Photo by Meriel Peterson
“Once upon a time” — it’s the beginning of some of our most beloved stories. These tales influence and captivate generations, yet few continue past their happily ever afters. Pepperdine’s Lisa Wengler Center for the Arts has picked up these stories from their final page and carried them into the reality after the fairytale, presenting these untold stories in a comical, dark rendition of “Into the Woods.”
The Tony Award-winning musical is based on the fairytales’ characters’ lives after they go “into the woods” or “get their wish,” combining and entangling their paths into one big tale.
In his first year working at Pepperdine, the stage director Dimitri Toscas, set the bar high in his expectations of the talent and crew. Familiar with previous performances of the university, Toscas came into the project warning the interviewers of his creative touch.
“When I was being interviewed for this directing position, I said something out loud that I don’t usually admit in a job interview: ‘If you’re looking for someone to copy a video and recreate someone else’s ‘Into the Woods,’ I am not your man,” Toscas said. “I always try to come up with something new, something exciting, something challenging that no one has seen before.”
After several months of preparation and rehearsals, Toscas has certainly lived up to his word. He hit the ground running after his spring 2014 hire, scheduling meetings to plan and properly execute his vision. Designers then put countless hours of work into the set, costumes, hair, makeup, props, lights, sound and projections. Yes, projections. With the collaboration of creative minds, each designer told their story to tie in with Toscas’ vision and bring it all into fruition.
August rolled around and the search for talent immediately commenced. Toscas explained these auditions as a “process to come in and show [him] who they are.” Talent got these actors through the audition door, but their ability to feel “pain in their core” would get them the callback.
Toscas expressed this emotional search: “I needed someone who understands longing, someone who knows what it means to give everything up to get the one thing they desire and then be willing to do it, someone who is trying to be perfect on the outside, but isn’t afraid to show the world that they are a mess underneath. These are the people we found.”
Very pleased with the results thus far, Toscas did not divulge too deeply into who is playing what role. Nevertheless, he did not hesitate to share: “They’re remarkable.”
After deciding on the cast, music director Tyler Kimmel (‘11) began to exercise his musical expertise. Kimmel is returning to Pepperdine as an adjunct professor of music in his first term with the theater and music departments. With knowledge of previous Pepperdine productions, Kimmel matches Toscas’ goal to create something never heard of before.
With 72 musical cues, a great deal of underscoring is used to avoid the expected scene-song-scene-song routine. “This show requires a lot of musical synchronization with the action on stage, sound effects, light cues and other ‘magic,’” Kimmel said.
Another spin to this fall’s musical is its non-chorus roles, with each line and/or song playing an equal role of importance in the overall success of the production. This change is only one of the many as Kimmel explained their decision to add instruments to the orchestra and add more edge to the sound.
With rehearsals beginning at 6:30 p.m. and ending at 10:30 p.m. six nights a week, the cast and crew bend over backwards to meet their own expectations. Budgets in need of revision, schedules in need of adjustment and every minute detail — from the knife “looking like it could kill a wolf” to the glitter eyeshadow used — the cast and crew dedicate their time to perfection.
Toscas’ goal is not to simply show his audience what happens to these fairy tales, but to “go with the characters into a woods that [they’ve] never seen before. A woods that [they’d] never imagine.”
Abandoning any hint of previous interpretations, this musical stretches beyond the returned glass slipper and the scaring off of a big bad wolf. As Kimmel said, it begs the question, “Do you know what it is you wish? What would you do to get your wish? Anything?” Toscas expressed that beyond the perfect happily ever after lies a mess “just like most of us.”
Audiences can already purchase their tickets online at the Pepperdine Center for the Arts or at the Smothers Theatre box office. The opening day is today at 7:30 p.m. and ends Nov. 22.
“When you come to see ‘Into the Woods,’ come with a blank slate,” Kimmel said. “Leave all your pre-conceived ideas, images and sounds at home; you are in for an evening of exciting, risky, unique and felicitously fresh storytelling.”
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Follow Marisa Padilla on Twitter: @MishaLaurennn
