Footloose, our spring school musical was a great success. A few members of the cast and crew have expressed their opinions on auditions and practice before their opening night March 1st.
According to Esther Glunt (’25), “auditions are my least favorite part of the process, they’re like the most nerving and it’s usually very terrifying.”
Junie Nickel (’27) says that during auditions, “I was pretty nervous but I had a lot of people supporting me.” “I wanted to try something [that] I’ve never done before and it seemed like a good opportunity” said Nickel about why she auditioned.
For Footloose auditions, they had to prepare 30 seconds of a song to sing and dance to. Reasons for auditioning range from peer pressure, to trying something new, to past theater experience.
For example, Josiah Young (’27) became a part of the theater program because his friends convinced him to do it, starting with his performance in Treasure Island. When it came to being a part of Footloose he said, “since I liked doing Treasure Island so much, I was like you minus well do footloose [too]”.
They have singing rehearsal Monday and Tuesday and then dance rehearsal Wednesday and Thursday. With Friday being a day they either practice their lines or practicing blocking, which is planning where and when they are supposed to move.
Glunt explains, “We have dance rehearsal with our choreographers and then singing rehearsals with Mr. Weaver and then we’ll have some blocking rehearsals with Kalie Predder and [Robert] Hanson.”
Nickel says that practices are “fun and really long” and that she prefers dancing practice over singing practice.
Young also prefers dancing practice, claiming that “the dancing’s complicated but I’m not a good singer”.
When asked about how ready and how nervous the performers are for the performance, Glunt said “I used to get really nervous, especially freshman year I would just get – nervous and excited all at once, now – it’s thrilling, it’s fun, it’s what I’m passionate about.”
Glunt is ready for what they’ve been practicing but she says “there’s still some stuff that we obviously have to work on, – but I’m sure that we can all get it done.”
While Young says that he’s “still kinda confused with a lot of the dancing parts but I understand the songs” and he invites us to come and watch.
Glunt prefers to go here because of the theater program. She says that “it’s a very good community within the arts here and we all just support each other and love each other.”
