It is nearly time to audition for “Spring Awakening,” the brainchild and MAP of Nolan Boggess ’18. “Auditions are open to everyone and everyone who even has an inkling that they want to audition should!” Boggess wrote in an email to The S&B. “Just be honest and open and willing to try new things.”
Boggess wrote that “Spring Awakening” “is based on the 1891 Frank Wedekind play about German youth discovering their physical and mental bodies and rebelling against oppressive forces in their life … The contrast between the text and music creates a contemporary edge to a show with a story that has been controversial for over 100 years.”
Boggess shared that he “came to Grinnell with the hopes of creating a student musical theatre group on campus.” Over the course of his first three years here, he produced “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” with Jessica Daly ’18 and Hannah Lundberg ’18. He also described being partially inspired by Daly’s MAP production of “Next to Normal” last fall. “Like Jessica, I wanted to present a final project that summarized both my education within the department and experience producing musicals outside the department.”
Though the theatre department has had a slightly controversial past with prioritizing their need for actors over that of seniors with MAPs, Boggess explained that the increasing interest students have had in doing their own work has “inevitably led to the conversation about student shows and department shows being produced at the same time.” However, he added that “students obtaining an education in Theatre & Dance at Grinnell College can learn from both of these types of productions and should,” and expressed to The S&B that he “gained so many skills that have helped [him] in working on student musical theatre here.”
According to Boggess, making a musical happen is not cheap. “This production will be funded by the academic office in charge of supplying MAP funding and SGA funding (who I both thank dearly). Although available, obtaining funding for students shows is difficult because one has to find it in many different spots,” Boggess wrote. “I joked to my friends one time saying it felt like another part time job getting to the bottom of how one finds the funding to create a student musical here. Also, most of this work takes place months in advance. For ‘Spring Awakening,’ I was working during the summer to get contracts and funding in line.”
Boggess is also a proponent of performance as a valid form of research. “Thus, my final presentation of this MAP will not be a presentation or paper but will be the four performances of Spring Awakening in December. I hope this production inspires other students to continue to do performance as research and defy the notion that research has to take place in papers and laboratories.”
There are 13 roles available, with 11 of them being singing and the other two non-singing. Auditions are Sept. 22-23, with callbacks on Sept. 24. The sign-up sheet is on the callboard outside the Flanagan Theatre, and questions can be sent to Boggess at [boggessn].
