A striking chord cuts through the auditorium as the curtain begins to rise. Actors in fairy tale costumes make their way through a painted forest, their voices blending to create intricate harmonies. Though many attend North’s spring musical, “Into the Woods,” few know the work that occurs behind the scenes.
Auditions for the musical began back in November, and the process consisted of three parts: a monologue, a song and a dance.
“A monologue is just a little bit of a paragraph of speech, a dialogue that a character would say that has some emotion to it,” said sophomore Gabriel Lotfi, who plays the Baker. “You had to choose a song and a monologue and go and sing it for them, and then the next day you would go and dance.”
The cast — made up of about 40 people — rehearsed nearly every day after school or in the evening beginning in February. Due to the many events taking place in North’s auditorium, rehearsals often happened in the choir room and empty pods until after spring break.
“[Rehearsals have] been a little longer because it’s a long show, but we rehearse every day after school, from 2:30 to 5:30 most days, and then as tech started, we started going later into the night,” said senior Lincoln Pixton, who plays the Wolf and Cinderella’s Prince.
In order to cover all aspects of becoming their character, from singing to dancing to acting, the cast engaged in a variety of different rehearsals. Choir Director Michael Molloy led hour-long vocal rehearsals each day after school, breaking the show down song by song for the actors to rehearse solos, duets, large group songs and ensemble numbers. Another main type of rehearsal was blocking.
“Blocking rehearsals are where we learn all our dances, where we’re supposed to be during the scenes, how we’re supposed to interact with characters,” said Lotfi. “It’s what helps us work on our acting.”
The actors are not the only ones meeting every week to rehearse. Another major component of the spring musical is the pit orchestra, which is formed in November.
“We announced the needs of instrumentation, and then if there’s more interest than needed, … we have to have an audition,” said Andrew Masters, pit orchestra conductor. “Beyond that, it’s usually just teacher recommendation.”
“Into the Woods” presents a special challenge in comparison to previous North musicals due to the amount of instrumentation. Instead of just playing while the actors are singing, the orchestra often plays during dialogue parts, as well.
“The rehearsals for the orchestra in this show are kind of tedious because we’re not playing a lot of melodies. We’re playing background music, and the music is obscure. It’s hard to kind of latch on to immediately,” said Masters. “What’s been a challenge for me is then knowing how the music fits in with the dialogue and our specific cues and knowing when to play.”
Starting at the end of January, the orchestra begins rehearsals two to three times a week. The first time the orchestra and cast rehearse together is during sitzprobe, which is German for “seated rehearsal.” During this time, the actors sit down with the orchestra and go through the music without any acting or dancing. After that, the orchestra moves into the pit.
Aside from the cast and orchestra, another group is working behind the scenes to make the show happen: the tech crew. The tech crew for “Into the Woods” works on a variety of components, including the set, lighting, costumes, microphones and sound cues.
This year, the tech crew took a different approach to costume design. Instead of renting costumes, they thrifted many of the outfits and even worked on sewing them themselves.
One of the tech crew’s main jobs is to put together the set for the show, which was outlined by three student designers in coordination with the directors.
“We have builds, generally, every day after school — except for Tuesdays — until about 5 p.m., and really that’s just the time for us to be in the auditorium, in the space, and work on getting the set built,” said senior Brady Rosales, stage manager.
While actors may struggle to remember lines or sing at the right time, the technical aspect of the show brings its own challenges.
“During the show, obviously, whenever anything goes wrong, that’s really stressful,” said Rosales. “The cast, they can improvise when something goes wrong. For us, we have to either get it right or fix it right away.”
Though “Into the Woods” has been a challenge for the cast, crew and orchestra, everything began to come together in the weeks leading up to the show. Because the run time of “Into the Woods” is nearly three hours, tech week lasted for two weeks instead of one, and the actors rehearsed different parts of the show each day.
“This show, specifically, is very hard musically. Everything is very interwoven and intricate, so if even one factor is off, like tech or music or lines, it kind of all gets messed up,” said senior Everette Alhambra, who plays the Baker’s Wife.
All the members of the show have put in a lot of work over the last few months to bring “Into the Woods” together, and many of the actors were able to fully step into their character and take inspiration from the message of the show. For Pixton, this came from the song “No One is Alone.”
“It’s just this piece at the end of the show where everybody in the song has sort of lost somebody who they had depended upon, and it’s just really beautiful to hear them sort of work through everything that just happened,” said Pixton. “I think in the world we live in, we experience so much loss, so many terrible things. It’s a really great message to hear, ‘no one is alone.’”
