Senior Elena McFadden, who plays Clarissa, has been in theater since the first show of her freshman year.
“This will be my 13th show,” McFadden said. “I plan on doing all of [the shows] this year, so that will be 16 shows before I graduate.”
This is the first time she has partaken in a fall musical and she was elated to hear the change.
“I love musicals and I love this musical [in particular],” McFadden said. “I love the music in it and the storyline so I was really excited that we were going to be doing it.”
McFadden also had her concerns regarding the difference in executing a play versus a musical.
“I was a little nervous to see how we would pull off two musicals in one year, especially because this musical is different from anything we’ve done, at least in the time that I’ve been here,” McFadden said. “But so far the process is going really well.”
For McFadden, the audition process was familiar, making it less stressful and enabling her to have more fun. She sang clips from two songs, one song from “Alice by Heart” and one song from a different show of her choice, which was “Spring Awakening”
“We basically just go in the room and say what we’re auditioning for and then sing the song,” McFadden said. “Then, callbacks come out the night of the audition.”
Though McFadden has been doing theater for all four years of high school, she does not plan on pursuing theater as a major in college, but still hopes to indulge in it as a hobby.
“[For] most of the colleges I’m applying to, you can still audition for the shows without being a major,” McFadden said. “I still definitely plan on doing a few shows here and there or singing in whatever way that might be.”
McFadden plans on majoring in psychology and believes that her choice in major connects deeply with her love of theater.
“I think there is a really big connection between psychology and acting,” McFadden said. “For acting in theater you have to go into the mind of your character and kind of understand their psyche.”
No matter what McFadden goes on to do, theater will forever have imprinted on her life.
“Music will always be part of my life,” McFadden said. “It’s just not the career that I’m going into.”
