itirruNouRG Musical let students, first-time director learn from each other

By Kyra Smith-Cullen ksmithcullen@dailyitem.com

When Meghan Nardella took over as musical director at Mifflinburg Area High School, she said she had never worn so many hats in a musical production.

“My prior experience with college, community, and professional theatre companies had solely been with teaching the vocal and instrumental music, so stepping into the role as head director and producer was a huge challenge for me,” Nardella said.

For her first musical, she said she wanted to do a big show that would showcase the school’s ensemble and draw a lot of new audience members to the program — “Beauty and The Beast” was the perfect musical to let the students’ talents shine.

It also gave her the opportunity to help the students as much as they helped her.

“The students exhibited so much grace and patience with every- thing this year, and I learned so much from them because of it. It is hard enough navigating changes when there is a new teacher, but that is compounded when it is a new teacher fresh out of college,” she said. “We certainly had our bumps in the road that could happen with any production, but I was inspired by the resilience and perseverance from our wonderful students.”

Her work with the students helped them embrace their characters and add dimension to roles — whether it was offering performers advice to connect to the audience or reminding crewmembers like Lighting Chief/Board Operator Rowan Shoemaker, a 12th-grader, that she trusted him and everyone else in the production.

For some students, the biggest challenge of the production was finding ways to connect with their characters.

“I think the most challenging moment for me leading up to the show was truly figuring out my purpose as Lumiere,” said Evan Stimmel, the senior who played the candlestick Lumiere. “Sure, you could always just be a character on a stage and play that character, but for me, it’s the deeper meaning that I try to strive for, and that was my hardest challenge trying to find that.”

The students worked hard on their singing and dancing, mastering smaller, more intimate dance numbers like the waltz between Kyra Zechman as Belle and Matthew Blake as the Beast where Zechman said she struggled with the untraditional 3/4 timing and stepped on Blake's feet several times.

For every person involved, “Beauty and The Beast” presented an opportunity to learn and grow.

“I have learned so much after this first year, and I am very excited to continue learning more about theater and all of the minute details that there is to worry about during my time in this position,” said Nardella.