Local children join college cast
Tan-skinned with brown eyes and brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, hoop earrings, a turquoise tanktop and sneakers, Jessie Medofer picked up her ankle-length skirt and twirled and danced. Medofer seemed like a typical, carefree 10-year-old, playing dress-up and singing the summer away. But, she and 11-year-old David Mahokey, attend long rehearsals, memorize pages of lines accompanied by movement and endure constructive criticism and sight-reading, which require adult virtues such as patience, sacrifice and dedication.
Medofer of Brownsville and Mahokey of Dunbar are playing the lead roles in six performances of California University of Pa.’s musical production, “The Secret Garden’ based on the classic novel by Frances Hodgson. It’ll be running on weekends through July 20 in Steele Auditorium.
Medofer is playing the lead of Mary Lennox from India, and Mahokey is playing Lennox’s bedridden cousin, Colin Craven, from England.
Mahokey gave up his annual summer ritual of swimming on the Uniontown YMCA’s Dolphin’s team to attend rehearsals. He has been swimming since he was 7 and has won first-place trophies, but he said the musical was “worth the sacrifice.”
Medofer has at least four hours of rehearsal every day, and both children will practice from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. during tech rehearsals the week before opening night.
Medofer has been acting for the past four years with CalRep, and her past roles include Marta in “The Sound of Music,’ Molly in the first and the dual roles of Tesse and Annie in the second production of “Annie,’ Medea’s son in “Medea’ and her most recent role as Alfred in “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.’
Mahokey was John in “Peter Pan’ at Stage Right in Greensburg, in the chorus of Cal U’s production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’ and in “A Knight to Remember’ at Catholic Verna Montessori.
Besides their usual dramatic tasks, Medofer and Mahokey have the added challenge of speaking on stage in British dialect. Michele Pagen, administrative director of CalRep and director of “The Secret Garden’ has been teaching the child stars the Standard British dialect since the beginning of May and said, “They picked up on it quickly, because they both have an ear for it.”
Mahokey said that you have to take out or run together a few of the middle letters in words with double sounding consonants so that “secretary” and “necessary” would sound like “sectry” and “nesry.”
Pagen said that British dialect uses totally different muscles and resonates in a different place. According to Mahokey, “The first few days, your mouth really aches.”
Both children have to sing in the Standard British dialect in “The Secret Garden’ as well. Medofer plays piano and clarinet and takes ballet lessons and some jazz. However, the Cox-Donahey Elementary School has no choir for her to join. She loves that Cal U’s production is a musical.
Mahokey also plays the piano, takes voice lessons and sings in the choir at the Catholic Verna Montessori and will be starting at Conn-Area in the fall.
Jordan Sealy of Brownsville, Kristy Bissell of Canonsburg, Bethany Dye of Uniontown and Dan Callery of Charleroi make up the children’s choir for the production.
During rehearsals, Medofer said that sometimes the college cast can be a little overprotective of her, especially when the scenery is not completed.
“They are like, ‘Be careful and watch your step!'” said Medofer.
Also, when the script called for Josh Elicker, who acted as The Player in “Rosencratz and Guildenstern’ to kick Medofer, he apologized profusely.
“He kept saying, ‘I am so sorry. I really don’t want to do this.’ I told him it was okay. I could take it,” said Medofer.
“The cast is like one big family,’ he added.
But, the cast has cause to be conscientious, because as Mahokey demonstrated, accidents do occur. When Mahokey was in “Peter Pan’ he said that he was hooked up to a harness that lifted him up to fly and during a performance he missed the landing spot on a makeshift bed.
“I wasn’t hurt, just freaked out. My night gown worked as a parachute and luckily, I had shorts on underneath,” said Mahokey.