The musical this semester is Elf the Musical. It will be on November 13 and 14 at 7 pm and November 16 at 2 pm and 7 pm. Joseph Patterson, the head of the theater department, is running the show.
“I am the head of the theater department,” Patterson said. “I run all the shows. I make the casting choices. I am in charge of the budget, and I also am in charge of everything.”
Patterson chose this musical because he thought it would be fun.
“I think that it would be a lot of fun to do. It’s going to be close to Christmas time, and I like the message of the entire play about finding family [and] accepting yourself as who you are,” Patterson said.
Patterson describes the plot of the musical as very similar to the movie Elf where a human grows up as an elf and then goes to the real world.
“There is a human who accidentally crawls into Santa’s toy sack and grows up as an elf,” Patterson said. “He then finds out that he’s not enough. Has to go find his real family, finds his dad, pretty much ruins his dad’s job, and then his dad sticks up for him.”
The audition process is about two to three days and during it, students have to prepare to present to Patterson for him to decide who got what role.
“I have the students all prepare a monolog and also a song. Then they come in for a dance audition, where they learn the choreography that day and get judged on it,” Patterson said.
Patterson decides who gets what role by not just thinking about how people did on their audition, but how well they work with others as well as other attributes.
“[Whether or not they got the role] really depends on how the people did during their audition, if I think they work well as this character, or if they would bounce off well with another person,” Patterson said. “It’s a huge puzzle of putting pieces together.”
Jack Fortner, a senior who plays Buddy the Elf in the musical, describes his character as cheerful and someone who has to adjust to normal human life.
“Buddy the Elf [is] very cheerful,” Fortner said. “He’s very childish, too, and he doesn’t fully understand human interaction because he was raised as an elf. [So] now he’s in New York, and he’s having to figure out his way through it.”
Fortner has been in six musicals throughout high school, not including Elf the Musical.
“Freshman year I was in Adams Family, then Mamma Mia,” Fortner said. “Sophomore year I was in Oklahoma and Chicago. Junior year, I was in Spongebob and then Once Upon a Mattress. Now I’m in Elf.”
Fortner prepared for the role by memorizing a monolog and a song. He had to figure out how certain characters would do certain things.
“I just [have to think] ‘how do [I] envision this character saying that?’ and then [I think] ‘where can I put pauses here? Where can I put pauses there?’” Fortner said. “And [it’s the] same with the singing too, because you don’t want to just stand there and be boring.”
Some of the most challenging aspects of the role of Buddy the Elf for Fortner are elements like tap, other dances, and the abundance of lines he has.
“There [are] quite a few tap dancing scenes, and tapping is not my strongest suit,” Fortner said. “So that’s gonna be something I’m gonna have to really work on. Buddy [also] has a lot of lines and I’m in like, every page, so I’m a little intimidated by that, but I know that I work hard and I can do it.”
When Fortner was cast he was very excited because there are many talented people in theater so he did not expect to get the role.
“I was really excited [when I was cast],” Fortner said. “We have a lot of talented guys, and so I could see myself as this role, but also you never know who’s gonna come in and be really amazing in their audition. So I was like, it’s possible, but I set myself not to be sad or disappointed if I didn’t get it.”
