This week, justArts spoke with Sarah Hines ’15, director of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

justArts: How did you choose to perform this show?

Sarah Hines: So the way that it works in the UTC is that every semester there are proposals that get submitted, so I didn’t actually propose this show, but someone else proposed it, and then we have meetings where each of the shows that were proposed get talked about, and people vote on them, and so [Tympanium Euphorium], which is the organization that’s producing this show as a whole—everyone involved in that voted to do Spelling Bee, so it was a collective choice. And then, from there, people can apply to direct the show, so the show was actually chosen before I came on board, so then I just applied to direct this one.

JA: Did you have any challenges as director?

SH: There are always challenges. I’m trying to think if there’s anything very specific. Well, we had a lot of snow days, so that was something special that we had. We had a good week [of rehearsals despite the snow days, and] we only actually missed, like, one and a half rehearsals, I think. Other than that, everyone trudged through blizzards to get to Spingold to rehearse, which was really great because they weren’t forced to, but almost all of them were able to make it anyways. I even had one kid walk from off campus to get [there]…. The actor that we initially casted as Chip, for health concerns and stuff, had to [step down]. We all decided it was best for him to step down from the role, just because his voice was having a lot of issues with that, so hopefully he’ll get better, and get back up on the stage next semester. We had to recast that role about half way through the production, which was a little stressful. We were all up until 2 a.m. trying to figure out what to do, but we ended up asking Brian [Haungs ’15] to step in who’s now the current Chip, and he, I mean the original Chip, was great, but Brian picked up everything so quickly, like I’ve never seen it, he was off book in three days. I was afraid that we were going to be two weeks behind in rehearsal and we [were] not going to be able to do anything, but he really picked it up really quickly, which was good. Yeah, that was a little twist in the plot.

JA: Was everyone happy with opening night?

SH: I think so, I was thrilled. I mean, you know, it’s the UTC and just the way it works is you have one week of—I mean we started building our set on Sunday, so just the amount of time you have for tech wasn’t, isn’t like you would have in the real world. So we still had a few technical, lighting things that maybe we just weren’t on the same page for opening night, but I think as of last night, everything was exactly the way that I wanted it. You know, opening night is the night where you are like, “Oh, we’ll fix a few little things.” But the actors killed it. They worked really hard. It’s a hard show, but by last week they were ready to go; this week it was really just about putting on the tech things. But yeah, I was thrilled. I think last night went even better.

JA: Was there one thing you wanted the audience to take away from the show?

SH: That’s a really good question. For me, I think, the show can be done with not a lot of set, with, you know, it’s fewer actors. I’ve seen it done very poorly a lot of times. It’s a really easy [show] to make simply fun. For me, part of the reason that I love this show is because it is so fun and hopefully everyone is laughing almost the entire time That’s so great and the audience is right along there with you, which I love about it, but I also love the show because I think there’s so much more to it. I think that this show is about [how] each of the characters grow so much in the moment they enter the opening number to the time they get out, or after the time they get out. So I hope, overall, people had a blast, but that they also were able to see themselves on the stage and that they were able to see themselves in certain characters, see their childhoods or see their story of growing up or whatever that looked like. I think it has some real messages. I think Olive is really just looking for someone to love her and I think that Coneybear is looking for self-assurance in himself to say to himself that he is smart and that he can do it. I think as a senior, as someone who is about to take this giant next step—I think that there is something really cool in watching these characters grow up, in a seemingly irrelevant spelling bee, yet at the same time is such a huge transition for all of them, so I guess that’s what I hoped people would see in it.

—Jaime Gropper