Earlier this spring, 13 year old Kavya Shivashankar from Kansas took the top prize at the 82nd annual Scripps National Spelling Bee Championship held in Washington DC. Kavya’s win, by the way, came with the correct spelling of the word “Laodicean,” which means lukewarm or indifferent, especially in matters of religion or politics.
Laodicean is also is a good way to describe many memories of middle school – or junior high as it used to be called in the “old days.” From dodge ball and pimples, to unpredictable growth spurts and changing social pecking orders, it’s a period in our youth that most of us would not choose to relive even if given a Capraesque chance to go back in time.
Yet middle school is exactly where audiences will find themselves at “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” when it opens this Sunday at the Southampton Cultural Center. Michael Disher directs the Long Island premier of William Finn’s Tony Award winning musical (with book by Rachel Sheinkin), which tells the tale of six socially awkward adolescents battling it out for the top spot in the spelling bee food chain.
“Imagine your typical spelling bee with six of the most eccentric and awkward children, each with an issue,” says Disher. “These children are bizarre beyond belief.”
The home-schooled kid, the overachiever, the child of gay parents, the offspring of hippies and the Boy Scout are among the middle school archetypes presented in “Spelling Bee.” It certainly sounds like a simple enough premise, right?
“One would think,” comments Disher. “But think of it as six individuals who start off as caricatures. Fifteen minutes into the play, they become characters and by the end, they are full human beings. It’s the subtle journey of children wanting to be accepted in that most horrible age of all — middle school.”
Of course, the ultimate irony is that regional spelling bees are the only place where the out of sync, out of place, overly intellectual and socially geeky students ultimately find one another and, for the first time in their lives, realize there are other people in the world who are just like them.
“And here’s the real kick,” says Disher. “Now that they’ve found each other, they’re pitted against each other. The six eventually come to an understanding of things they’d like to believe is true in themselves. In its own quirky way it’s not unlike the Wizard of Oz. They travel to this territory and one kid finds out he has courage, another a brain, the other that his heart is quite large.”
Playing the six spellers in this version of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” is a relatively young cast of local actors ranging in age from 16 to 25. Among them are Sag Harbor residents Bethany Dellapolla and 16-year-old Holly Goldstein, a junior at Pierson High School who is, herself, not that far removed from middle school.
“Oddly enough, and they will agree, the hardest thing these 16 to 25 year olds have had to do is access their 12-year-old lives,” says Disher. “They block it out – middle school is horrible for everyone.”
“In this play, we take what everyone remembers about middle school, factor in that misery plus being an outcast, plus being an outcast who’s intelligent, then thrust them into the bee where they meet others like them and are now pitted against them.”
This play is also a musical, and although it is the antics and quirks of the spellers that are hilarious to watch on stage, now that he has gotten into the material, Disher admits he has been surprised by the depth of the score as well.
“I went into this show thinking this is relatively simple music,” notes Disher. “Kind of like Charlie Brown. But when you begin to look at the music and scratch into the depth of it, it’s deceptive and difficult. The chords and harmonies in the score are breathtakingly gorgeous to hear and so unexpected. So the cast has risen to that particular challenge.”
Ironically, “Spelling Bee” wasn’t the play Disher originally set out to offer this time around when he first did the casting. But, as they often do in both life and spelling bees, fate and circumstances intervened.
“We were originally slotted to do ‘Godspell,’” explains Disher. “But I found it impossible to cast. I barely had enough actors to cover it and within the first two weeks, two dropped out.”
So Disher went to the website of Music Theatre International, his licensing company, to see what else might be available and suitable for the cast he had. He saw “Spelling Bee” advertised on the website’s home page, but assumed it was an advance notice of the play’s upcoming availability because the show had just recently closed on Broadway and was still touring nationally.
“This was on a Sunday,” says Disher. “So I looked over the page and didn’t see the restriction notice so I clicked on ‘apply for license.’ I wrote the rep I usually deal with and said, ‘I’m having trouble casting ‘Godspell,’ if possible can I switch over to ‘Spelling Bee?’ By 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, I had the license. It just became available for amateur performance four weeks ago – we got the first license on Long Island.”
“I took the ‘Godspell’ cast and put them all in ‘Spelling Bee’ except for two who didn’t make it,” says Disher. “The cast I had fit this show.”
Disher is thrilled to be able to present this play to East End audiences.
“I saw this show in New York, it’s one of the few where I’ve sat in the audience and laughed out loud,” he says. “It’s in its own right groundbreaking. It’s a hybrid in many ways between a standard musical, a reality show and a game show.”
What ultimately makes it a game show is the unknown territory the play treads every evening when four audience participants must join the action on stage. There are three rules for these participants, notes Disher. They must ask for the definition of the word they are given. They must ask for it’s usage in a sentence and they must do anything the children tell them to do. Based on how the four guests do in their spelling tasks, it may be up to the cast to contrive ways to eliminate the contestants.
“Another complication, is what if I can’t find four people willing to do it,” ponders Disher. “It’s a different show every night. It scares the hell out of me.”
Between staging complications, musical score and the rough territory of reviving early teenage angst, ultimately, Disher has learned that even the simple spelling bee is not so simple in the end.
“One of the things I’ve learned over the years is if a show appears to be very simple, you had best beware,” says Disher. “This one is deviously difficult. The music is complicated. Getting kids to want to revisit age 12 is painstaking. The unknown variables wreak havoc on them. They have to not elicit laughter and smiles on stage at things that are so funny. There’s the kid who spells on her arm, another who spells with his toe. Another is an overachiever who finds it all boring.”
While the kids and their anomalies make for hilarity on stage, Disher notes that the audience will leave the theater with a deeper message of acceptance and understanding.
“I think everyone can identify with one of the characters in the play and the middle school setting,” says Disher. “Everyone went through it.”
“The other hidden message I’ve tried to get the kids to work on is that people judge others too quickly,” he adds. “If they take time, they will see the defining feature of the individual. That’s what the characters do too — through self-realization. Though it’s not all positive and not true happy endings.”
“The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” cast includes V.J. Chiaramonte, Christopher D’Amico, Bethany Dellapolla, Billy Finn, Adam Fronc, Holly Goldstein, Mary Ellen Roche, Ken Rowland and Christina Stankewicz.
Performances begins with a special festive opening night this Sunday, October 11 at 5 p.m., with wine, champagne and food for cast and audience immediately following the performance. Tickets are $45.
Regular performances begin October 15 and run through November 1 with shows Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. General admission tickets are $25 ($10 for students). For reservations and additional information, call Southampton Cultural Center at 287-4377 or e-mail reservations@southamptonculturalcenter.org.
SPELL SHOCKED: Above, William Finn (not the composer), Adam Fronc, Christopher D’Amico, Allison-Rose DeTemple, Holly Goldstein and Bethany Dellapolla compete in "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee."
