The start of the 2019 Spring semester has come and gone, and so has auditions for the spring musical. This year’s musical is Disney’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”, featuring a total of 19 students as the cast.
“The show has a very big ensemble, meaning that the chorus is very vital to the storyline,” Theatre Professor Edward L. Powers said. “They are telling the story, they aren’t just being in the background as singers and dancers, they’re telling the story. So, all the actors will be used very effectively.”
Junior music ministry major Thomas Faye will be the lead role of Quasimodo.
“It’s pretty great actually, I have never gotten the lead role before so, it’s an honor,”Faye said.
Some of the challenges Faye is facing in preparing for his role as as Quasimodo is the voice, the hunchback and the personality.
“I was actually pretty excited when I heard that it was the Hunchback,” Faye said. “Of course, I was a little skeptical about it because I wasn’t sure how we were going to do this big production, but from the looks of it, it seems like it will be a great show.”
To see if the show would work on the Goodwin Performing Arts Center stage, Powers looked to the internet for reference.
“Well I did look at a couple of examples online and I looked at the size of their stage and what they did and I was thinking to myself ‘well, this could fit our stage’,” Powers said. “So, that was another reason for thinking that the show would be advantageous to us.”
This isn’t the first Disney show to be on the Waynesburg University stage, but this is the first time that “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” will be done here and the first time Powers will see the show on stage.
“I have always liked the story and not based on the Disney movie,” Power said. “I have just liked the Victor Hugo story.“We have some success [with Disney shows] in the past with “The Little Mermaid” and so then I thought about Hunchback and I went ‘ok well maybe that might be another Disney show I might be interested in.’”
This will be Powers’ 55th major show at Waynesburg. He is very excited to do this show because he believes that the message of the show goes hand-in-hand with the message of the university
“One message that I believe that this show brings out is for us to value one another and value life. That is a very good message for our campus in keeping with our Christian focus,” Powers said. “So, I think that the Hunchback is a very good story to tell in this day and age and to fit the message of Waynesburg University.”
Powers noted that this is a very serious musical, which is not what most people think of whenever they think of musicals.
“A lot of people when they think of musicals they think of a very lighthearted story with lots of laughs,” Powers said. “There is some humor in the Hunchback, but this is a very serious story and I want to point out the seriousness of it.”
The Hunchback of Notre Dame will take place March 27-30 at 7:30 p.m. in the Goodwin Performing Arts Center.
“When the actors and the audience come together [between] March 27th to the 30th that is when theatre occurs, that’s when the magic occurs and that’s when the art occurs,” Powers said.