AURORA | The combination of lighting, props, music and stage cues brought Jaylon Muniz to tears.
The 15-year-old Gateway High School student wasn’t expecting such a visceral reaction when he reported to the Buell Theater in Downtown Denver last week for the opening-night performance of the Broadway musical “once.” A fan of more traditional musical theater fare (the school’s recent stage work included a production of “Kiss Me Kate”), Muniz wasn’t anticipating much from the 2012 show based on the 2006 film of the same name.
But the show about an Irish musician who finds a renewed purpose after befriending a Czech piano player made Muniz rethink his basic ideas about staging, scores and, most importantly, characters.
“I ended up in tears. It was so touching, and there was a personal connection to myself,” Muniz said. “I think that’s the goal with the show, for the cast to connect to the audience.”
Muniz and a group of more than 20 Gateway students had a rare opportunity to connect with the “once” cast on an more immediate level this week. Four actors from the touring production of the show by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová stopped by Gateway on May 8 to answer questions about life as a professional performer. Claire Wellin, Matt Wolpe, John Gardner and Evan Harrington talked with the group of aspiring performers, stage designers and techies.
They gushed about the quality of the performance just before posing questions about the precise steps the actors took to find a full-time gig as a performer in a touring Broadway show. The actors fielded the praise and the curiosity with equal ease. They spoke about living a role, about finding an anchor in a character and enjoyment in the same lines and actions night after night.
Wellin, who plays Réza in the show, tackled a straightforward question about the toll of nightly performances. A student asked simply, “Does it ever get old?,” and Wellin answered without pause.
“Sometimes, yeah, and that’s OK. It’s real life. When you do something that often, there are times when maybe you do get a little bored,” Wellin said. “But it’s interesting with this show. They encouraged us to explore all of the different ways that we can play the scenes. All of those ways live with us all of the time, and doing the scenes, sometimes something will happen that makes you turn all of your senses on again.”
That’s no wonder, considering the structure and scope of the show. Actors are on the stage constantly, and play a wide array of acoustic instruments for the folksy score. The show doesn’t feature a formal track system for props — instead, the actors are responsible for moving five tables, 20 chairs and a whole mess of guitars, ukuleles, banjos and drums.
That gives the show a demanding dynamic for the actors onstage, and a revealing quality for audience members, even in a venue as large as the Buell. That structure made the show all the more immediate for Gateway students like Muniz. The visit from the cast members added another dimension — it made a career on stage feel attainable.
“All of these students are involved in the school productions,” said Tia Woods, English teacher and department director at Gateway. “To get to meet someone who gets to do it for a living is huge. It makes their dream more realizable.”
Reach reporter Adam Goldstein at 720-449-9707 or agoldstein@aurorasentinel.com