Youngsters learn lessons on stage

What’s the hardest part of staging a major musical production such as “Beauty and the Beast”?

Not building the sets or costumes, although both required a significant amount of creativity, ingenuity and volunteer hours from parents and community members.

Not learning the lines or the songs or the choreography, although those take time and effort and a lot of practice.

But when you’re an eighth-grade actor starring in a play based on a Disney movie, one of the biggest challenges to conquer is the love scene.

Rachel Bjork, who plays Belle in Kalispell Middle School’s production of “Beauty and the Beast,” said that saying “I love you” to Jhalen Salazar, the eighth-grader who plays Beast, wasn’t easy. During the first few times they rehearsed the scene, she would pause before saying those three little words.

The pause was long enough that Salazar, who was supposed to be playing dead, would open his eyes and gesture expectantly, further flustering the young actress.

They laugh about it now but say that pretending to be in love isn’t easy. Choir teacher and play director Tracy Snipstead laughed with them Monday but agreed that mushy scenes aren’t easy at any age.

“It’s hard to do a love scene as an eighth-grader,” Snipstead said. “It’s hard to do a love scene as an adult.”

Their hard work comes to an end this week.

“Beauty and the Beast” will be staged at 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday and at 2 p.m. Saturday.

Tickets cost $5 and are available at the door. All performances will be held in the middle school cafetorium.

The shows will be the fruition of nearly three months of preparation. The school announced before winter break that auditions for “Beauty and the Beast” would be held in January, and for some would-be performers, the work began then.

Catie Henderson said she started doing her homework on the Broadway “Beauty and the Beast” play during winter

break, including learning the songs. The KMS production is a junior version of that play, which is based on the 1991 animated Disney movie.

Bjork said she listened to “Home,” a song that isn’t in the original Disney film but is part of the Broadway score “at least 80 times” over winter break.

“I was practicing in the shower, singing around the house ... my mom was ready to kill me,” she said, laughing.

In the end her hard work paid off. While Bjork has been in church productions, this is her first lead role.

Ninety sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders tried out for the play in January. About half of them landed parts. This is the first year the school has allowed anyone but eighth-grade choir students to try out; only six cast members are eighth-graders.

One eighth-grader is Henderson, who landed the role of Mrs. Potts, the cook-turned-talking-teapot. After she got the part, Henderson and her mother wandered the aisles in Home Depot in search of something they could use to make her costume.

They had a light-bulb moment when they reached the garbage-can aisle, Henderson said. She crawled inside a blue can and put another over her mother, while a confused store employee tried to figure out what they were up to.

Salazar’s Beast costume is on loan from Whitefish Theatre Co. While he, Henderson and Bjork agreed that the furry outfit is awesome, Salazar admitted that it also is extremely hot inside.

He wouldn’t have been in the play if not for incessant coaxing from Henderson, who had urged him all year to audition for the spring play. He is one of the few non-choir students in the play.

Snipstead said that before tryouts took place, she had an idea of which students might play which roles. She had no idea who might be the male lead, however.

When she heard Salazar’s audition, Snipstead knew she’d found Beast. She wasn’t wrong; Henderson said when he roars in character, he’s truly terrifying.

“He’s scary on and off stage,” Bjork teased.

Salazar’s acting history includes Missoula Children’s Theatre productions at his old school in Great Falls. With two months to practice instead of the one week usually allotted Missoula Children’s Theatre plays, “Beauty and the Beast” has been a new experience — one that has taught Salazar the importance of teamwork.

“Teamwork is the best thing you could ever really use,” he said, adding that without teamwork, the students would never have been able to pull off the play.

Teamwork gets complicated when it requires working through the middle school’s clear-cut social hierarchy.

Salazar said he and Bjork are “at two different ends of the food chain,” a claim Henderson echoed. Outside the play, Bjork is one of the most popular girls in school, Henderson said, while she and Salazar are not.

But working on the musical has brought kids from all sorts of social circles together, the young actors agreed.

“Through theater, you can meet a lot of new people, and make friends with people you wouldn’t usually make friends with,” Bjork said. “It’s kind of a place to just be yourself.”

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.