The smell of coffee and fake smoke fills the air, feet planted into the ground to not fall over, the taste of cough drops, and the sound of applause—the lights, blinding, bright in Olivia Dolton’s eyes.
Students prepare for the upcoming musical, The Phantom of the Opera. Set in the late 1800’s, the show has romance, suspense and with almost no speaking lines very demanding vocally. September 9 through November 19 are spent preparing, learning life lessons, balancing time and their lives.
“I’m not laughing and jumping around the place. I’m almost meditating, I get myself in the mind space of, I’m about to be on stage for two hours straight, and I need to lock-in a way. I quiet down and I focus,” Dolton, who plays Christine Daaé said.
Rehearsals provide the cast and crew with valuable time to learn how to navigate the production and explore different approaches to their performance. With an estimated number of 100 props alone, there is little room for error in a production of this size. The 100+ cast and crew members, will work relentlessly to make sure that there are no bumps in the road.
“Rehearsals have gone super smooth and are really fun. It’s really different from anything else I’ve done and I’m doing better than I have ever done in my life,” Londynn Witherspoon, who plays Meg Geary said.
Mindset is one of the factors that contribute to a show’s success. Getting into a good mindset of a character is one of the most important aspects of being an actor, a good headspace, keeping your voice healthy, as well as staying focused and well prepared, will make sure you don’t have any problems or get burnt out to quickly.
“Preparing for a role like this is like nothing I’ve done before. This whole musical is just music. Christine specifically has a very high range, so I have to prepare my voice to sing all of the high notes, which means I’m consuming a lot of tea, a lot of honey and a lot of throat coat. I have four different types of lozenges I bought just for the show. I humidify and I nebulize my voice,” Dolton said.
This isn’t the full story, however, there are still many personal obstacles you have to overcome, fatigue, vocal strain, burnout and anxiety are all very big problems. Fatigue makes it hard to continue moving, damaging your voice can jeopardize the whole performance, burnout and anxiety. Rehearsals bring the cast together, balancing your life, keeping your mind and body healthy and knowing your stopping point.
“There’s a lot of practice outside of rehearsal. All of the leads, especially, we have to have all of our lines and all of our music memorized long before rehearsals. There’s also vocal warm-ups sometimes, because it’s hard music,” Isaac Bailey, who plays Meg Geary (The Phantom) said.
The cast and crew of The Phantom of the Opera are putting in 110+ hours to complete every detail. From set changes to vocal rehearsals, the production is coming together after months of preparation. Classes also add many hours to the cast and crews lives.
“When we decided to move forward with this show, we knew that it was going to be a huge challenge. It’s something that not a lot of folks in high school or teenagers know about; it’s been running and available forever, but we thought this would be a really cool thing to showcase to the community. I hope that they just enjoyed the moment and soaked it up along the way, knowing that this was a very different type of show for a high school to do, but also knowing that they had the skills and determination to pull it off,” assistant director, Mick Turpin said.
A teacher preview will be held on November 18, with public performances running November 19–22 at 7 p.m. If interested in learning more, go to @lpsfinearts on Instagram or buy tickets at vancoevents.com for 5 dollars each.
