S-U-C-C-E-S-S
About the author:
When Celia Keenan-Bolger arrived at Barrington Stage Company in the quiet Berkshires over the summer, she didn't know what to expect. There for rehearsals for Tony Award-winning composer William Finn's new off-Broadway musical, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Keenan-Bolger was the newbie in a cast, where many members had workshopped the production a year earlier. But she was welcomed with more than just open arms. To Keenan-Bolger, the hospitality and friendship shared amongst the company is the main reason the show has been a S-U-C-C-E-S-S. With a history of performing in shows like The Light in the Piazza, Our Town and Little Fish, Keenan-Bolger now plays the part of a pre-teen overachiever feeling the pressure of competing in one of the most important spelling bees of her adolescent life. Here, Keenan-Bolger spells out the history of this one-of-a-kind show and her view of the transition from the summer fun in the Berkshires to debuting the show in the hustle and bustle of New York City's off-Broadway scene.
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Picture, if you can, a large sunny backyard. It is the fourth of July, and the cast of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee has assembled for a game of spiders and flies. If you've played this game, you know that the spiders Jesse Tyler Ferguson and myself have to tag and capture the flies the rest of the cast as they run from one side of the backyard to the other. The amount of screaming and running and laughing is enough to make us all throw up the hot dogs and hamburgers we just grilled.
And yes, this was a somewhat typical day off in the Berkshires.
When I found out I was going to spend my summer in Massachusetts, I was filled with both anxiety and excitement. I was the newest member of the cast, as almost everyone else had already workshopped Spelling Bee earlier that year. Needless to say, the winter provided a lot less outdoor frolicking. We had about two weeks to put together a small-scale production of this new Bill Finn musical. I was coming in with no knowledge of the music or the characters. However, I have always believed there is something very special about going out of town with a new musical, especially if you are fond of the people you are working and living with.
I could not believe my luck with this particular cast.
Spelling Bee has a pretty amazing history. An improvisation group called The Farm decided their next project should be C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E, an evening based in improvisation that explored the lives of kids in a spelling bee. A lot of the cast members had known each other for years or attended college together, so essentially, it was a group of very talented, very funny friends putting on a show in New York City. It was a huge hit, and while C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E was in performance downtown, the playwright Wendy Wasserstein came to see her nanny, Sarah Saltzberg, perform in the show. When it was over, she told Sarah she was going to tell Bill Finn to check it out and think about turning it into a musical.
So a few months later, there we were in the Berkshires with Bill Finn, some of the C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E cast, and a few other additions from a workshop they'd performed that winter. We were rehearsing in a middle school cafeteria and I was feeling a little out of my league. First of all, everyone had already created these incredibly detailed, hilarious characters. They also knew all of the music from the earlier workshop. I was the new girl, not just in the cast, but in the piece as well. The bookwriter, Rachel Sheinkin, decided the musical needed a character that was a little less hilarious and a little more emotional. During the rehearsal process, I felt inadequate in a lot of ways, but the cast was supportive and welcoming, and they made me feel like I had been there all along.
Cut to, a freezing cold, slushy New York morning in January. There are a lot of the same faces from Barrington Stage, but this time we're in rehearsals at Second Stage Theatre, and our little show is in previews for an off-Broadway run. Now after rehearsal, we go home to our New York lives. But that familial energy is still very present, and for that I am very grateful.
Previews of a new musical in New York can be both thrilling and exhausting. Our creative team has been turning out a lot of new material and ideas. Every performance has something new. On this particular morning, Dan Fogler and I have been given a new musicalized scene with new lyrics and dialogue. The rest of the cast has to learn completely new music to underscore us. We are all freaking out, but we decide to put it in that night. And it is good. And after the performance has ended, Dan tells me he feels like we landed a plane together, and I know exactly what he means. Sarah Saltzberg says she stood backstage sending us good energy while the whole thing was going on.
And I realize that our time in the Berkshires playing spiders and flies and just being with each other served a greater purpose than I could have ever expected. Making a new piece of art is one of the most satisfying aspects of being an actor, but making art with people who you genuinely care about, that is something else all together. So I have to believe, a lot of the success or interest The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee has already received is a direct link to the fact that it is rooted in something deeper than just making a musical. The experience has been about human beings, and group dynamics and fitting in, and now we're all here in this exciting off-Broadway run, and I feel so lucky to be a part of it… all of it.
