Emerson Theatre Company’s winter musical, “Guys and Dolls” has its opening night on Wednesday, Jan. 22 at 7:00 P.M., followed by performances Thursday and Friday also at 7:00 P.M. in the auditorium. Tickets for the shows can be purchased at etctickets.ludus.com. Over the past couple of months, the cast and crew have been rehearsing mornings and evenings to turn the musical into a reality.
Set in a time of financial depression in Manhattan, “Guys and Dolls” is a musical revolving around gamblers, named Sky and Nathan, as well as the Sarah and Adelaide, ladies that they fall in love with. Throughout the story, Sky and Nathan are faced with the difficulty of deciding what truly matters to them: their game or their women.
“‘Guys and Dolls” is about a lot of things, such as making time for your priorities,” cast member Lily Rangel, 10, said.
With an elaborate plot, this romantic comedy is not an easy musical. It takes a cohesive effort from both cast and crew members to turn the script into a full-fledged onstage performance.
“Theatre has been preparing very hard for about two months,” Theatre Director Libby Rotan said. “We’ve been learning all the songs, all the choreography, blocking the show … building, painting, costuming … and we’re almost there.”
ETC is now only a short way away from their opening night, however, they had to overcome multiple obstacles along the way to get to this point.
“Because our whole team is actors but also in publicity, it’s been hard balancing them both,” cast member and Publicity Head Hanaa Al-Husseini, 11, said. “We’ve been working really hard in our own time on the playbill and making posts for the show.”
Due to the number of people involved in the process and the sheer amount of work that must be done, musicals often require diligent time management to keep rehearsals running smoothly. On top of that, the recent snow days have posed an additional challenge that the cast and crew had to overcome.
“The snow days put us behind because we were supposed to start copy and pasting stuff into the playbill, and we can’t do that from home,” Al-Husseini said.
Due to their upcoming show date, the cast and crew is working extra hard to make up for the lost rehearsals. No amount of rehearsing, however, can change the feelings of excitement experienced on opening night and keep them from giving it their all.
“It’s going to be really amazing and [students] are going to get to see [their peers] do things that they don’t normally get to see them do in their other classes,” Rotan said. “You’re going to get to see them sing, act and dance in ways you never knew your classmates were able to.”
