DOUBLE SPOTLIGHT: From School Stage To Pro Stage
Hello! My name is Sonja Ayala, and I’m currently a grade 12 student on Vancouver Island. My greatest passion is musical theatre, and I have been lucky enough to be extremely busy with performances over the past couple of months. Balancing these extracurricular performances has been difficult, but the experiences have all been extremely rewarding.
Primarily, over the summer I was cast in the ensemble (understudying Johanna) of a local production of Sweeney Todd, and the show happened to be my first professional theatre production. Better yet, the director (Morgan McLeod) was the Head of Theatre at my school, and so we already knew each other very well going into rehearsals. I have worked with the company that produced Sweeney Todd, VOS Musical Theatre, since 2021, whether through summer camps or teen musical theatre classes, and so I already knew a few people in the cast, even though I was the only cast member under 18. That was definitely a daunting factor of the production, but everyone involved with the show was extremely welcoming and kind to me. I learned so much from the wonderful group of people that I worked with. Everyone was so willing to go full out and try new and exciting things, and it gave me the confidence to really experiment with my role in the ensemble and develop character and energy every moment that I was onstage.
From understudying the role of Johanna, I got a glimpse into the world of understudies and swings in theatre. I could not have any more respect for people who work in those roles; I didn’t have the opportunity to go on as Johanna during our run of the show, but I worked behind the scenes and sat in on all of her rehearsals, learned all of her material in combination with all ensemble material, and had the privilege of watching talented performers developing their characters and the relationships between their characters before my eyes. It is a very difficult job, to understudy a role, as there is very little warning before you need to go on, and you need to be ready at the drop of a hat to go on as that character.
And if we’re talking swings, they have immeasurable value in the cast. Our cast didn’t have any swings, but for our closing show, one ensemble member was unable to perform due to personal reasons. About an hour before curtain, the ensemble was called up to the stage to map out his track throughout the show and fill in the gaps where he had material. We redistributed solo lines, assigned someone else to be slashed by Sweeney, and assigned new people to move set pieces and furniture all in the length of approximately five minutes. Live theatre is finicky and unpredictable, and that is what makes it so thrilling. The skill of the cast and crew to fill in those gaps and make it unnoticeable that we had lost an ensemble member was amazing to witness.
A part of the production that was especially inspiring was just being in a cast full of people who were so passionate about the work we were presenting. Many reviews we received stated that it was the best show the theatre company had ever put forward, and some even joked that we should take the production on tour. The show would not have reached the level of precision and energy that it did if the cast and crew had not been so committed to putting their all into everything, trying out new and absurd choices, and having faith in the vision that the creative team had been chasing since the beginning of the process. From the gasps, screams, and otherwise entertaining reactions of the student groups in attendance at our production’s preview night, to the blood capsules and eyeballs/fingers/etc that the props crew continued to add to the act 2 pies each show, the experience was filled with a back-and-forth energy wherein everyone involved bounced off of each other’s energy and built up a standard of excellence and grotesque creepiness.
I saw a noticeable improvement in my own skills by the end of this production; my dance movements were more fluid as a result of the flowing and bending choreography of our excellent choreographer Siobhan Barker, I was more inclined to make big acting choices as a result of the encouragement and safe space built by our director and my teacher Mr. McLeod, and my ability to reach soaring soprano registers and harmonize in buzzing and dissonant chords became refined and easy thanks to our music director Shannon Tyrell. In particular, it was great having Mr. McLeod as the director of Sweeney Todd, because we were both in the same boat with needing to balance the school musical and Sweeney, and so the rehearsal schedules only overlapped a couple of times.
However, at times it absolutely was difficult for me to feel properly rehearsed; just two weeks ago (including just before/in the middle of/and just after Sweeney) I was rehearsing for a school choir Carol Service, an outside-of-school Christmas concert called Deck the Halls in which I was a featured soloist, my school musical in which I play a lead role (the Prom), final scene performances in my Theatre Company class, University Applications (including submitting musical theatre pre-screen content), and self tapes for film and TV auditions.
I have been lucky enough to have very kind teachers who are lenient, but it’s clear that many people don’t understand the commitment, physical and mental, that it takes to have so many artistic projects on the go. People often see performances as a for-fun activity that I do, but it was great to have people come and see Sweeney and experience the breathtaking production that had me rehearsing 10 hours a week.
I have been told that live theatre is just a “stepping stone” towards film acting, which I find to be completely untrue. Both types of performance walk hand in hand with each other, and neither comes before or after the other. They exist at the same time, and performers can do both and be successful in both. One is not less than the other; both are extremely huge commitments that require a large amount of giving and taking. At the end of the day, I feel privileged to have been so busy with artistic pursuits these past few months, and have learned so much as a result. I believe that those in the arts should be given their commendations for all of the incredibly difficult work that they do, as the arts are challenging and taxing, and deserve to be taken as seriously as academics or sports.
