by Lola Furbee
One of my favorite times of the school year is the opening of the North Central College Theatre Department’s spring musical. If you happened to read the write-up I made last year on NCC’s Ride the Cyclone, you’d know I became deeply infatuated with that production, and it’s no different for the musical this year. Assassins is a Stephen Sondheim musical that depicts the tale of historical figures who assassinated (or attempted to assassinate) Presidents of the United States. While it undoubtedly sounds like a crazy concept around which to create a musical, book writer John Weidman artfully crafted a patriotic yet malicious plot that depicts these figures in their clever, sinister ways.
North Central College’s production of Assassins ran a couple of weekends ago under the direction of Landree Fleming and music direction of Ellie Kahn. With guest directors at the helm, the rest of the creative team was rightfully proficient, including Scenic Designer Milo Bue, Lighting Designer Brighton Liese, Sound Designer Andrew Butler and Assistant Sound Designer Casey Bretz, Props Designer Noora Kassem, and Costume and Hair/Makeup Designer Alyson Meyers. The production was stage managed by Ari Watts and found its Assistant Music Director in Madalynn Travnicek. Rounding out the team were Assistant Directors and Co-Dramaturgs Nathan Dittemore and Jake Keller.
The last three names I listed are the ones I want to focus on first for this deep dive into Assassins. As a current sophomore at NCC, Madalynn Travnicek played a unique role in the feats of this musical. As the name of the role would suggest, she assisted Music Director Ellie Kahn with all the singing-related aspects of this show. When I sat down to chat with her about her experience on this show, Travnicek brought up a unique challenge that Kahn and she were presented due to the casting choices made for this production. If you’re unfamiliar, Assassins is usually made up of a primarily male-identifying cast, so the songs are heavily favored by the baritone and bass voices. However, NCC’s production was primarily made up of the treble voice. It seems so obvious to me now, but before Travnicek explained to me how she and Kahn had to “transpose” every single song in the musical, I’d never considered some of the technical aspects that would be affected by this casting choice.
A little insider secret, but Travnicek is actually a close friend of mine, so I was particularly curious as to how her experience working as the Assistant Music Director would aid her as a future music education teacher. She explained to me how this process has cemented her love for “getting into the nitty gritty of the artistic details and the song choices.” It’s allowed her to “have a foot in the door” by teaching her the tools to run a greater musical rehearsal. Whether it be with a school district, a local community theatre, or somewhere else entirely, Travnicek feels this exposure to the rehearsal process at NCC has given her a new avenue she has the potential to explore in the future.
Now, moving on to the other two names on my list. As the dramaturgs for this production of Assassins, Nathan Dittemore and Jake Keller had an especially important role to fill. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, of a dramaturg is “a literary adviser or editor…who researches, selects, adapts, edits, and interprets scripts, libretti, texts, and printed programs, consults authors, and does public relations work.” While a very broad use of the term “dramaturg,” and I could, no doubt, go into the much deeper definition behind a dramaturgs’ role within a theatrical production, this hopefully gives you a better understanding of what Dittemore and Keller were tasked with. The most indicative of the depth of research and thought these two students put into their role is the NCC Assassins website they crafted. As someone who was only familiar with the names “John Wilkes Booth” and “Lee Harvey Oswald” in this show, I found their website to be incredibly valuable. Not only did it contain detailed information on all of the figures that appear throughout the musical, but it also provides helpful context on some of the motifs that could be seen in this specific production. I recommend you check out their site if you have the time, even if you didn’t get the chance to see the show. It’s an enjoyable read, nonetheless.
As with any great production, the creative team’s vision couldn’t be executed successfully without an equally dedicated and capable set of actors, and I can assure you that NCC’s Assassins had just that. The cast consisted of Olivia Wegner (John Wilkes Booth), Riley Knoop (Charles J. Guiteau), Karen Ono (Leon Czolgosz), Siobhan McNulty (Sara Jane Moore), Marina Jòkanović (Giuseppe Zangara), Autumn Dunn (Samuel Byck), Gabriela Sorrentino (Lynette Fromme), Rowan Brando (John Hinckley Jr.), Raine Lanoue (The Balladeer), and Samantha Doyle (The Proprietor). It feels inane to say when the majority of the cast is made up of real-life assassins, but after seeing this show, it felt like everyone on the stage was born to play their role. It was clearly such a company effort to make this show run as smoothly as it did, and it’s all just a testament to this incredible casts’ talents.
Similar to Madalynn Travnicek, there were two cast members who I spoke with briefly to hear about their differing experiences working on Assassins. I first met with Autumn Dunn who played Samuel Byck. As a first-year student at North Central College, I wanted to get her perspective as to what it was like being the “newcomer” of the cast. She was quick to say that she found it to be a supportive environment where she felt she was able to truly connect with everybody in the cast, which I’m always glad to hear. I also got her input as to what her character work looked like for this musical. I figured that, as an actor, your traditional approaches to a character might not work perfectly when the character you’re playing was, not only a real person, but a real person who attempted to assassinate a president. Dunn explained that a lot of her research stemmed behind what “[Byck] believed in.” She really wanted to understand what Byck’s political beliefs were, and subsequently, was able to get a feel for what her interactions with the other characters on stage were going to look like.
To garner a different perspective from Dunn, the other actor I spoke to was Gabriela Sorrentino. In her senior year, her role as Lynette Fromme was sadly going to be Sorrentino’s last on stage with NCC’s Theatre Department. I didn’t know this about her beforehand, but she labeled the time as “shocking” and “rewarding” because she didn’t really start her musical theatre journey until college. Being a Musical Theatre major, I just sort of assumed that this was a passion she’d carried through her whole life. But she explained to me how she truly came into college as “a blank canvas” who instantly fell in love with the craft, which I just find to be so shocking because she’s undeniably a natural talent.
Another topic I touched on with Sorrentino was about what I feel is the most infamous song from the musical: “Unworthy of Your Love.” Even if you’ve never heard of Assassins before, there’s a chance you might’ve heard this song before out of context. In the musical, Sorrentino sang this song with Rowan Brando, as their two characters were expressing their feelings of undeservingness toward their respective partners. I asked Sorrentino about any trepidation she might have toward performing this song in front of audiences every night. She talked about how it was “intimidating at first,” but she was quick to shift any nervousness she carried toward the song and turn it into this incredible “opportunity” to be one half of such a famous duet in the musical theatre songbooks. Sorrentino lastly discussed the compassion she approached this character with. Similar to Dunn, she wanted to understand what Fromme’s motives were. She made it clear that she wanted to deeply respect the fact that Fromme wasn’t made-up, stating “[these characters were] actual human beings who had actual real-life stories, and in a way, sometimes traumatizing [ones].” And after watching her performance, I can say that I think Sorrentino tackled Fromme’s “realness,” perfectly.
In all, I found North Central College’s approach to Assassins to be fascinating. There were many small nuances throughout the show that left quite an impact on me personally, but I simply didn’t have the lengths to describe them in their full glory. And it goes without saying that many people worked tirelessly in collaboration to create this specific version of this musical, and it doesn’t go unnoticed. I haven’t had the place to mention this yet, but Assassins actually featured a live pit orchestra instead of the actors singing over a recorded track. The musicians consisted of North Central College students: Chris Kalinka, Sean McMahon, Paige O’Rourke, and Mikayla Szot. It’s been over a year since a live pit has been a part of one of NCC’s theatrical productions, so I hope the success of Assassins sets a trend to see more of them on our campus, in the future.
