Musical theater pushed to the ‘Edges’ in Max Noah

The Max Noah Recital Hall was full Dec. 1 with people ready to watch theater performers put on scenes from “Edges,” an unconventional musical about real issues that relate to everyone.

The play began with the musical number “Become” where the performers question who they are becoming and if they are being genuine. This sets the mood for the rest of the play.

Some of the songs to follow were punchy and bold like “In Short” performed by Elisha Hodgin. She sang in character about how and why her ex-boyfriend should die, relishing in all of these bad occurrences that could and should happen to him.

“Being on stage is nerve racking because your voice begins to squeak and you can’t take charge of it. Singing is always more nerve racking than acting because you have to have much more control your voice,” Hodgin said.

Other songs were more comical like “Be My Friend”, which was sung by the whole company, discussing the many tribulations of having a Facebook account.

After the performance, many members of the audience had a lot to say about the splendid job that the actors did.

“I really liked the material done by all of the theater majors. I loved it when the company sang together because their harmonies were great,” senior Caroline Horlacher said.

As far as the favorite performance of the night, the audience leaned towards the songs that were more serious in tone.

“My favorite of all of the skits was ‘Lying There’ because it had the most emotion in it and it was very powerful,” freshman Ross Daniel said.

This performance was definitely a challenge for the actors themselves because they had to manage not only this play, but all the others from this season.

Steve Holbert, a sophomore, who had a solo in the final number ‘Coasting’, said he was more challenged with this part than with others from the past.

“I’m used to playing extreme parts, so to prepare for this show I watched how other people were acting around me and tried my best to imitate them,” Holbert said. “We have been very busy this semester with all of the other plays so by the time this production came up we all booked to get ready for it. Time management has definitely been key in that sense.”

The actors auditioned for their parts in August and have been working together since September preparing for this play.

“We have been preparing for this performance all semester. I am really relieved and excited to see how it all turned out,” Hodgin said.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Dec 4 2009. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry