A magnificent velvet red curtain is pulled across the black hard floor as the actors practice their vocal warmups backstage to loosen their voices and jaws, stretch their muscles to relieve any tension and distance themselves from the others to find their focus for the show. Meanwhile, downstairs a group of theater students trained as makeup artists prepare to gloss the actors.
This completes a fraction of the process involved in preparations for a theater production, and this particular process is for the show "My Fair Lady," presented by Ball State University's Department of Theatre and Dance and directed by Michael O'Hara, associate dean of the College of Fine Arts, which will open at 7:30 p.m.
"My Fair Lady" is based on George Bernard Shaw's classic book "Pygmalion." The story is "the remarkable journey of Eliza Doolittle from cockney flower girl to proper English lady, with a little help from the irascible professor Henry Higgins," O'Hara said.
Harold Mortimer, associate professor of musical theater, will play professor Henry Higgins.
"Higgins takes on the job of transforming the poor girl on a bet, but he gets more than he bargained for in the feisty Eliza. As she grows more independent and confident, he discovers a ‘life force' he cannot ignore," O'Hara said.
The show consists of many exaggerated characters, one of whom is the Eliza's father, Mr. Doolittle, played by junior musical theater major Chris Chamberlain. Mr. Doolittle is a crude, outrageous, obnoxious elderly man who asks for money from Higgins.
Chamberlain said the story is about more than Eliza transformation.
"It is a different take on the traditional love story, while at the same time being incredibly funny and entertaining," he said.
Erin Oechsel, who plays Eliza, and Chamberlain had to learn the different English dialects the characters speak for the show.
Oechsel, a sophomore musical theater major, received help in learning cockney and standard British from dialect coach Wendy Mortimer, who gave the actors notes to make sure the actors weren't slipping into their Midwestern habits.
O'Hara said Mortimer would come into rehearsals and take seven pages of notes to ensure that every syllable was correct. Chamberlain said in order to learn a new accent, one must be obsessed with wanting to master the accent to make it authentic.
"I love how speaking in dialect provides a whole new insight into the mind of your character, and the different feeling you get from speaking in a way that you are not normally used to. Even though the process is frustrating, when you really start to grasp the dialect it is incredibly rewarding," he said.
Shaw, the acclaimed Irish playwright, is known for his use of writing out dialogue with dialects that read as though it is being spoken, O'Hara said.
"Speech is so important to Shaw because he believed in speech. He wrote plays in which people are emancipated from fear and poverty and pointed to innovated and radical ways that life could in fact be better. He was an amazing idealist who believed in the power of humanity," he said.
While Higgins is Eliza's teacher he becomes something more, O'Hara said, and they develop a meaningful relationship with each other. He said the play is relevant to today's times.
O'Hara said American society is one that separates people with distinct barriers such as how people speak or with the clothing they wear.
"All of the characters in some way experience the difference between how an upper-class person is viewed in their world and how a lower-class person is seen," Chamberlain said. "Much of the comedy comes from the lower-class characters not behaving according to the class rules and catching the upper-class characters off-guard."
While the audience is watching the performance, the actors on stage are filled with a variety of emotions.
"There's this feeling of not knowing where it's going to turn next while you're riding full speed ahead," Oechsel said.
Chamberlain said the feeling of being on stage is comparable with that of falling in love.
"You can't put any words to it. You just know that it is something wonderful," he said.
Every time an actor sets foot on stage and the audience is staring at them, waiting in complete silence for their performance, there is a feeling of adrenaline meeting panic, Oechsel said.
"Every time I get out there in front of an audience, I just breathe and remember all the hard work put into the rehearsal process," she said. "That's when the work ends and the fun begins."
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