Middle school theater produces experienced performers

PALMER — Colony Middle School’s most recent production of the classic Disney tale, “Beauty and the Beast,” was something worth praise.

Being the third big Disney musical Colony has put on, both middle school students and a handful of students from Finger Lake Elementary School worked long and hard to make the musical one for the books. Director Toby Lambert has helped develop a few veterans.

Alexis Mattson, who played the role of Madame de la Grande Bouche in Beauty and the Beast, is already a veteran of the stage.

“My very first play was during my kindergarten year in elementary school and it was ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’” she said. “I didn’t have a specific role, but I know I had lots of fun. I have been in a school play every year since then, including ‘The Little Mermaid Jr.’ where I played Ariel’s big sister, Attina, and last year’s ‘Cinderella,’ in which I got the honor of playing Cinderella. I have also participated in many Valley Performing Arts Summer Camps, and performed in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘The Little Princess.’”

With every performance, actors and actresses get better and better, and learn more to further their career. Any mistakes made give them opportunities to learn and apply their newfound knowledge to the next performance.

I asked Mattson what she might have gotten out of the experience.

“First of all I have learned how to sing higher notes. In choir, I have always been an alto, but Mr. Lambert helped me figure out how to open my voice in order to reach my character’s parts without straining my vocal chords. My character is a very outgoing opera singer, and it took some practice to access the higher range. I also think this experience has widened my acting experience in many ways, such as improvising, which we had to do quite often to allow the scene to keep moving when someone forgot a line. As we all said, ‘the show must go on!’”

And go on it did into a spectacular fight scene that Alexis describes as her favorite.

“To be honest, my favorite scene of this production is the fighting scene, when the villagers come to kill the beast. The part that makes it fun and unique is the character Lefou, Gaston’s goofy assistant, gets scared and runs away after I creep up to him with my own background music and sing a high note in his face. It was a lot of fun, and definitely something I have never done before.”

A lot of performers experience nervousness or stage fright even after years of performing. All have different ways of coping and getting through it to make the performance the best it can be and to be comfortable with the audience.

“I am going to be completely honest with you — yes, I get nervous on stage,” Mattson said. “Before almost every show, I get so nervous I can barely stand without having my knees shake. The nerves calm down as the show goes along, though. For instance, opening night I had horrible anxiety, but the last show I had enough experience and calmed down. You see, the thing that always worries me is the thought that everyone will laugh at me if my voice cracks or if I mess up so horribly that the show is ruined. Then I remember that there is a 1 percent chance that will happen, and I talk myself out of being nervous. But what calms me down the best is standing in front of a mirror, warming up my singing voice, drinking water, and breathing deeply. After I finish warming up my voice, I fix make-up flaws and make sure what I can fix, I fix. By then, I have run through the show so many times that I know I will do just fine. All I can do is try my best, and in the end, that’s all that counts.”

Mattson has a little piece of wisdom for first-timers to the stage.

“I would say just to keep an open mind before you perform, because if you’ve never tried something, you don’t know what you can do yet, and who knows, you could be fantastic. A famous Broadway actor said, ‘As far as the audience knows, you’re great.’ This means you need to try and not stop what you’re doing on stage. If you mess up, you should move on quickly and calmly, they won’t notice. Even I mess up sometimes, and I have been doing this for years!”

Katelyn Smihula is a senior at Colony who sings in choir.