In 1990 the School of Speech showed Northwestern what its new Music Theater Program could do when it mounted a full-scale production of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass.” More than 150 performers took part in the show, making it the biggest production the school had ever done.
Eleven years later, nothing had yet come close to rivaling the magnitude of “Mass.” Friday, however, the 1997 Tony Award-winning “Titanic: The Musical” will plunge into action on the Cahn Auditorium stage.
But in this case, it’s not the size of Titanic’s cast that makes it a monumental musical — it’s the size of its budget.
“We are probably spending more money than we’ve ever spent on a show,” said Dominic Missimi, the director of the Music Theater Program. “My feeling is that when you do music theater you have the big audiences and you take in money and you may make a profit that can help pay for a lot of your other theatrical adventures throughout the year that perhaps don’t make so much money. This is one where we probably will not show a profit just because of the fact that it’s such a high-cost production.”
But for Missimi, the high costs are definitely worth it. A big budget, after all, allows for elaborate costumes, full stage scenic projections and moving light technology. It means students can work with hired professional guest artists like projection designer Jon Boesche and lighting designer Daniel Ordower.
Of course, paying for all this isn’t easy. The cost of producing a show like “Titanic” can be staggering, Missimi said. (Neither he nor Theater and Interpretation producing director Paul Brohan would divulge actual figures, though.) And, contrary to popular belief, the program isn’t “overburdened with buckets of cash that we’re taking to the bank,” Missimi said.
“It’s very expensive to produce anything,” he said, “and we’re just trying to make ends meet.”
A combination of the recent tragedy and the poor economy has especially made funding this show more difficult. Missimi said they were hoping for corporate support, but they didn’t get it, and with the exception of a couple of grants, they are “sort of having to go at it alone.”
“Certainly after Sept. 11, no one was about to open their door and hand out any checks to us,” Missimi said. So that meant Missimi and crew had to make compromises when they came back to school in the fall. Again and again, they had to stop and say to themselves: “This is simply going to cost too much.” They nixed the idea of having a raked floor because lumber would be too expensive. They get rid of the big and costly porthole drop. They rented the $50 costume instead of the preferred $100 costume.
A professional theater would consider that nickel-and-diming, Missimi said, but for them that wasn’t so — they simply had to keep the show reined in so it wouldn’t go way over budget. Despite any financial restraints, Missimi said they are very excited about the product they’re unleashing on Friday.
“Every now and then we should be willing to produce big musicals that we create from scratch, both for the sake of the artist and the students, so we know we can produce big full-scale musicals,” Missimi said. “Producing ‘A Chorus Line’ or producing ‘Grease’ is very run of the mill. They’re not big scale productions.
“I just think every once in a while we want to tackle things like this. Other examples might be if we wanted to do ‘Les Miz’ or if we wanted to do ‘Cats’ — I think we should be able to produce those every now and then. We certainly can’t do a steady diet of them.”
Christine Mild, a Speech junior in the Music Theater Program, said doing such a monumental show with a large budget gives students a better idea of what it’s like to work on a real Broadway production.
Mild said if people come to the show, they’ll see what Northwestern is capable of doing and that “we can do a show like this and do it well.”
“We deserve — and Dominic has definitely said this — we deserve every once and a while to do a big show like this,” Mild said. nyou
