On Thursday night, a man will sit in a chair and invite all of Otterbein into his living room.
This man, no doubt a gracious host, is also the main character of the Theatre Department's most recent production, "The Drowsy Chaperone." Here, "a man in New York is feeling blue, so he puts on his favorite record and takes the audience along," said freshman musical theatre major Preston Pounds, who leads the show as the man in the chair with a "non-specific sadness."
Unlike most theatrical productions, this one takes the audience along in a different sense.
"It exists in two different worlds. It takes place in a man's living room," junior musical theatre major Andrea Varadi said. "His bad day prompts him to put on his favorite record, which is "The Drowsy Chaperone," and the show comes to life in his house. It is the story about the man in the chair."
A show within a show might be new to some audience members, but the intentionally clichéd 1920s characters aren't quite so novel.
"There are so many different stereotypes of different characters from the '20s, and we were really able to put our stamp on them," Varadi said.
"There were a lot of technical elements, like an airplane with a working propeller and a refrigerator that the cast uses to enter the living room," he said.
With the new experiences through tech design came new experiences through directional means. David Caldwell, a guest director who has directed over 20 plays and choreographed an impressive 10, brought his talents to Otterbein to help produce "The Drowsy Chaperone."
"The guest director has been great because it's different than what we're used to. We mostly get people from within the department, but it's great as a student to work with a guest director because it offers a different viewpoint," Varadi said. "Most of the directors we work with are acting professors, too. They teach acting workshops, which would make a play production feel like another workshop. This is what makes guest directors so great to work with," Pounds said.
"The Drowsy Chaperone," which has lived on Broadway since May 2006, has earned awards for best book and best score at the Tony Awards. It started off as a spoof of the typical musical, housing each of the humdrum characters of the Broadway of yore.
Fans and critics have raved in the name of its excellence since Toronto birth in 1998 and stake it as a comedic gem honoring the jazz age.
With the likes of such playbill connoisseurs bowing at the glitzy toes of this play, the hardship of the production might come from finding originality within the characters.
"With any show you have to bring your own flair to it," Pounds said. "We each have different experiences that we bring to the characters, experiences that would differ from anyone else playing this part, so we each bring our own flair to the characters."
