So, just like everybody else, I grew up watching Barry Poppins, I love the movie as a kid.
I think that it's a wonderful story of a great character coming into a family and healing
some of the issues that they're having. The magic and the adventure of it for the kids
was always fun as a kid to get to watch. And as I grow older, the story about Mr. Banks
trying to re-prioritize and making sure that his family comes first is certainly something
that in the hustle and bustle of American life is something that we can still all take
to heart and learn from. Usually with the audition process, students come in and they
reserve a time slot and then we have them come in and they sing, you know, a verse in
the chorus of the song for us. Yeah, auditions were terrifying. They had a little bit extra
for me because I had never really sang in front of anybody before. And so that was
a little, a little nerve-wracking to say the least. I always get really nervous for auditions
even though I do them a lot because of theater. They're very nerve-wracking because you're
just putting everything you have out there and letting people judge it. The auditions
were super fun. These ones were particularly fun because there was already a sense of unity
and family amongst the cast and the cast hadn't even been put together yet. There was just
a really great sense of support and love amongst the people that were in that room which was
really cool to see. So we've progressed a lot since the first rehearsal. We just sat
in a big circle and everyone was kind of like unsure of how, how everything was going to
go. We were a little shocked to see who was who's part and everything like that. The biggest
challenge so far with getting ready for the show is definitely the music and putting
it all together. Well, I got involved in the music side of Mary Poppins, actually any
side of Mary Poppins, a couple of weeks before auditions. It was a last-minute addition to
the staffing. When I started meeting with the students, it was, we were just listening
to the music and trying to get a feel for the rhythm and I had a lot of students tell
me that I can't sing, I don't have any rhythm and really doubted themselves through the
process. And with a lot of work, what some of them have found is that they can sing,
they can sing harmony and they can do it in rhythm and they're, they're learning that
they can actually sing with a beautiful choral sound and it's surprised, really surprised
them the first time they did that. I mean, you want to talk about from the first day
to now with singing, just is outstanding. Everyone's, now that everyone's got, you
know, the tunes down for everything, it's just starting to sound great. And just the
other day, they started, you know, the big numbers, the dancing and everything and it's,
it's really starting to come together. Well, any time you do something Disney, it, it blends
itself to being a complicated production because there's just something about Disney
that always, it has a magical element to it. So, you know, the different Disney titles
that we've done here, Providence in the past have certainly had their own unique set of
challenges for, for Mary Poppins. We've, we've got her flying, Bert also flies through the
show. You know, there's 40 kids in the cast, so trying to figure out how we get all those
costumes worked out. The set itself had to be designed so not only functioned to help
with the setting of the play, but also had to be designed in such a way to allow for
the magical things that have to happen to happen on cue each and every time. So, it's,
it's pretty unique in that way. Mary Poppins means a lot to me. It was something that I
grew up watching as a child and I would go to Disney World and see Mary Poppins and
she, I love Julie Anders and she was always a really important character for me. And I
feel like the major theme of Mary Poppins is family. Really, the whole show revolves
around the Banks family and Mary comes in for the Banks family, particularly for George.
At the beginning you see me as this mean dad who has a horrible relationship with his children
and his wife. And then there's kind of a turning point in the, you know, in the middle of the
show that I kind of realized that, you know, my life was terrible as a child. So why am
I, why am I doing this to my kids? And that's kind of where things start to turn around.
To me, it's about the relationships you have with other people over, you know, the pressures
of life because that's, that's kind of what it is. You know, you have the, you open up
on this pretty dysfunctional family and everybody kind of begrudgingly gets along between, you
know, you have, you know, Mrs. Banks kind of putting herself out there for the rest
of the family and Mr. Banks doesn't care about anything. You know, he's just trying to get
him home from work every day. And the two kids, they don't understand, you know, what's
going on, how stressed out their father is. And so they just kind of, they turn to these
two little brats, you know, but Mary Poppins comes in and what she does is she kind of
refocuses the things off of themselves and off of other things and say, okay, the only
thing that really matters is the people around you and the people who are, who are next to
you because that's your family and that's, that's everything to you.
A big part of it is that no matter what happens outside of your family, your family will always
be there. But regardless, they'll be with you no matter what.
And that's really the beautiful part of that story. It's, it's a restoration of a family.
So, you know, it's been interesting because there have been veterans that have worked with
us before that came back and have really taken on leadership roles to sort of help set the
tone for the rest of the cast and let them know what's acceptable and what they need
to be doing to make the show to the level that we're hoping to achieve. So it's, it's,
it's been wonderful watching those students that may have never done a show before learn
from the experience, learn from each other and then grow to, to hopefully have an outstanding
final end result based on what we're saying so far. We're really excited about it so we
can't wait for the opening. It should be really good.
