Bringing Broadway back

Kendyl Wade

From top left, Dottie Pratt, Courtney Kelley, Haley Steele and Jami Terracino and from bottom left, Rachel Harwell and Jordan Isbell perform in Tuesday’s Musical Theatre Scenes: A Night of Classis Broadway. The entire cast performed songs from shows such as “My Fair Lady” and “Annie, Get Your Gun.”

Musical theatre scenes celebrate the oldies and goodies of Broadway

Ten GCSU students with majors ranging from theatre and English, to marketing and mass communication, got to display their vocal talents during Musical Theatre Scenes, “A Night of Classic Broadway” on Tuesday, Nov. 16. The performance was a collection of musical scenes from much loved Broadway classics such as “My Fair Lady” and “Annie Get Your Gun.”

“I’m a theatre major, I love to perform and I love musicals, so this put it all together for me,” said senior theatre and English major Dottie Pratt. This was Pratt’s seventh time participating in the class, but also her last as she is planning on graduating in December.

Pratt preformed in four of the seven scenes. The first scene starred Pratt as Eliza singing “Just You Wait” from “My Fair Lady,” which Pratt suggested to director and professor of the class, Dr. Wendy Mullen in the beginning of the semester. The scene also starred freshman theatre major Evan Wells as Mr. Higgins and freshman music therapy major Eric Pratt as Pickering.

Dr. Mullen chooses all the songs the class will perform for the semester after all the class members audition.

“We have auditions the first day of class,” Dr. Mullen explained about how rapidly the class goes from introduction to performance, “It moves very quickly, [the students] get a music rehearsal, a staging rehearsal, and then they’re supposed to be off-book and we rehearse it a couple of times, then it’s the show.”

The musical theatre scenes class has been around for the past 12 years, since Dr. Mullen came to GCSU. Anyone can audition and be in the show, allowing the class to have students from many different majors.

“I love musical theater and to sing and act but it’s not my major,” said sophomore marketing major Haley Steele. The audience loved Steele’s starring role in the fourth scene as Annie from “Annie Get Your Gun” singing “Can’t Get a Man with a Gun.”

“Country music is my thing; I love country music so it was perfect,” said Steele about the scene.

Other students participated in the class to just have a little fun with musical theatre.

“I loved getting to work with people who are awesome and talented and getting to sing,” said freshman theatre major Rachel Harwell who played Carrie in “Mister Snow Reprise” from “Carousel” and Sally in “The Baseball Game” from “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown.”

“[The performance] takes away from the pressure of all the other academics,” Harwell said. “It’s kind of like our outlet, along with all the other theatre classes we take.”

This semester’s performance was a little different from past performances, it had fewer scenes and fewer class members.

“Sometimes we’ve done as many as 14 scenes, and it’s absolutely nuts,” said Dr. Mullen. “I loved having a smaller class, this is one of the smaller classes I’ve had so I’ve gotten to spend more time with individual people, that’s what’s been special about this class.”

“It’s a different kind of course, different from anything we have here at GCSU,” said Dr. Mullen, “but it’s a lot of fun.”

Posted by Molly Holmes on Nov 18 2010. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.