Into The Woods

“He’s Dead!” - Baker

I served as the Music Director for Francis W. Parker’s spring musical production of Into the Woods! The staff consisted of Director Tom Moster and Choreographer Florence Walker-Harris.

We did the full show, and made some adjustments to the staging and script due to our cast since and rehearsal time. Our previous director had to stop working on the show early in the process, which was a big bump in our production. I was the only other one with an idea of the previous creative vision so transitioning to Tom’s direction was a bridge we had to build together. We had a wonderful cast of students that were incredibly excited to work on the show and that helped immensely.

We had 9 people in our pit, one of them being a student musician. I would love to expand this program to have more student musicians, as that was one of the reasons I’m in this industry today! To be able to give back to a program and create more interest in theater would be incredible.

This being a high school show, many students haven’t had the training or experience of having to take care of their voices, especially through tech. Even with vocal rest, hydration, and (hopefully) sleep, we had many students throughout tech lose their voices because of irresponsible use. Our Cinderella tried to push through tech and had no voice for our Thursday show. Our understudy was barely present, so there was no option but for her to go on. Vocal fatigue is something that even professionals have to deal with, and she didn’t even have the safety net of the understudy. She came in very anxious and stressed to perform, and I led her through a series of breathing exercises, head voice placement exercises, and mental reframings to allow her to calm down and perform the show. It was my first time dealing with such a nuclear option, but I feel proud of keeping my cool and being able to lead her to a better headspace and vocal placement to have her feel proud of what she can do.