After months of rehearsals, the fall musical “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” takes over the theatre this weekend.
This musical is powerful because all the characters have different back stories while trying to figure out themselves. The musical theater Giants have worked hard to showcase their talent through the songs that they’ll sing and the acting.
” ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’ is a musical about six kids who faced their adversity through the ways that they spell and compete in the spelling bee to hopefully be the one to go to nationals and get all the enjoyment you know,” junior Makenzie Tetrick said.
Senior Nathaniel Villa says the show is about much more than spelling.
“It’s about these kids that come together to really spell things that they’re passionate about and it’s really about how each character is going through their own situations,” said Villa, who plays Douglas in the show. “In the play, each character situation depicts how they act in and how they spell the words and it really changes the musical and it’s having its own aspect.”
Senior Ethan Olan plays William Baret.
“He is kind of a nerdy bully,” Olan said. “I relate to him in a way that that he’s kind of a big nerd and he generally believes he’s right, but he ends up near the end of the musical kind of becoming more nicer to everyone after he realized that there’s more than just him winning there’s other people‘s feelings. I think that growth evolves to kind of making you like him.”
Tetrick plays Logan Schwartzandgrubenierre (you read that right).
“She is one of the youngest spellers and she has a lisp and she’s got two gay dads and they’re very hard on her,” Tetrick said. “They wanna make sure that she’s doing the best and I see this in my parents, making sure that I’m always going out at full force and everything.”
Villa has enjoyed the improv part of the show.
“He’s (Douglas Pants) a character who has anger issues and he finds his own place to relieve himself from that and I think I relate to that character because it’s a lot about growth and having people there to support you knowing that there’s people there for you such as the comfort counselor,” Villa said. “One thing I really enjoyed from this character is the improv that he does and having to come up with his own sentences and words that are used throughout the play.”
While the end goal of the performance is this weekend, all the characters have enjoyed the journey.
“This process was very fun for me,” Tetrick said. “You learn a piece of their song and then whoever you want to perform before you get to perform it for (Sarah) Miller and (Benni) Fraley and it seems stressful but really once you get the hang of it, it’s not that stressful and it’s really comfortable.”
Villa might not agree.
“It’s pretty nerve-racking,” he said of acting. “I didn’t get the person that I auditioned for, but I think that the person that I got was really resonated with who I can act the best with and I think that I’m grateful for the opportunity that I was given with and I’m just happy to be a part of this musical and grow from it.”
Olan has enjoyed the time spent together with the cast and crew.
“For me, I sort of get very nervous, especially because it’s my first time in musical theater at BD so I didn’t really know how this process would work,” Olan said. “But I’m glad I took the risk because here I am with an amazing cast and some people I would gladly call my family.”
