While the majority of college students were taking a break from scholastic pursuits, a few select students from the theater department dedicated their break to preparing for the highly anticipated musical, “Oklahoma.” Sophomore and lead actor Nathan Peterson playing Curly, said, “The leads get their scripts before Christmas break and we had to have it completely memorized and off-book before the time we got back to school.”
“The audition process for this play was a little more extensive,” Peterson explains. “This is because this is such a big production. There is a live orchestra pair and it’s a bigger production than what you’d normally see [at Mesa State].”
Written during the 1940’s, the World War II era, the production was more than just a form of entertainment. It was meaningful to many its Americans, and especially those soldiers headed to the war.
Peterson said that when the show opened in New York City, the main port for all the soldiers going out to war, they would let the soldiers see the show for free. Many people could relate to it and that is a reason the play became so popular.
“It was an anthem of home, an anthem of changing, and coming of age for a lot of men,” Peterson said.
“Curly is definitely a mascot of that change. He’s a cowboy, living in the wild, sleeping in campouts, but he is in love.” In the show he wants to marry Laurey and become a farmer.
“It’s a representation of a change of life- a transition that everyone must go through at some point, and that is how I feel everyone is able to relate to this play,” Peterson said.
Rodgers and Hammerstein II, the writers, according to Peterson and other musical theater authorities are Musical revolutionaries. Musical theater at the time paralleled popular music, so it was such a big part of popular culture.
“It parallels to political and social issues. That is one of the purposes of musical theater: to educate people about cultures and politics,” Peterson said.
Though much time was spent over break memorizing scripts, that time spent is just the beginning of the work that follows to make a successful production. Now that school is back in session, the real work begins.
Facualty and students are in rehearsal every week night in preparation for the show. They start everyday at 6 p.m. and rehears most nights till 10 p.m. “That is not including the time spent outside of rehearsal,” Peterson said “If you don’t rehearse outside of rehearsal, you’re not going to get any better during rehearsal.”
Performers expect to spend 20 plus hours of time each week preparing for the play for 5 weeks, totaling 100 hours of rehearsal time alone before the play is performed on the main stage.
“I was planning on getting a job if I didn’t get the lead,” Peterson said. Now he will rely mainly on student loans to get by.
Most art students spend most of their time dedicated to their craft but at the same time they still manage to maintain the lifestyle of an average college student.
“We still do normal things, but while we’re on our way to where we’re going, we’re reading our scripts,” Peterson said with laughter. “It just becomes a part of you. We do just as much as everyone else does, it’s just, since there’s so much time expected out of us at the school, we become a family. We do thing as much as any normal person does, we just don’t do it in normal settings.”
Watch Peterson perform in “Oklahoma” Feb. 23-26 and March 2-6 in Robinson Theatre.
lbell@mesastate.edu
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