Are you ready, kids? Aye aye, Captain! From April 6-10, the Bismarck State College Theatre Department is ready to perform a brand new musical featuring the iconic cartoon character, Spongebob Squarepants.
MEETING THE MAN BEHIND THE SPONGE
Patrick Watson is a busy guy. He is not only a first year music student taking 25 credits while also working as a part-time barista at Mystic Java, he is also playing the titular character , Spongebob Squarepants, so it is now his job to try to balance it all while wearing a smile.
Patrick has performed in many musicals before,both within and outside of BSC. He started young with the Shade Tree Players, a children’s theatre group in Dakota Stage LTD located on west main street on Bismarck. He has played in multiple shows with them such as “Anything Goes'' and ``Bye Bye Birdie”, with his most famous role being in “Oklahoma,'' where he played the main character, Curly Mclain. He also performed in multiple plays ever since he was in elementary school.
Performing for BSC has been a difficult task. Originally, the rehearsals went from 6-8 p.m., but soon got longer as they extended to 10 p.m. Additionally, in order to get into the role, Danny Devlin, Associate Professor of Theatre told Patrick to act more like the character in his daily life. While this may be seen as a difficult task, he sees the character as an extension of himself.
“SpongeBob is easy for me to play because it's just me. I'm very like, I wouldn't say I'm bubbly but like annoying, I guess . I'm a very annoying person. So it’ll be easy to get into this character.” Said Watson.
Patrick says that he wants to continue acting as a professional actor after BSC and is pursuing the music degree as a backup plan.
THE ACTORS BRINGING BIKINI BOTTOM TO LIFE
The town of Bikini Bottom is very crowded, with a colorful cast of different characters played by many actors. Some actors are dedicated to one character while others play multiple smaller roles throughout the course of the musical. No matter how big or small the role, all these pieces align to create the iconic world of Spongebob.
Brittany Bearsheart is a theatre veteran, performing in multiple shows long before she attended BSC with her first ever musical with the school being the 100 year anniversary performance of Titanic in 2012 where she played Eleanor Widener. Additionally, she has performed ever since she was in elementary school, and has performed with both Sleepy Hollow and the University of Mary.
Additionally, Bearsheart said that the musical was written so that any character can be played by any gender in the musical-making it possible for there to be a female Patrick, a male Karen and a female Mr Krabs.
After graduating in 2016 with a music degree, Brittany took some time off and recently returned to BSC to pursue a degree in theatre.
“Oh goodness, it's a lot of fun.” Bearsheart said, “I had done theater my first round of college when I was out at University of Mary and I was still involved with some of the shows here at BSC as well, but coming back as a student and back into the theater experience. I have learned so much more than what I already had known and getting to know a whole entire new group of people has been a lot of fun as well. It's just been an overall great experience.”
On the other hand, Nicholas Zezeus is a BSC theatre debut. He was homeschooled his entire school life, so he had no prior chance to act in high school. His roles in the musical are smaller, playing characters such as an electric skate that’s like a rock star, a cowboy, a sardine devotee who is obsessed with Patrick Star and Old Man Jenkins. Due to the number of characters he plays, he has at least five to six costume changes.
Zezeus says that while he has sung publicly at performances before, he has never done it in a large performance such as this, so it’s a bit of a nerve-wracking experience.
“It's always both, right?” Zezeus said, “ I think that if you're performing you're excited because you want to do a good job and you know, everyone's there to see you but you're nervous. I’m motivated but you just got knots in your stomach at the same time. So that's bittersweet as well. It's bad. It's all of it.”
TAKING A LOOK BEHIND THE CURTAIN
As the saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” and that saying is also true when it comes to bringing the fictional town of Bikini Bottom to life .There are a lot of moving pieces to create a musical, from stage design to creating the music, it takes a lot of people to bring the iconic undersea town to life.
There were a lot of changes that had to be made from the original musical, with some more complicated sets having to be simplified. For example, during the original performances, when the characters climbed up Mount Humongous, they had to change it from climbing a massive prop to climbing up airplane ladders to simulate the experience. A lot of the experience is up to imagination.
“ They're mobile ladders. There's a platform on top and so they can stand up there and they'll be moved around on stage. They kind of mimic the climbing of the mountain scenes.” Dean Bellin, BSC technical director said.
Dr. John Darling, Professor of music said that the music style is a mix of different parodies of rock bands such as the Monkees and Bon Jovi, as it mimics rock and roll artists in a sort of tongue in cheek style mixed in with the traditional Spongebob music style of tropical music and sea shanties. The instruments in the pit include three pianos, two guitars, a base electric base. A drummer, an auxiliary drummer, violin, ukulele, cello,clarinet, flute, oboe, bass clarinet, saxophone and trumpet. Dr. Jason Thoms was the vocal coach.
“So I will add that it's not just for children.” Bellin said. “Like I said before, anybody who grew up watching it, like, if you're a college student who grew up watching it or if you just like musical theater because there's a lot of really fun catchy songs in it, and it's just a lot of fun and it's a great story and I hope everybody comes sees it.”
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