For NCC musical theater students, their four years of hard work lead up to the senior musical. This year, the senior musical is “I Love You Because”, directed by Kyra Norris, ’21.
“I Love You Because” follows Austin Bennet, Jeff Bennet, Marcy Fitzwilliams and Diana Bingley. They are all in their twenties, trying to navigate life, love and 1990s New York City. Any bookworms in the audience might notice the allusions to Jane Austen’s classic novel “Pride and Prejudice.”
Outside of the theater department, students may not be aware of the effort needed to produce the senior musical. The process takes almost a full year and takes an entire team to bring the show to life.
The proposal
A theater student who wishes to direct the senior musical must research their show and undergo a proposal process.
Norris said she chose “I Love You Because” because she felt connected to the story. “I just felt like it would work well for … a student-run show because it had a lot of elements of design and tech,” she said. Norris added that the COVID-19 pandemic added a new meaning to “I Love You Because,” making it an escape for the audience.
“It’s such a light-hearted, loving show that just shows connections between people, which is what we strive for right now; it’s what we miss the most,” said Norris, ’21.
Once a student has a sound reason for choosing a show, the real work begins. They must figure out how to make their show possible. The potential directors must decide on logistics, such as securing the rights to the show and planning the location.
The student proposes the show to the entire theater faculty. Based on this presentation, the faculty decide which performance will play the following year. One of the big questions that the theater faculty asks the presenter is, ‘why this show, why now?’
“We really had to have an idea about what we wanted it to look like from the get-go and have that on our proposal so that the faculty could really know what the vision was before they picked something,” Norris said.
The faculty also look at which shows will provide the most opportunities for students in both acting and production work.
Virtual rehearsal
When creating theater in a whole new way, there can be more challenges than expected. This cast was initially supposed to perform on stage, but Norris and her team had to reconfigure everything to an online format.
Norris said that one of the biggest issues they ran into during rehearsal was Zoom audio. Zoom automatically detects a ‘speaker’ on a call and focuses primarily on that voice. This was problematic for a musical with duets and group numbers with multiple voices singing at once.
“All they could hear was themselves singing, or the other person singing, but they could never practice actually singing together,” said Norris.
Eventually, the production team solved this issue. “During recording, they were all in separate rooms, but they had headphones on so they could actually hear their duet partner singing with them. And it was just a really amazing moment,” said Norris.
The production team and cast alike were thrilled during technical rehearsal last weekend. “Seeing it all come together and hearing the group numbers all being sang together, everybody was close to tears the first time we heard it because we were like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s a musical … it sounds like a real musical!” said Norris.
Applying skills from class
Norris said that her love of acting sparked her interest in directing. “I think being able to actually look at all components of a show kind of broadens your knowledge of theater as a whole,” she said.
As a musical theater major, Norris’ classes have prepared her for her role as director for this production. “It’s nice to have a culmination of all of those classes that we’ve taken, or working backstage on shows. Now we finally get to try that out for ourselves as a production team,” she said. “So, I think that it has really led up to that for our senior musical.”
The final product
When a director begins work on a show, they have to consider what they want the audience to learn. These experiences help deliver the main message, or multiple messages, that is central to the show’s story.
“I think (this show) has a good balance of the realism that love is not this perfect thing that is so easy to come by,” Norris said. “A lot of times, it’s something that you have to work at; you have to work on yourself and know what you want. It allows us 20-year-olds to see ourselves and our struggles in a show and make us feel like it is not abnormal to struggle with relationships and what we want to do with our lives right now.”
Norris said she wants the audience to notice the effort behind this production and the joy that it has brought to the entire cast and production team. This production was truly special because there was no guarantee that they could create a theater this year.
Streaming information
“I Love You Because” streams performances on Nov. 19 at 7:30 p.m., Nov. 20 at 7:30 p.m. and Nov. 21 at 2:00 p.m. Virtual tickets are available for purchase here for $1 per device.
The show contains some adult themes and language which may be inappropriate for young audiences.
