By Myra Chanin . . .
I’ve seen many versions of A Chorus Line, but the recent FAU Festival Rep 2023 production was the most diverse, touching, passionate and compassionate. On a bare stage of FAU’s Marleen Forkas Studio One Theater, 25 actual theater students auditioning to be in a chorus line, reveal how they got that far, despite childhood miseries, cruel parents, dull hometowns, etc. The diversity of the cast was phenomenal. They came in every size, shape, ethnicity, skin color and gender, applying for four male and four female openings. After Director Zack (Kyle Smith) eliminates several, he calls out dance combinations to quartets of wannabees, who also frantically sing “I Hope I Get It!” I remember feeling that way once, so I was rooting for them all.
Their skin tones and hair color ran the gamut from Barbie pink and blonde to all shades of chocolate and woolly. Some wore wigs while others donned caps to perform as a member of the opposite sex. Prerequisites for dancers usually include being tall, slim, wiry, muscular, handsome, and pretty. In FAU’s chorus line, short, flabby, and plain also got a taste of glory and proved how impressively they could sing, leap, shuffle and tap. But Director Zack demanded more! He made them reveal the traumas that made them become dancers. Why? Because that Nogoodnik intended to base his script on their travails! Without paying them, or crediting their contributions, or any mention of royalties or residuals! I’ve always been enraged by that egotistical demand, a feeling shared by Matt Stabile, the writer, director, actor, educator, and producing artistic director of FAU’s professional resident company. He says in his Director’s Note that the characters endure a grueling audition and are asked to blur the lines of their professional and personal lives for the possibility of temporary employment. What Chutzpah! Therefore, Stabile made sure the cast spent a lot of time in workshops discussing power dynamics, pay scales, work/life balance and disentangling career from personal identity.
First Prize among the male dancers goes to Mitchell Worrell-Olson, the MFA Theater graduate student who caught my eye in FAU’s Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 as a cross between a beautifully attired Sydney Greenstreet and Orson Welles’s unfaithful middle-aged Citizen Charles Foster Kane. Mitchell’s solo, “I Can Do That!” about him accompanying his sister to ballet class and replacing her when she dropped out, included watching him leap as high as a Moiseyev Cossack and touch his toes with his fingertips in mid-air. Wow! Two other accomplished hoofers were the high-kicking Doriyan De’Angelo Caty in an aqua nylon undershirt that displayed his roving waistline, and Anthony Blatter, whose blue t-shirt declaring “Dudes can Dance” hinted they also enjoyed good food.
The females shared at least in more significant songs. Three (Cait Siobhan Kiley, Nuelle Saunders, and Olivia Beebe), raised in cold, contentious households, understood “At the Ballet,” wasn’t paradise, but felt like home. Val (Daniela Moon) in “Dance: Ten, Looks: Three” shared her pain when getting perfect dancing scores got her no jobs because she only scored three in looks . . . until buying herself tits and ass finally got her on national tours. Kristine (Ashley Brooke Miller) stopped the show with her excruciatingly screechy impression of a dancer who couldn’t carry any tune at all. Cassie (Sarah Sun Park), back in New York after flopping in Hollywood and auditioning for her former inamorato, considered “What I Did for Love” as a love song, but Diana (Valaria Illan) changed the meaning of the show’s biggest hit into being about passion for artistry, which struck much closer to home.
Because A Chorus Line requires an entire cast of triple-threat performers, able to act, sing and dance for over two hours, Stabile feels it helps students stretch their skills and develop their craft. He also considers it an opportunity for college theater departments to further advance the components that will turn them into more dynamic musical theater programs.
Costumes by Dawn Shamberger and Tim Bowman were outstanding: white tuxes and top hats for the survivors, blue sparkly outfits for everyone else who remained onstage. Choreographer Jerel Brown distributed plenty of dance steps, and got those who did them poorly back in the wings real soon. The band, conducted by Caryl Fantel, was sensational. My guest, a musician, was distressed that they never came up for air and were denied the applause they all justly deserved. He also marveled at how talented these players were and bemoaned the fact that there weren’t enough jobs in theater for most of them. An experience as exhilarating as this one, feeling so appreciated by a caring sellout audience, will forever protect them from ever regretting what they do for love.
A Chorus Line’s July 13-30 run at Marleen Forkas Studio One Theater was the final production in FAU’s Festival Rep 2023 and was completely sold out. For info about upcoming FAU productions, check www.fau.edu/artsandletters/theatre/
Photos: Morgan Sophia Photography
