Pitt musical theatre club D-E-B-U-T

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

Pitt Musical Theatre Club

Frick… The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

Pitt Musical Theatre Club

Frick Fine Arts Auditorium

Free admission

April 16-17

8 p.m.

Some of us avoided middle school spelling bees at every cost, while others practiced for weeks only to crumble in embarrassment upon misspelling a word like “broccoli.”

But now it’s time to put those bad memories aside.

The Pitt Musical Theatre Club’s upcoming performance of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” will make you look back on those tragic moments and laugh — a lot.

“When we did our first read-through, we were on the floor dying of laughter because the show is just so funny,” sophomore director Monica Meinert said.

This is the Pitt Musical Theatre Club’s first full-length play and features six driven middle-school spelling bee competitors, each with his or her own quirky personality.

Their battle against awkward moments and raging hormones makes for some PG-13-rated jokes.

No two performances of the play will be the same.

Before the show, sophomore co-director Shannon Knapp chooses “guest spellers” from the audience to participate on stage during the show. When spellers ask for the definition of the word, the principal, played by Evan Terwilliger, ad-libs ridiculous examples of sentence usage.

An orchestra composed of a piano, synthesizer, drums, flute and clarinet will accompany the performers on musical numbers.

The musical has a small cast of 10 with some actors playing multiple roles.

However, Meinert and Knapp said they felt limited by money and technology rather than the small cast.

“It’s really a budget problem,” Knapp said, adding that the club only had roughly $400 dollars to make the play. “The wireless microphones are from the theater department. They were really helpful but are so old that only a few are working. We’re just going to hope that the actors get picked up.”

The cost of licensing the show and renting scripts from Musical Theater International came from Student Government Board, allowing the show to be free to the public.

Additional funds came from group fundraisers and donations from the fall variety show.

Despite budget and technological constraints, the two have put together most of the setting, props and costumes on their own.

Meinert painted the spelling bee banner above the stage, and both have gone to Avalon and Goodwill for costumes. They also credit their actors for being flexible.

“We really wouldn’t have gotten anywhere in the show if all the people in the cast weren’t who they were,” Meinert said.

The performers have rehearsed at least three days per week since February.

As with any student organization, the balance between homework and practice proved difficult but worth the extra effort.

“I didn’t know most of these people before this,” sophomore Natalie Keil said. “Rehearsal time is fun time with them, too. It has its rewards tucked in there.”

Freshman Sarah Tamburelli, who has been singing since second grade, is a theater minor. She plays Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre, the youngest and most politically active speller, who speaks with a lisp.

“Her basic conflict is striving to impress her two dads, who are really hard on her, and trying to find herself,” she said.

The performance falls dangerously close to finals week, but Tamburelli said she hopes people will take a break from studying to come out and see the show.

“It’s a good way to influence people, to pick people up and make them think about things when they walk away … It makes you laugh about life and just enjoy it,” she said.

Brendan Schatzki, who plays an overachieving Boy Scout named Chip Tolentino, has been singing his whole life.

His parents are opera singers, he said, and he performed in the Bangkok Opera while living in Thailand as a child.

He has never been in a spelling bee himself, but he said he found inspiration for Chip by watching the National Spelling Bee on TV.

“A lot of people don’t understand how intense spelling bees really are and how hard these kids study,” he said.

The musical is a small production, but the directors said the club has about 20 people who attend meetings regularly and more than 200 people in the Facebook group.

“One of the things we’ve learned from this is that there are a lot of people on this campus that really want to do musical theater. It’s something that excites people and something they want to get behind,” Meinert said.