Urinetown Comes To Parker
Students Perform in Satirical Musical
Instead of doing the usual announcement at Morning Ex, Upper School music teacher Emma Castaldi thought to introduce this spring’s musical a bit differently. Around 15 musical titles were tacked on a fourth floor bulletin board. Every day, one title would be eliminated until the last one stood––the chosen production.
The final two were “Mamma Mia,” the globally-known musical recognizable to much of the Upper School. The other title was less familiar: “Urinetown.”
“We were nervous of the title and because it’s not really a well known musical,” music director Castaldi said. “But I knew that we had a good enough group of people that would do it anyways.”
Castaldi was right. On Wednesday, March 11, “Urinetown” opened with a cast of 28 upper schoolers, one math teacher, and around 10 stage crew members. Castaldi served as Music Director and performing arts teacher John Hildreth was the director.
“Urinetown” takes place in a dystopian society where its people must pay to use the bathroom due to the lack of water. The toilets are controlled by “Urine Good Company,” a corporation controlled by loose morals.
It also contains a love story. Bobby Strong, a member of the working class, falls in love with Hope Cladwell, the daughter of a powerful CEO.
“It’s a story about rich versus poor,” Castaldi said. “It’s a very relevant story about how rich corporations sometimes just use their power for bad things and how the poor decide that they’re fed up with it and want to fight back.”
Urine Good Company’s CEO Caldwell B. Cladwell, the musical’s villain, was played by junior Benji Gourdji. “I think it’s anti-corporation on the surface level,” Gourdji said. “But I think if you look deeper, it’s about mob rule and how the will of the people isn’t always the best path. To be honest, it’s one of the most layered and confusing musicals I’ve ever been in.”
On the day before opening night, the cast skyped Mark Hollmann, the composer of “Urinetown.” “He was saying that they were trying to make the script as human as possible,” Castaldi said.
A lot of work went into their four scheduled performances. “In recent history, this has probably been one of the most difficult musicals in terms of music, in terms of character development, in terms of story line–– all around it was very challenging,” Castaldi said. This made practices longer, with the whole cast called almost every day.
The cast and crew of “Urinetown” planned for four performances. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the Friday night and Saturday afternoon performances were cancelled. “I just wanted to give the cast as much of an opportunity as possible to perform it as normally as possible, because they put in so much work and they deserved that.” Castaldi said.
Cutting the performances short was hard on the cast. “It was horrible,” Gourdji said. “I felt cheated out of a run that I spent seven weeks earning.”
“It was really upsetting,” senior and Assistant Director Abri Berg said. “We all dedicated so much time rehearsing the show. It was really hard on us seniors to have to say our goodbye so abruptly.”
Castaldi is trying to look at the cancellations in a different perspective. “The students get so much more out of this than just those four performances,” Castaldi said. “There were people that just completely grew in confidence, people singing in entirely different levels.”
“The fun part is showing it to other people,” Castaldi said. “But I think the most rewarding part is the rehearsals and growing as a team and as an ensemble.”
