Ryan ChartrandA group of Cal Poly students and community members are putting on Urinetown: The Musical, in the Cal Poly Black Box Theater through Saturday.
Of the student members of the cast and crew, the director, stage manager and advertising manager are using the musical as a senior project.
The play is a fun, farcical musical that pokes fun at other works in the genre, but also has deeper political and social meanings.
“I wanted to do something fun so we’d get a wider audience,” said Ryan Cordero, a theatre senior and director of the production. “Once I read the script I knew that was the production I wanted to do.”
Cordero said that Urinetown makes fun of many other musicals, including West Side Story and Les Miserables. Cordero has also added his own personal spin on the production, adding a musical number that jokes about the play Wicked. Urinetown also incorporates many musical forms from rap to gospel.
Cordero said he has tried to create an atmosphere for the audience so that from the moment they walk into the theater, they are immersed in the world. He will have actors circulating through the aisles, begging for change, to help set the scene for the play.
“The play is supposed to be light- hearted and even the heavy parts are over the top funny,” Cordero said.
The play is essentially the story of a town where everyone must pay to pe. There is a large population of poor people who work constantly just to scrape together enough money to use the bathroom. At the top of this business is the villain Cladwell, who owns the restrooms. The play also features a love story between the idealistic hero Bobby Strong and Cladwell’s daughter Hope.
“What’s great is the cast all understand that underneath it’s a satire,” Cordero said. “They also see that their characters aren’t three-dimensional, and once they got that, light bulbs went on about how to play them.”
One of the other unique and interesting features of the play that Cordero said he loves is that at times the characters are interacting with one another as well as the audience. The narrator and certain characters turn to the audience and speak directly to them at certain points within the story, helping the audience feel more involved.
Cordero has spent more than a year working on this, and he says it has taken up most of his time. But the combination of a great cast and an interesting production has made it a joy to Cordero.
“I’ve fallen in love with it,” Cordero said. “I go home and think what I can do to make the show better.”
Part of the challenge of the production has been working with a small theater.
“We’re doing it in a small space, but we’ve made it work by using the room to full potential,” he said.
This included designing sets that fit together and did double duty, so that there is still space on stage for the actors.
Another challenge in such a small space is that everything is in view, said Krista Schoenbaum, theatre senior and stage director.
“Because everything is seen in a small space, we have to make sure that cast members’ facial expressions are right and a dozen other small things,” Schoenbaum said.
Schoenbaum said that the production has gotten a huge audience already, and the interest level is extremely high.
“I think that interest is a combination of things,” Schoenbaum said. “It’s a student production, which is different, the play itself has been very popular and well-known, it’s funny and people want to see it, and there is a large cast with a big group of fans.”
Part of the production’s strength has been the large number of students involved, said Greg Correia, theatre senoir and male lead, Bobby Strong.
“It’s refreshing to work with other students and nice to be under the control of peers,” Correia said.
He said that every member is learning from the others, and that he feels freer to express an idea with student direction. He said that a fellow student is more open to ideas than a professor might be, because they are still learning as well.
“We have more freedom to experiment with new techniques for things,” Schoenbaum said.
She agreed that working with peers helped foster a different atmosphere, but also said that sometimes it can be tricky, because someone has to take charge.
“There is this bond, though, because we are all in it together,” Schoenbaum said.
Theatre freshman Rocky Jarman who plays the female lead, Hope Cladwell, also agreed that being in a mainly student production was an interesting and rewarding experience.
“It’s been exciting and fun and it really motivates me to see Ryan’s hard work and passion,” Jarman said.
She said it’s great to have people to work with who are just as involved in theater as she is, and it is an inspiration that makes her work harder.
Jarman said she knew right away that she wanted to be a part of Urinetown. She got a copy of the script long before auditions and learned as much of it as she could. Although she’s been in productions since she was 2 years old, this is Jarman’s first lead role.
“Hope is simple-minded and starts out believing everything is good,” Jarman said. “Through the show she is exposed to what life is all about, and I get to go from not understanding to showing what I’ve learned.”
Correia also said his character, Bobby Strong, grows over the course of the play.
“Bobby Strong is at first just coasting through life working at a public restroom,” Correia said. “There’s nothing going on for him, but nothing is really going wrong either.”
After Bobby meets Hope, who tells him to follow his heart, Bobby takes his idealism and tries to change his world.
All the cast and crew members agreed that one of the best aspects of the play is its humor.
“It takes you to a place where you can laugh and forget about the outside world for two hours,” Cordero said. “It doesn’t take itself seriously, which is great.”
As with any production, publicity was essential for this production. Cordero asked his friend Robyn Bowie, a speech communications senior, to come in and advertise for Urinetown.
“We could have a really great production, but if no one comes, what’s the point?” Cordero said.
Bowie was able to use Urinetown as a senior project, just as Cordero and Schoenbaum were, and began by getting a sense of the play and then built the publicity around that.
Since the play itself has some vulgar humor, Bowie used a combination of shock and informational ads to promote the play. It was advertised on KSBY’s community calendar, on the radio, in local publications and on campus.
“We also created a board in the music building that is a dynamic display to advertise the show,” Bowie said.
She combined props, toilet paper and facts about the play to create an interesting display that showed the essence of Urinetown.
The production was funded partly by the theater club Alpha Psi Omega, and also by a generous donation from Cordero’s parents. As demand for the play increased, they opened up a few preview nights, where people could come and watch the production in dress rehearsals.
Because the Black Box Theater is so small, there is an extremely limited amount of seating for such a popular production. The public is strongly encouraged to show up to the performances even if they fail to get tickets, because seats sometimes are vacant and the cast want to perform to as a large a group as possible.
For further information on Urinetown, or to purchase tickets, call Ryan Cordero at (805) 458-2080. Performances are June 6 to 9 at 8 p.m., with a special afternoon show June 9 at 2 p.m.