Footloose Review

Footloose Review

Director—Jennifer Guarino

Music conductor— Eunyong DiGiacomo

Dance Director— Ms. Pollard

Custome Manager— Mrs. Bass-Riccio

Lighting Conductor— Mr. Macbreen

Stage Manager— Lynch

Piano Player— Nathan Trier

Drum Player— Jesse Ofgang

Ren— Tony

Ren’s Mom— Cassidy

Aerial— Olivia

Shaw—Aaron

VI— Jenna

Chuck— Nan

Lyle— Grace

Travis— Stella

Aerial’s friends— Mao, Caroline, Amelia

Willard— Ray

Footloose was played in Cheshire Academy in 2019 winter musical.  It is a comedy musical, mainly talked about Ren moved his home with his mom to Bomont, the small town that people are not allowed to dance and have fun, from Chicago.  Ren was not happy about the law and wanted to change the law, but the stubborn town manager and priest, Shaw, was against his suggestion.  Through a lot of effort, Shaw was convinced by Ren, and the town can dance again.

It is my pleasure that I can play a role in Footloose.  In the play, I played Lyle, a body of Chuck.  Lyle and Travis are the bodies of Chuck who is the ignorant and awful person who was got out of school and got involved with drug dealing.  Even though Travis and Lyle are not kicked off from the school, but they are also bad boys.  However, they gradually left Chuck and followed Ren, and in the end, they are with Ren and Ren’s friends.  

It is an interesting story for Travis and Lyle.  As Lyle, I believe that he is not as awful as Chuck, and he is not as thoughtful as Chuck either.  The reason for being with Chuck is that the feeling is cool and exciting.  What they did are totally different from most students.  They feel like they are breaking the rules that nobody likes, so they have the excitement of guilt.  In addition, Chuck is the topic in the town before Ren came, so Lyle and Travis want to be the spotlight, being talked among students.  However, after Ren came, the spotlight is on Ren, and it made Lyle and Travis jealous of Ren.  When Chuck loses dominance, Lyle and Travis left Chuck.  In addition, Ren is the person who is easy to get along with, so Lyle and Travis are more willing to be bodies with Ren instead of tempered Chuck.

Because of the differences between boys and girls, or good boys and bad boys, there is a challenge for me acting Lyle, which is so exciting.  Being a different person on the stage is the most exciting thing for me.  At the beginning of the play, I was wearing jeans, a dark green T-shirt, and a leather jacket with my hair tied.  I walked in a stride and tried to talk in a heavy voice to build up a male’s figure, and then I talked and stood carelessly to emphasize how irrelevant Lyle is.  The song we sang is The Girl Gets Around.  The lyrics are about the players playing with girls so I can be irrelevant and careless as much as I want.  Nobody can stop me from doing it, because I have Chuck as my big brother who can stand out for me.  Even though we are so scared of Shaw that we pretend to be good when we meet Shaw, we can make fun of him after he is gone.  Lyle called it strategy and bravery.  I called it cowards.  

At the end of the show, when we danced in the prom, we dressed in suits and met new friends, I made Lyle a little bit shy.  In my opinion, Lyle is not rude enough to be totally bad.  Instead, he just wants to be popular.  Therefore, when he finds out that it is another way of getting popular and welcomed not only by being a bad boy, he showed his inner side more, which is a shy boy that who can be blushing when talking to pretty girls.

There is also another role for me to play in the middle of the show which brought funs to me.  In the second scene of Act II, I played a cowgirl.  It is a female character, so I can dressed up, let my hair down, walk with jog a little bit, and saying my lines in a higher voice.  In addition, to distinguish the two characters more, I added the southern accent in my cowgirl’s line.  Every time when I thought I am a southern American international student, speaking English with a mix of Chinese accent and southern accent, it can make me laugh for a while.

For the production, lighting is amazing.  Compare to the last winter musical I attended, the stage got more lighting.  We have the party light that when we dance; we have the red light when the car crash showed; we have the three spotlight that can be used at the same time.  Besides, the cues of lighting change are more than the last one, which can be more difficult to control and more interesting when it works well.  For backstage and pit band, we also got a camera and screen, and it made the production much easier and more professional.

In the end, I enjoyed being a part of the show.  It is my last musical in high school, and I decide to engage with more dramas when I get into college. 

Reflection

        On last Thursday, we spent three hours, staying in the black box, to perform and watch others' performances.  Our group is the third one, and we made through once, which is excellent.  David and David put all the efforts in it, and they gave their best performance I believe.  They spoke loudly and clearly; the facial expression and body movement are into the characters.  I love the nagging that David Dai had and the peacemaker David Wang created.  I am proud of them.
        My performance is not bad.  All of us showed the characters' emotions, and my emotion is good as well.  I decided to create Caroline to be naive and a little bit soft at the beginning of the performance, so I had petty actions, such as jogging, many facial expressions when saying the lines, and unsteady tone when saying the lines.  I wanted to show that she is not confident enough to speak her voice out loud in the first monologue, and I did pretty well on it.  In the scene that the biggest conflict happened between mom and Caroline, I shouted to David (mom) and intentionally broke my voice.  The breaking voice can bring the scene more dramatic and can highlight Caroline's anger even more.  I like this decision.  At the end of the scene, the moment before the wedding, I dressed up and said my monologue in a stable tone and a bit heavier voice.  I spoke the end monologue more slowly compared to my last monologue.  The first monologue is like a diary that I only speak to myself due to lack of confidence, but the last monologue is more like a speech that I project my voice so that everyone can hear me and understand me.  I did this comparison clearly, and I like it a lot.  In addition, if you noticed that I improvised in the last monologue.  I added some lines because firstly, I found out the duration of the performance might be shorter than expected, and secondly, I think it might be better if Caroline shows the understanding to her mother.  When people get nervous, they usually speed up their speech, so I hoped I could stretch the performance longer.
         I made mistakes, two big mistakes.  One is that I said the line wrong, and the other is that I kind of forgot the line.  I messed up one line's sequence so that it did not sound right.  Then, I had to change the words a little bit, and it brought extremely awkward pauses.  It is really bad, and I felt sorry for it.
        There is an accident that David cannot get used to the dark environment, so he passed the teddy bear to be late, and it caused the last scene started late.  I came up to stage late, so the monologue did not match the background music perfectly.  However, I do not think that is a big deal.  I would have more tech practices if I have the performance in the future.  In addition, the camera is kind of closer to the floor.  Then, the performance is moved to the top instead of setting in the center of the camera.  Besides it, everything is good.