Our Journey to Frozen: The Broadway Musical
Before the end of the 2022 school year, fresh off our SpongeBob Sondheim Best Musical nomination high, after the Senior Showcase and per tradition, the WWHS Players announced that our 2023 spring musical would be Mamma Mia. The sound track immediately went into my Spotify playlist and I started gearing a portion of my weekly vocal lessons to the score. Time progressed, excitement continued to build, the new school year started. Then, in September, a Players meeting was called for September 9th. A few days before, as President of our International Thespian Society Troupe, I was informed about the agenda of that meeting. I was sworn to secrecy, which I maintained, but I was bursting with anticipation and couldn’t wait until the rest of the players found out.
The morning of September 9th, The Players gathered for our meeting. We were told that the directors of the WWHS Players entered the Disney Frozen Love is an Open Door nationwide contest and were going to be shortly announced as one of the winners! They went on to say that this meant we won the exclusive rights and show package to premier Frozen The Broadway Musical performances in RI. The meeting had a dual purpose to inform us of the win and to vote if we wanted to replace Mamma Mia with Frozen. We overwhelmingly voted yes and planned a 6 show run in March of 2023. The contest win gave us, among other things the ability to work with the original Frozen production team. 49 schools in the US (1 in each state except SD) and a US Base in Germany won the rights to produce the show. Here is the link to the official Disney video announcement: www.facebook.com/wwhsplayers/videos/806535400371518
Next stop auditions. Our shows used to go up in January, but the tail end of Covid made it prudent for us to move our shows to March so they wouldn’t be possibly compromised by school vacation Covid. So, due to our performance rescheduling, and regular school performance reshuffling, auditions had to wait until the end of November….nearly 3 months!!! aggggggghhhhhh!!! Auditions were to take place after school on November 28-30 with callbacks, if necessary, on December 1. Over 60 people signed up to audition, we were looking for about 45 to be in the performance. Wednesday night, November 30, I received an email that i was asked to return for a callback for the role of Elsa!! I was so very excited, I wanted the role and I knew I would be amazing, so just 1 more hurdle…the callback song: Monster.
Monster is a song, not performed in the movie, but written for the show. It is tough…give it a listen, I’ll wait…https://open.spotify.com/track/05om7Ac9m7wKq1rHn4sHQh?si=9c0bbdf8dbf5458b you back? good :) I didn’t listen to the other callback, I don’t like to do that. When I was called, I took the stage and began the song. Have you ever heard of the Bugatti Chiron? It’s a car with a top speed of 261 mph. But, before you can go that quickly you need to insert a 2nd key for the car to perform a self-multi-point safety check. If all the checks aren’t green, you can’t access the top speed function of the car. This is what it is like to perform a difficult song in my head. As I am performing and becoming more relaxed onstage, I am aware of the difficult part(s) coming up. So, there I am….singing….as I am singing, the back part of my brain is checking off all of the things that I need to complete in order to hit the top speed of the song so to speak. Position, breath, focus…green, green, green then boom!!
I knew I did well, but, no role is mine until the cast list comes out and about 3 hours later it did! Elsa was 9th down on the cast list.
Elsa………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Abigail Saccone.
Excitement doesn’t even begin to cover the feeling. What most people don’t understand about theatre is that there is no 2nd place for roles. In other words, it isn’t that if there are 2 people called back for Elsa 1 gets Elsa and 1 gets Anna….nope…it’s 1 gets Elsa….period. Anna is already cast….Also named Abby btw lol.
So here are the numbers…48 Cast, 2 Directors, 4 months rehearsal time and 6 shows…but the most important number of all….1…….1 team. We are so incredibly excited to bring you this show. We are humbled by the opportunity to be the 1st group to EVER perform this show in RI and we will not disappoint.
Tickets on sale 2/1/23 at www.wwhsplayers.weebly.com. Hope to see you there!
Much Love,
A-