Spring musical spreads message of peace and equality.
Drama Director Michael Palmieri and his Fine Arts colleagues turn the spring musical into more than just another school play. photo by Mia Nogueira
This year the Performing Arts Department is pulling out all the stops to create a spectacular, artistic performance that will leave its mark on Thomas Jefferson. The RENT Project is a collaboration between a trio of very talented teachers: Michael Palmieri, Edwina Hebert and Carole Fulkerson, who have all played an integral part in its development since last year. “We thought we might do it [Rent] last year, but these things tend to fall into their own timing, and this year turned out to be the right time,” said Palmieri.
The Project was designed to coalesce with the show so that students who planned on auditioning for the show, students wanting to potentially be involved and students who want to be involved but don’t necessary intend to be a part of the acting aspect, were able to experience and discuss topics that may no be in their comfort zones.
RENT is the wildly successful Broadway play that received critical acclaim and helped create a whole new generation of musical theater fanatics. The rock opera is the brainchild of the late Jonathan Larson, who loosely based it off of Italian composer Giacomo Puccini’s opera La bohème.
Set in New York’s Lower East Side, the show stars six young starving artists trying to make it in a world that seems to put obstacles in their way at every turn. Mark, the narrator of the play, is an aspiring filmmaker who recently got dumped by his flirtatious girlfriend, Maureen. When Mark is constantly asked who Maureen left him for he is embarrassed to admit that she had found companionship with a woman named Joanne, an Ivy League educated lawyer. The next male lead is Roger, Mark’s roommate, a musician and ex-junkie who contracted HIV and as a result he broodingly works away on his guitar in order write the perfect song before he dies – but is distracted by their neighbor Mimi, an exotic dancer who also has the virus. The plot starts rolling when Mark and Roger’s friend Collins returns to the city after quitting his job as a teacher. He gets a taste of New York’s unforgiving streets when he gets mugged but fatefully runs into Angel, a happy-go-lucky gay drag queen who ends up nursing him back to health.
“Ms. Hebert and I love doing musical theater. Rent is a great musical; it’s popular, the music is incredible, the characters are really cool, and it also has a cool message,” said Palmieri, who has been teaching drama at TJ for four years. “But we are also interested in affecting some change, and we knew that just a musical wouldn’t do that. If we really want TJ and beyond to be more tolerant, caring and kind, we knew we had to make it kind of a year-long project.”
RENT tells a very real story about the AIDS epidemic in the early 80s, a subject matter that is still controversial today. However, it is also a play that sends out a message about hope in times of adversity, friendship, and most importantly love and acceptance. “A lot of the characters in rent are controversial because they have various things they are dealing with in their life. So we want to teach acceptance and unity and understanding of everything that everybody around us might be going through. The characters are dealing with homelessness, they’re dealing with disease – some of it life threatening. They’re dealing with just different things that are possible for all of us to go through in our lives,” Hebert said.
The project also includes the entire student body. Some members of the project are working closely with school clubs such as GSA (Gay/Straight Alliance) and the Peace Panel. The collaboration with GSA will produce an information night where they will have open panels that will discuss a wide range of topics and issues.
In order to really get into the heart of the play’s message, over summer break Palmieri and several students volunteered for the Denver Rescue Mission, a non-profit organization designed to aide the homeless. “They went and served dinner at the rescue mission on a couple of nights and helped prepare and serve dinner to the residents at the shelter. They conversed and got to know these people and realized that they’re actually people with lives and things going on who just happen to not have homes at this point and time,” Hebert said.
There were also visits to the Children’s Hospital, where students got in touch with their inner kindergartner and did arts and crafts with the siblings of sick patients. The volunteers also helped with the Colorado AIDS Project, going on an AIDS walk in early August that gave them an opportunity to meet people either afflicted with AIDS or other volunteers and family members walking for their loved ones. The outreaches will still continue throughout the audition process, and sign-up sheets are already filling up.
Even this year’s audition process has gone through a few tweaks. Instead of the usual monologue and dance audition, candidates are being asked to perform two songs and act the character out while they sing, similar to how it is done in a professional musical. The two songs will be at least three to four minutes long while the dance auditions will be about two minutes per group.
“Rent is a little different in that it’s a rock opera and the whole show is sung [rather than spoken],” Palmieri explained. “So, your monologue and your song are kind of the same thing.” Students were also given a packet, one for males and one for females, which included song selections, a calendar of mandatory dates, and character descriptions along with what songs the character sings. The packet also comes with a CD with karaoke tracks and a music sheet with lyrics for each individual song featured in the packet.
“After Chicago, this [choreography] will be much simpler. It is not as complex,” said Fulkerson who is in charge of dance auditions. “The choreography and set will be very similar to the Broadway musical, and since it’s going to be such an elaborate set there is going to be continual movement.” Fulkerson will teach the tryout dance moves a week before the formal tryouts at noon for several days.
With auditions at the end of October, Palmieri looks forward to a sold out show come spring. “I would love it if we filled up the auditorium including the balcony for all four shows, even to the point of adding a fifth show. I’m looking forward to that happening.” For those interested in auditioning for the play or being part of the RENT project, contact Palmieri for a packet and bring your parents to the parent meeting on Thursday, September 24th.
