Photo by Photos by Gary and Pierre Silva
It’s 6:45 p.m. on Monday, June 29 and the Cabrillo Music Theatre's cast for CATS is gathering for an evening rehearsal—one of many before opening night. The small group is practicing outside of the Hillcrest Center for the Arts in Thousand Oaks, bathing in the last bit of sun they’ll enjoy before re-entering the chilled rehearsal room.
"Jellicle Cats come out tonight. Jellicle Cats come one, come all. The Jellicle moon is shining bright…" They sing and raise their arms, fingers clawing at the blue, moonless sky. They pounce, and kick rhythmically when suddenly a young woman’s black dance shoe sails through the air. As she runs to retrieve it, the dancers laugh and the group scatters, making its way through the glass doors. It’s 6:55 p.m. and evening rehearsal starts in five minutes.
Four years ago, Cabrillo Music Theatre, the resident musical production company to the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza and the largest theater between Los Angeles and San Francisco, was flat broke; financial ruin eclipsed its artistic contributions to Ventura County. At the urgings of community and civic leaders, Carole W. Nussbaum, a lawyer known for her business acumen, became the theater’s president and CEO. Within a year, Nussbaum had resolved the debt. The following year, she raised the bar by bringing in bigger shows and better productions. By 2008, Cabrillo had won six Ovation "Tony" Awards, the most of any theater in Southern California. And in both 2008 and 2009, Cabrillo was awarded the Daily News Readers’ Choice "Best of LA" Award for Live Stage Productions. "I’m a go big or go home kind of person," says the green-eyed Nussbaum, who worked her tail off to bring CATS to Cabrillo.
Nussbaum, who began her career as a prosecutor protecting theaters and other nonprofit groups, was always enamored with the play. Based on a collection of poems by T.S. Eliot and composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Cats had a twenty-one-year run in London, becoming the longest running musical in the history of the West End. On Broadway, it played for a record-setting eighteen years. "If a rainbow could sing, it would sing CATS," she says.
After years of working with the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization (RHO), the licensing agency that represents CATS for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group, Nussbaum was granted the rights for Cabrillo Music Theatre to produce the show—a rare achievement for a regional theater. “As with everything surrounding CATS, even the public announcement was dramatic,” she says. “The approval from RHO arrived just two days before we would announce our new season.”
That’s when the ball began to roll. Cabrillo's producer and artistic director, Lewis Wilkenfeld, keeping in mind his desire to "hand-off knowledge to the next generation of performers," hired a seasoned staff and held a weekend-long marathon of auditions. Over three hundred local people tried out, and once the cast was chosen, rehearsals began.
At 7 p.m. the group of singer/dancers and dancer/singers (the prior are stronger singers than dancers, the latter the opposite) settle down in the rehearsal room for vocal practice. The walls are mirrored except for one long wall of windows that allows sunlight to cast a glow over the performers. Ilana Eden, the musical director/conductor, stands behind a music stand, a pencil tucked behind her ear, wearing a white button-up shirt and a pair of thin-framed glasses. The singers, dressed in leggings, wildly colored scarves, muscle shirts, and off-the-shoulder blouses, wait for instruction. "Fast forward to bar forty-four," says Eden. The cast sings and their voices fill the room with an angelic melody.
Later Eden tells me, "What you heard last night was the raw beginning of a chorale. In terms of the potential sound you will hear at the show, what they hit was about the fifty-four percent mark." To reach a hundred percent, the cast has to sing—a lot. Melissa Lyons, who plays the ousted cat Grizabella, has her own diligent practice schedule: "I pretty much wake up and don't stop singing. It drives my husband crazy.”
Across the room, the production assistants sit Indian-style on the floor, with fluorescent rolls of tape, a tape measure, and a line diagram that depicts a junkyard scene. There’s a large tire in the center of the diagram, a car trunk to the right, a trashcan on the left along with multiple tunnels, stairways, and junkyard accessories. The “PAs,” as they’re called, are creating a scaled-down version of the set. Since the cast won’t be able to rehearse in the actual theater until days before the performance, this will serve as their guide. "People don't know how dangerous it is backstage, especially when there is scenery flying in and out. Sometimes that stuff weighs a thousand pounds or more," says Lindsay Martens, the production stage manager.
Meanwhile, director/choreographer Dana Solimando, who made her Broadway debut as Rumpleteazer in the 1997 production of CATS, and her co-choreographer/director Billy Johnstone, sit against the mirrored wall awaiting their turn to work out the cast. By the time the singers are done the sun has set, taking the glow along with it. The window now reflects the darkness of a moonless night. "Pit singers, you are free to go. Thank you, guys."
At 9:03 p.m. the group stacks chairs against the windows and the singers, now turned dancers, are stretching, putting on kneepads, and joking around. Someone feigns a "Janet Jackson moment." For the next twenty minutes they warm up before diving into the Jellicle Ball choreography. "The show is two-and-a-half hours of nonstop dancing and movement,” explains Solimando, who is recreating Gillian Lynne’s original choreography. “One of the things I do right away is teach the cast the hardest part of the show to help them build stamina."
The dancers practice, their catlike bodies writhing and twisting as they sing in whisper soft voices: "Jellicle Cats come out tonight. Jellicle Cats come one, come all. The Jellicle moon is shining bright. Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball…”
Not only does the cast have to dance, sing, and navigate the set, they also have to learn how to apply their own makeup, finalizing the transition from human to feline. In the makeup room down the hall, I encounter one of the cast members getting a lesson. Black whispers sprout from his powder-whitened face, and above him there is a row of Styrofoam mannequin heads capped with stiff wigs streaked orange, brown, and black. Applying the cat’s face takes about an hour and a half, during which the performer has to layer on white foundation then draw in the cat's features. “It’s about a five-step process to get it to stay on so they don't sweat it off and so the audience can see their expressions," says Solimando, who, along with Johnstone, oversees the makeup lessons.
At 10:45 p.m., with only fifteen minutes of rehearsal remaining, I pass through a hallway crowded with fringe, feather, pleather, and tufts of coarse fabric adorning sleek body suits with limp tails. The lifeless costumes are waiting for a warm body to animate them. I walk back through the glass doors and head home under a heavy, incandescent moon. I'd seen enough behind the scenes. And with opening night only weeks away, as Eden would say with pitch perfection, I'd prefer to “preserve some of the magic.”
08-01-2009
