CalRep opens new season
CALIFORNIA – A few weeks ago, in the basement of Steele Auditorium on the campus of California University of Pennsylvania, performers in the 2003 CalRep Pennsylvania company rehearsed and dreamed about the future. The basement, where the voices of altos, sopranos, basses and tenors rise and fall, is not only a training room, but a place where some performers dream of the next stage – New York City and even Broadway.
This year, CalRep will perform “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum,” “Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” and the “CalRep Cabaret: Broadway Goes Top 40” Wednesday, July 9, through Sunday, July 20.
The company, offering pre-professional actors a chance to hone their skills, is in its ninth season.
“It provides an opportunity for university students to get that first professional job that’s so hard to get and begin to build their resume,” said Richard Helldobler, CalRep’s artistic director and director and choreographer of “Sweeney Todd.”
In addition to building their resume, the performers have the opportunity to measure their skills against other actors.
“They begin to understand and assess where they are in their own development in relationship to other students,” Helldobler says. “Until they have that experience they really don’t understand what they need to do to develop themselves professionally.”
CalRep performers are picked from three audition sites – the Eastern Theater Conference, the Southeast Theater Conference and a local audition held on the Cal U campus. This year, auditions were also held in Washington D.C.
More than 2,000 actors audition for CalRep and other theater companies at the conferences.
“Students have such a need to have jobs in the summer and for theater people it becomes difficult to make a living and art. It’s just tough,” said Bill O’Donnell, producer and set designer, says. “What we did was designed a program that would give them a very intense experience in a mere six weeks.”
Those six weeks break down into four weeks of preparing and two weeks of performing.
Michele Pagen, administrative director of the company and director of “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum,” said the company is put together based on the type of performers needed for specific roles but with a balance among those roles.
“They’re not going to walk out of here with two major roles and also performing in the cabaret, because that would destroy their voices,” she said. “Usually they get a major role, a minor role and then perform in the cabaret. We try to make sure that’s fair.”
Pagen said the company made a “very conscious decision” to market itself as pre-professional.
“We are not a professional company,” she said. “We are affiliated with an academic institution, and helping kids learn skills that they don’t have is very important to us.”
Patrick Newell, a voice professor and director of the opera program at Eastern Kentucky University, will play Sweeney Todd, and Miles Gloriosus in “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum.” He is also music director of the cabaret.
“I get to pass on some of what I’ve learned as well,” Newell said. “It’s nice to be in that position.”
Newell, in his first summer at CalRep, said he is impressed with the program.
“They are focusing on education, getting these kids ready for their next step or steps which for a lot of them is going to New York and trying to have a career,” he said. “I have an opera background and in the opera world we would call this an apprenticeship.”
And at least three CalRep apprentices are aiming to make it big some day.
“I get the experience here of doing parts I normally wouldn’t get in college so it just really rounded my education,” said Josh Fiedler, one of 19 performers in the company. “I just get so much experience here that I feel like I can apply to anything. I’m moving to New York after this.”
Fiedler, a 22-year-old from Miami, Fla., in his third summer with the company, recently graduated from the University of Miami with a degree in musical theater.
Tina Ghandchilar, also 22, from Washington, D.C., is in her first summer with the company.
“When I got called back I was really, really excited,” she said. “I replied to them immediately. As soon as I got the e-mail it was like OK I’m doing this, I know I’m doing this.”
Ghandchilar, a senior at James Madison University, is pursuing a dual degree in musical theater and speech language pathology.
A 19-year-old sophomore at Cal U, Brian Levine, also in his first summer with the company, said he has already learned from his experience with CalRep.
“It has shown me where I need to work and how much harder I need to work, especially meeting people like Josh and other people who are graduating and going into the business,” he said.
“I’ve definitely grown through this year, but I’d like to improve a lot more before this time next year.”
Eventually Ghandchilar and Levine, like Fiedler, hope to end up on the stage in New York City.
“Yeah, yeah,” Ghandchilar says, laughing. “Maybe like auditioning for specific stuff like Urinetown.”
“Mine will be a journey around and then in,” Levine added.
“I probably won’t go immediately to New York. I’ll probably try to do some other companies and then eventually try to make it in New York.”
The musicals will run in repertory Wednesday, July 9, through Sunday, July 20, in Steele Auditorium at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. CalRep Cabaret will run at noon and 11 p.m. and will be held at High Point Restaurant and Lounge on Route 88 in Coal Center.
For more information or to purchase tickets, call the box office at 724-938-5943.