Last July, when the biggest audition in the history of the Vero Beach Theatre Guild drew 80 people clamoring for a role in the musical “Hairspray,” director Ben Earman had to draw on his extensive wrangling skills.
Teaching high school drama for three years was a good start. Managing the parrot, stork and kangaroo show at Busch Gardens was even better; that detail alone could have come straight from the brain of John Waters, who wrote and directed the original “Hairspray” movie.
Two months of rehearsals, now six nights a week in advance of the Nov. 5 opening, have tamed neither the squawking nor the enthusiasm of Earman’s onstage menagerie, though the cast is doing a fine job of mimicking the score, many listening to the movie soundtrack through earbuds in the precious hours between day jobs and rehearsals.
Earman’s rigorous pre-audition recruiting included not only school theater departments and black churches, but interviews on WFLM, the Port St. Lucie-based R&B radio station known as The Flame.
That outreach paid off, resulting in what may be the largest cast ever for the Guild – 35 – and the most diverse, on multiple fronts.
Chief among them is race, the plot’s most pointed social issue. Set in 1962 Baltimore, with a backdrop of a teenage TV dance show being pushed to integrate, the cast is evenly split among blacks and whites. For the Guild, the new recruits and their fans may become the musical’s lasting legacy.
The Guild’s reach has also expanded geographically. With a cast spanning five counties from Palm Beach to Brevard, the production broadens the community theater from local to regional.
And the diversity extends to age. “Hairspray” falls into the category of modern musical, and as such, appeals to a younger crowd than the typical Guild shows, heavily weighted to British farces and classic musicals.
Then there are the issues of body type and gender identity. In the script, a lead female role, Edna, is played by a man (Divine in the 1988 movie, John Travolta in the 2007 musical remake). In Vero, Edna is played by Larry Thompson, a staffer at the Indian River Blood Bank who inhabits the role with great aplomb – and the requisite extra pounds.
Discrimination against heavy people doesn’t fly in “Hairspray,” either. Tracy Turnblad, the overweight female lead played terrifically by Dana Rogers, can shake it like a Polaroid picture in her audition for a TV dance show that is the backdrop for the musical. But she is nearly undone by the thin, beautiful, racist blondes who are the show’s villains.
“This is a big step in the right direction for this theater and this community,” says Earman, 27, a Vero native who spent his childhood from the age of 7 deeply involved in Riverside Children’s Theatre. A graduate of Indian River Charter High School, Earman earned a degree in theater from University of Tampa. He now works in box office management at Sunrise Theatre.
“Being my age and being well-known in the theater community, I enjoy the shows that push the boundaries. I’m over the classic musicals,” he says. “I think it’d be really good for us if every year we do one stage show that draws in younger audiences.”
Veteran Guild volunteer Carole Strauss produced Earman’s three shows. She calls his directing skills “outstanding.”
“Ben continues to up his game,” she says. “‘Hairspray’ is an enormous undertaking and he’s nailed it.”
Earman directed “Sweet Charity” last season. For “Hairspray” he teams up with the same choreographer, Andrew Currie, and music director, Karen Wiggins, the newly named manager of the Performing Arts Center of Vero Beach High School.
The 1988 movie is the mildest of Waters’ cult-status films. He followed it with another slightly racier film, “Cry-baby,” a musical version of which had its community theater premiere at Melbourne’s Henegar Center last spring. It was a huge hit. The Guild production has a shot at similar success.
Consider that 15-year-old Shannon McNair, a 10th grader from Jensen Beach, has been singing the songs from “Hairspray” for as long as she can remember. Recruited by Earman who was her counsellor in a drama summer camp at Sunrise Theatre, she won the role of Little Inez, a young girl who is dying to dance on the Bandstand-like TV show. One night a month, the TV show’s all-white cast of dancers gives way to a black cast for what is billed (in classic Waters style) as Negro Day. When there’s an opening for a dancer in the regular cast, Inez wants to audition. Of course, she isn’t allowed.
“It actually was like my childhood,” says Shannon. “I’ve always wanted to be on a show and I’ve always loved ‘Hairspray.’ I knew almost every song before I even auditioned.”
Earman has successfully recruited not only talented amateurs but professional actors as well as several with degrees in theater.
Dana Rogers is a veteran of Guild musicals since childhood and studied at the Shenandoah Conservatory for Musical Theatre; her mother, Madelyn Rogers, is the longtime Guild wig mistress, no small task in “Hairspray.”
Keenan Carver, who plays Inez’s brother Seaweed, is a Palm Bay native who trained in theater at Morehouse College. He has performed in a number of roles in the Atlanta area as well as at Melbourne’s Henegar Center.
Thomas Duplese, a strong character actor with dual roles as Mr. Pinky and Mr. Spritzer, only recently joined the Theatre Guild, relocated from New York where as a Screen Actors Guild actor he worked extensively in commercials and made 135 appearances in “The Guiding Light.”
Motormouth Maybelle, the lead black female role, is played by Vallery Thaw, who works in Palm Beach County government. She uses the stage name Vallery Valentine in her R&B band, the All-Stars, and recently appeared at Grind and Grape.
The roles of the evil blondes are played by Kelly Brown Clemenzi, a star of many guild shows with a degree in theater from University of Central Florida, and Shelley Adele, a popular Vero yoga instructor who studied performance at New York’s American Musical and Dramatic Academy.
And while her expertise may not be parrots, there is one other cast member with wildlife experience. Marla Hamilton, one of Motormouth Maybelle’s African-American dancers, is a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, specializing in Everglades conservation. She earned a Ph.D. from Clemson University with a dissertation on nesting shorebirds.
“Hairspray” opens Nov. 5 and runs through Nov. 22. Tickets range from $14 to $30.
