Hearing that a town has to pay to pee may not be the most appealing theme, but if you’re looking for a change of pace from your typical musical, then urine luck! The fall musical Urinetown, premiering Nov. 15, is set in a future where a tyrannical government places a tax on using the public restroom due to drought and famine.
“It’s extremely funny, extremely bright and it has this hilarious message that I really wanted to share with everyone else,” theater teacher and director Phillip Reid said.
A show that parodies other musicals, Urinetown satirizes political and social issues such as capitalism, municipal politics and the legal system in order to help the audience realize the relevance of those issues. Spectators are entertained by the oddity of Urinetown while they learn about these issues.
“[It’s a] show about people having to pay to pee and them bringing down the tyrannical rule of a horrible leader, which I feel is very relevant in this time that we are living right now.”
Urinetown is unlike many of the other shows TheatreMcLean has produced. Past shows like Cinderella and Seussical were popular and mainstream. Urinetown, on the other hand, is a darker and less well-known show.
“Urinetown is like my big experiment,” Reid said. “No one really knows what it’s about. It’s also really dark and not exactly family friendly.”
Members of TheatreMcLean started working to make the show come to life months before Urinetown auditions even began.
“[The process] starts around six months before when I’m deciding to pick a piece,” Reid said. “Then, once I’ve decided it and made the announcements, the designers read the script and get an idea of how they want to design, and about two and a half months before our production we’ll hold auditions, and from there we will hold rehearsals.”
More than 100 students have been involved in the production. Among them is junior Rebecca Blacksten, one of the main actresses of the show.
“I really enjoy the way that there is really a process that is going on with the show. In one room, people are learning the dance… In another room, people are doing the music… In the other room, people are learning the acting parts and are utilizing all of our resources to [create] one really sick show,” Blacksten said. “Everyone is really giving 110 percent which is phenomenal, and I feel that it’s become more of a piece as opposed to a random high school show.”
Blacksten plays a significant role in the upcoming production.
“My character’s name is Soupy Sue. She is one of the main ring leaders of the rebel horde and she is really easily excitable and anxious,” Blacksten said. “It’s a ridiculous show and she’s even more ridiculous. She thinks she’s some poetic goddess, but she’s really a poor woman who has no money and is sad.”
In typical musicals, the characters are more relatable to the actors and audience. Urinetown, however, is a little different.
“Urinetown is full of character archetypes as opposed to actual relatable characters. You know, there is the innocent maiden—all the different archetypes that sort of create a relatable but uneasy feeling about the whole show,” Blacksten said. “In Urinetown, they are so not [relatable] because their situation is so different than ours.”
The experience has been new to sophomore Casey Prestidge, who got the role of the main male lead despite the fact that Urinetown is his first musical.
“I wanted to do musicals because I’m in choir, but I am also really into soccer,” Prestidge said. “I couldn’t do the musical last year because it was during the spring and soccer is in spring season. But I heard they were doing a musical in the fall, so I decided to audition.”
On top of perfecting the acting on stage, a lot goes into a production behind the curtain. Each of the student-run departments is extremely valuable to the development of the show.
“All the heads are student heads. I don’t have an adult choreographer; I have student choreographers. They proved [they could do it] to me [during the production of 9 to 5]. I said, ‘Listen, you create this, you be your own artists, you create and make it work,’ and we won the Cappie for best choreography last year, so…It shows,” Reid said.
Some of the department heads also have acting roles in the production.
“I talk to small businesses, I design the posters and playbill and I run social media,” said senior Lauren Grobman, head of publicity. “I’m in the ensemble as well. It’s a lot more work than I thought, since it is my first time being in a musical, so you have to learn all the dance moves and the harmonies, but it is a lot of fun.”
TheatreMcLean members had to overcome a variety of obstacles while creating Urinetown.
“McLean’s auditorium is one of the smallest theaters in the county and also one of the oldest. There’s a lot of things that don’t work in and out of this theater that I wish we could have replaced or that I wish that we had working,” Reid said. “We have worked so hard with our shows to make enough money to help our sound crew, to help our lighting crew, to buy as much stuff as we can to make work, but we are still not finished.”
The long rehearsal times also pose a challenge, requiring a great deal of dedication from the cast and crew.
“We hold rehearsal from about 3 to 6 p.m. every day and then when we get to tech week, we are in rehearsal from 3 to 10 p.m. a week before, and then on Saturday it will be from around 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.,” Reid said. “It’s a testament to how passionate they are for theater, it takes a lot to put on these productions. The week before the show, this is our home and life.”
In spite of these challenges, the TheatreMcLean students have developed a seemingly indestructible bond.
“It’s been so much stress, but at the same time it’s so much fun,” Prestidge said. “Everyone around me has been so supportive. It’s a really close, tight-knit group, and I’m really proud to be a part of it.”
Urinetown will run until Nov. 18.
“If you’re not a part of theater and you want to support [us], come out to the shows,” Reid said.
