For a long time now, I have been nervously awaiting the Racine Theater Guild’s spring production of the massive, monumental Les Miserables …. a huge undertaking for any community theater and easily the most ambitious project for the RTG since I began directing musicals there. Les Mis loomed in the distance the way Mt. Everest loomed before Sir Edmund Hillary – or the way that huge, infamous iceberg loomed in the path of the unsuspecting Titanic – choose your metaphor. No matter what, it’s a work that demands the very best that a community theater has to offer – almost the way that Wagner’s monumental Ring Cycle is the supreme test for an opera company. And speaking of opera, that’s really what Les Miserables is, when you come right down to it. There is basically no spoken dialogue at all; it is sung from start to finish, and the music is written for the kind of classically-inclined, quasi-operatic voices that do not exactly grow on trees. So it’s an exceptionally challenging piece – and any music director who knows anything about it is apt to approach it with a peculiar mix of excitement tinged with dread. Indeed, when Kathy and I went with Doug and Kim Instenes to see Les Miserables in Greendale last summer (not only to see the work itself, but to cheer on three gifted performers from the RTG – Bob Benson, Zak Keil, and Ashley Mulder, who were in the cast) I found myself thrilled by the singing, intimidated by the difficulty of the score, and beside myself with worry over whether or not we would have enough vocal firepower on hand to do this work justice. In fact, at the start of intermission I handed Doug a note in which I said only half-jokingly: “I’d like to strangle the play reading committee members who thought it was a bright idea for the RTG to do Les Mis!” That was just my fear talking, but it was exactly what I was feeling in that moment . . . Oh my God! How in the world are we going to be able to do this? It’s not that we don’t have amazing talent at the RTG- We do! But how many of our most gifted folks would be willing to offer up their time and talents for this extraordinary challenge? And in particular, would we have enough young men? I feared that we might find ourselves in the desperate straits which the RTG faced some years back (before my time) when they mounted West Side Story; because so few young men auditioned to be in that production, the street gangs ended up including more than a few middle school boys, who did their very best to try and look menacing. The logical side of my mind knew that we didn’t face that kind of scenario with Les Miserables, yet somehow I couldn’t quite shake the crippling worry in the other half of my brain that our revolutionaries’ barricade would end up being “manned” by more boys than men.
Well, my worries proved to be entirely unfounded because 164 people came out for our auditions – by far the largest turnout in Racine Theater Guild history. But beyond the sheer numbers was an astonishingly high level of talent – and not just from folks driving down from Milwaukee or up from northern Illinois. The best talent from RTG strutted their stuff in these auditions ….. and by the time it was all done, I could not have been prouder of the RTG family. What incredibly gifted people we have in our ranks! And it was especially exciting and gratifying that so many talented male singers auditioned; they came in astonishing numbers, drawn I am sure by the enticing opportunity of appearing in this incredible show. And by the way, the quality of auditions was astoundingly high. Sure, there were a tiny handful of auditions that were pretty rough, but even those performances were heartfelt and full of energy. And what was especially gratifying was how when certain people would nervously announce to us that they were singing their very first audition ever, they were always greeted at the conclusion of their song with especially warm applause from the other folks auditioning. Those gestures of kindness were inspiring, in and of themselves – over and above the many impressive auditions that we heard.
And indeed, the problem confronted by Doug Instenes and I was not that we needed more people and more gifts from which to choose our cast. Our problem, instead, was the opposite – that we had a staggering number of worthy singers who wanted to be in our production …. and with 164 people auditioning for 40 roles, there is no way to select a cast without thrilling a handful of singers and disappointing many more. And if it were as cut and dried as just choosing the very best people in each role, it would be hard enough. But it is SO much more complicated than that! We have to cast these various roles so that the singers fit together, both vocally and visually. (Two singers who are portraying a romantic couple can’t be 20 years apart in age – one of them can’t have a voice twice as big as their partner’s – and it’s always preferable if the woman isn’t a foot taller than the guy.) I come more from the opera world where visuals tend not to matter as much as the vocals (I joked to Doug at one point that in opera we’ll accept a 300-lb. Romeo singing to a 400-lb. Juliet just as long as their voices are wonderful) …. although that has changed rather dramatically in recent years. For most opera companies now, a lot of consideration is given to how singers look and whether or not they physically match the role their singing, to say nothing of their ability to act the role and not just sing it.
On top of all that is also the rather delicate matter of welcoming new talent into the fold while also being true to the folks who have been faithful members of the RTG family- some of them for many years. It’s tremendously hard when someone whom we know and like and admire comes to audition for a particular role which they have dreamt of singing for years …. maybe even decades. Les Miserables is one of those very special shows which is the “dream show” for lots of people – and Doug and I would have loved nothing more than to hand out the major roles to people we know and love. But that would have been impossible, not only mathematically (what in the world do you do when you have 7 or 8 fine performers who have long dreamt of singing the role of Jean Valjean? Or 20 performers who would love to portray Fantine – any one of whom would do a fine job?) but also for the sake of the guild’s integrity. We owe it to our audience to give them the finest production of Les Miserables that we possibly can – a production which will also be true to who we are as a community theater. Towards that end, I think we are incredibly happy and proud that every single major role in this production will be sung by someone from Racine or Kenosha. None of those most-prized plums went to any high powered talents from out of town, unless you consider nearby Franklin out of town. Not that the RTG hasn’t benefited mightily from the performances of gifted folks from elsewhere. (Ryan Klug, the young man who was the beast in our first production of “Beauty and the Beast” is a perfect example- a really gifted performer and terrific guy who lived an hour away but got himself to every rehearsal and performance, without fail …. and I could name many other out-of- towners whom we were delighted to have on our stage.) But the new, unfamiliar faces in this particular production are all from right here, and that feels SO right. What IS hard – incredibly hard – is to disappoint someone who has worked devotedly for the RTG for many years ….. or to disappoint someone who perhaps has performed on our stage as a young girl, as a teenager, and returns as a young adult, eager and hopeful. However hard it is for someone like that to receive disappointing news, it’s almost as hard to have to deliver that disappointing news. And when you think about how many people – well over one hundred – either had to be told that they were not in the show at all, or that they were not being offered the role they were hoping for ….. Well, you can probably see why this is by far the worst part of the job.
I’m grateful in the end (and I’m sure Doug is as well) that most people …. especially if they’ve been around for awhile ….. understand what I’m saying and do their very best to look beyond their own disappointment and think of the good of the show. It’s probably one of the hardest things about being involved in theater – and the same sensitivity that allows someone to convey and communicate heartfelt emotion on a stage, to deeply identify with a given character, is also the sensitivity that leaves one vulnerable to hurt. When I think about the folks who are sad about Les Miserables, I think back to the moment in 1985 when the names were announced for the next year of the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists …. and my name was not among them, meaning that I wouldn’t be returning ….. or that moment back at Luther in the fall of 1980 when the list of Messiah soloists was posted, and my name wasn’t there. (It had been the year before.) Those setbacks were incredibly painful and bewildering at the time – and the hurt isn’t gone even after all these years. But hurt is just part of the deal, plain and simple – and the key to living a good, happy life is not in avoiding hurt…. but rather in figuring out how to live with hurt. I think back to that day when I got the crushing news about the Messiah. Right after that, I went to chapel- but made a point of sitting by myself in the hopes that I wouldn’t have to talk about it with anyone. Just as the service was about to begin, a senior named Ellen sat next to me. We weren’t close friends by any means, but I knew her a little bit from Nordic Choir. I knew she was sitting with me because she had just experienced the same sort of hurt; she had been a Messiah soloist the previous year, but would not be this time around. (And she was a senior, so in a sense it was a worse disappointment for her.) I’m pretty sure we didn’t ever exchange any words about our dual disappointment …. but I do remember a moment during the final hymn, “Children of the Heavenly Father.” As we got to the final verse words “Though He giveth or he taketh, God His children ne’er forsaketh” Ellen lightly rested her head on my shoulder. In that simple and sensitive gesture, she managed to convey what is perhaps the most comforting thought one could have in the midst of hurt: You are not alone. Hurt is something we all share – and it is one of the things that most clearly defines us as human beings.
Wherever you are at the moment – happy or hurt – I hope that will join me in wishing only the best for the cast and crew of the RTG’s Les Miserables …. that this can be an enormously inspiring and exciting experience for all who are part of it and all who will see it. That is exactly why we do this.
Pictured above: Doug Instenes welcomes to the Racine Theater Guild yet another “shift” of people auditioning for Les Miserables. At our busiest times, we were hearing 15 people per hour.