Teens Competing to Win
Joyce S. Schwartz
In its first incarnation The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee was an improvisational production done by a New York based comedy group known as The Farm. Called C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E, it was an unscripted play that dealt with six madcap teenagers competing in a regional spelling bee. The ball that got it rolling toward its’ award winning Broadway success was kicked off by playwright Wendy Wasserstein after she went to see it to support a performer, who happened to be her weekend nanny. The musical’s opening in 2005 at Circle in the Square Theatre in Manhattan was preceded by several seasons of workshop and summer theater performances, but the freshness and spontaneity that were the hallmark of the improvisational version were never lost.
The Bee’s contestants, all in their teens, come to the competition with the baggage that teenagers tend to carry on their journey toward adult independence. For one there is a deficit of parental love (mom is busy at an Ashram in India where she is finding her spiritual self). Another struggles with over attentive parents. (They are two gay guys who want their baby to succeed and work oppressively toward that goal.) There is an overachiever who speaks six languages, plays several classical instruments and is an accomplished athlete. Her lament arouses audience concern only after she confesses to being allowed no more than three hours of sleep a night.
The guys’ problems tend to be more fundamental and less emotional. A lad who suffers from low self esteem sings, “I’m Not That Smart” and proves his point by being eliminated. Another, who demonstrates an attention deficit disorder by having an erection when he needs to be concentrating, is dismissed and ends up hawking candy during intermission. The most resourceful of them, who most likely suffers from an information processing problem, compensates for his inability to think in the abstract by drawing his assigned word on the floor with
his foot so he can “see it”.
The Goshen Players’ cast is comprised of performers that are young but not necessarily kids. Among them are three university students and a recent university graduate. Two are still in high school and have resumes rich in credits from other Connecticut Community Theaters and an Opera Chorus. On stage at the Goshen Playhouse they become totally believable adolescents trying to survive their growing pains and get on with the struggle to mature. Interacting with seasoned actors who play Vice Principal Panch and his assistant Rona Lisa Peretti, not to mention four spellers chosen from the audience, they are able to ad lib and keep the pace going without missing a beat.
For Julianne Daly who describes herself as an overachiever like her character Marcy Park, the challenge of staying in role takes her back to a grade school bee. “When Marcy has to spell a word, I just think of sixth grade English when I had to spell.” Commenting that she didn’t win, she remarks “I think I came in third.” Katie Brunetto, who plays Logainne, reminisces about her own sixth grade spelling bee. “I remember being so close to winning and then I got out on ‘warrant.’
However, to my credit I did nail ‘mayonnaise’ and ‘barbecue’.”
The tiny and intimate Goshen Playhouse, which has been the venue for numerous major musicals, provides the perfect setting for Spelling Bee’s cast of nine. If the staging required a little fine tuning to keep the production in scale it presented no obstacle to Director Dan Checovetes or Music Director Aaron Bunel. As for its choreographer Foster Reese, being adaptable is what it is all about. “It’s a small stage,” he said with a grin. “You have to make do.” Going on he said, “I try to put people in a situation where they can succeed.” Anyone who sees the show is certain to agree that he and his collaborators have accomplished that admirably.
Lydia D. Babbitt, President of the Board
Goshen Players, Inc.
2 North Street
PO Box 63
Goshen, CT 06756
www.goshenplayers.org
Box Office: 860.491.9988
Days: 860.496.4277
Eve: 860.201.5632
He’s written for the Providence Journal, Hartford Courant, the New London Day, and published several best-selling history “Shorts” for Amazon.com. Profiled in such noted publications as Writer's Digest, NY Daily News, Newsday, Albany Times-Union, Hartford Courant, Advance for Nurses magazine, Forensic Nursing, and NY Post, Phelps has also consulted for the Showtime cable television series “Dexter.”
He lives in a small Connecticut farming community and can be reached at his author Website, www.mwilliamphelps.com
Beyond his true-crime work, in 2008 Phelps published a highly acclaimed narrative nonfiction biography of Revolutionary War patriot Nathan Hale: NATHAN HALE: The Life and Death of America’s First Spy (Thomas Dunne Books), optioned for film by Warner Bros. On April 1, 2010, THE DEVIL’S ROOMING HOUSE, about Arsenic and Old Lace famed serial killer Amy Archer-Gilligan, merged the two careers: crime and history.
Booklist calls Phelps’s latest book, The Devil’s Rooming House, “a delightfully cozy narrative [and] genteel true-crime excursion,” and Publishers Weekly says, “Phelps amasses an abundance of research to complement his already-extant authority on female murderers … diligent research … a vivid portrait.”
Phelps is also working a his first television show—a unique blend of his personal journey into true crime (his sister-in-law, five months pregnant, was murdered) and an obsessive quest he has embarked on with Dr. John Kelly to find not only his sister-in-law’s killer, but what drives serial killers to murder. Look for it in 2011!
Phelps’s titles include: Perfect Poison, Lethal Guardian, Every Move You Make, Sleep In Heavenly Peace, Murder in the Heartland, Because You Loved Me, If Looks Could Kill, Deadly Secrets, Cruel Death, Death Trap (March 2, 2010), Kill For Me (Sept. 2010), The Devil’s Rooming House (April 1, 2010), Failures of the Presidents and Nathan Hale.
He is currently working on three more contemporary true-crime titles; a work of religious history about the saints; and a thriller, introducing Detective Jake Sundance Cooper of the Boston Police Department, and Father John O’Brien, Jake’s mystery-solving priest sidekick.
Web: www.mwilliamphelps.com ~ Email: mwilliamphelps@comcast.net
Phelps is represented by Peter Miller, President
PMA Literary & Film Management, Inc.
45 West 21st Street
Suite 4SW
New York, NY 10010
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