April 19, 2007

From crapshooters to saints, this weekend’s Yellow Springs High School and McKinney School production of ‘Guys and Dolls’ includes 66 student cast, crew and pit orchestra members and features a core cast including, clockwise from right, Nathan Day as a crapshooter, Victor McElroy as Nicely Nicely Johnson, Toby Cromer as Nathan Detroit, Mary Hyde as Adelaide, Simon Freeman as a gambler and Rosa Dixon as Sarah Brown. Not pictured is Drew Stratton as Sky Masterson. The spring musical runs Fridays and Saturdays, April 20, 21, 27 and 28, at 8 p.m., and Sundays, April 22 and 29, at 2 p.m.

By Lauren Heaton

This year for the Yellow Springs High School spring musical production of Guys and Dolls, the actors, musicians, managers and stage and tech crew took a new approach to the theater arts. Instead of walking into rehearsal and breaking into their song and dance routines, the group as a whole gathered for three sun salutations. They took time to breathe together and engaged in improvised movement together, and they turned much of their focus on learning to sense their bodies in relation to the performance space and other people on stage. And it has made the difference between what would have been a good show and what is now a show that really “pops,” senior production manager Niquelle Orr said last week.

“I can’t exactly say what it is, but there’s something special about this show that makes it really bright,” she said. “It’s such a fun show; it’s so funny, and Andrea went out of her way to get professional artists to teach us and the Hot Box girls, who just look amazing.”

That is what director Andrea Auten hopes others see when they come to the performances of Guys and Dolls at Mills Lawn School this weekend and next on Fridays and Saturdays, April 20, 21, 27 and 28 at 8 p.m. and on Sundays, April 22 and 29 at 2 p.m. She challenged the students to embody the 1950 broadway musical about New York City crapshooters with a unified energy, and like no other group of student she has ever worked with, she said, they came through to make this an unforgettable experience.

Mary Hyde, who plays Adelaide, the ditzy star of the Hot Box nightclub and the 14-year fiancée of Nathan Detroit, is hilarious with a New York accent, Orr said. This is Hyde’s first time on stage as something other than a white-haired grandmother, and she rather likes the chance to be the blond floozy, she said. She is the ringleader of the Hot Box girls, whose colorful circle skirts are as impressive as their high kicks. Toby Cromer plays Nathan, the owner of an illegal floating crapshoot game who needs money to entice the high rollers to play at his tables. In comes Sky Masterson, played by Drew Stratton. With his crooning solos, he woos Sarah Brown, a Salvation Army mission girl, played by Rosa Dixon, who ends up saving all, or most, of their souls.

Auten, who teaches art at the high school and McKinney School, also directed the YSHS production of Moon Over Buffalo and has worked with youth through the Cayenne Pepper Theater Company she founded in Los Angeles before deciding to pursue a theater degree from Wright State University and live part-time in Yellow Springs. Auten has kept in close contact with her classmates, who generously agreed to utilize their talents and modern philosophies of movement and ensemble training for this production.

Matthew Brennan came in from New York City in early March for intensive choreography training with Hot Box girls Lara Donnelly, Elan Orr, Brenda Jones, Malaika Carver, Salome Garcia, Michelle Click, Danielle Fulton, Anne Weigand, Zyna Bakari, Elyse Giardullo, Miriam Barcus, Meg Hild and Belle-Pilar Fleming. He also worked with Havana dancers Eduardo Galiffa, Ameer Wagner and Barbara Jewell as well as additional ensemble cast members Kevin Mayer, Rory Papania, Adam Zaremsky, Amelia Shaw, Liz Zaff, Caity Bothwell, Laura Hyde and Miranda Russell.

John Faas, who works for Dayton’s Victoria Theater, agreed to step in as the musical director and coach the soloists as well as conduct the pit orchestra, whose members include high school and McKinney students Whitney Finster, Michael Finster, Lasena Badger, James Goodrick, Marty Scherr, Anna Stephens and Elizabeth Tobey, along with several community residents.

Local resident and professional actor Bruce Cromer, who has worked with Auten in the past, choreographed the fight scenes in this production, and local resident D’Arcy Smith, a voice and speech professor at Wright State, also trained the cast to “tawk lawk uh New Yowkah.”

The team of professionals that Auten has enlisted are all familiar with the movement training that helps the actors to become what is known in theater language as a living, breathing “we.” Exercises developed by internationally renowned artistic directors Anne Bogart and Tina Landau involve improvisational movement on stage where students react to others moving in and out of their space. Auten explained that practicing this “viewpoint” method hones a deeper connection to their purpose and results in a “visually interesting, naturalistic, non-standard high school musical experience.”

Hyde and Hild believe the exercises have taught them how to sense and react to each other in a small space without words through movement alone. The training helps them to create what they call a whole picture on stage, rather than individual pieces, said Hild, who had never approached theater in a scientific way before this.

Students know they are getting opportunities a lot of youth don’t have to learn from professionals. “The people Andrea has gotten to work with us are amazing,” Hyde said. The experience has given some students, such as Victor McElroy, who plays loose-lipped Nicely Nicely Johnson, the idea of pursuing theater beyond high school.

McElroy is a crapshooter along with Simon Freeman, Peter Keahey, Nathan Day, Elliot Cromer, Eric Dryden and Nerak Patterson. Other characters in the play are Max Fleishman, Anna Forster, Zeke Hardman, Jamie Paul, Mary Triplett, Lauren Westendorf, Rachel Misik and Kelly Miller.

Additional technical crew members for Guys and Dolls include Claire Triplett, Rose Pelzl, Sarah Acomb, Danielle Doubt, Megan Kaplon, Olivia Chen, Katie Triplett, Eric Rudolf, Nathan Auten, Jacob Auten, Kalson Cheow, John Reimers, Tyler Johnson, Claire Harworth and Zane Reichert.

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com