Since late September, snatches of music have been heard drifting into the hallways after school, and beyond the doors of the auditorium, an assortment of students has come together to dance jazz, sing while marching, and assemble a backdrop of city buildings on the stage. The students of RM’s Black Maskers have been hard at work preparing for their musical, the Broadway classic Guys and Dolls, which will be performed in mid-November. Although their diligence often passes by unseen, for the Black Maskers, the musical has been a rich and varied experience that extends beyond the show nights when they unveil the spectacular results of their efforts.
Guys and Dolls delves beneath New York City’s glamorous facade, shining a spotlight on the vibrant personalities that populated the city’s underbelly in the 1950s. It tells two stories: one of the disreputable gambler, Sky Masterson (senior Noah Montemarano), and his deal with the devout leader of a band of missionaries, Sarah Brown (senior Marjorie Long); the other, of Nathan Detroit (senior Joey Moore), a notorious crapshooter whose gambling leaves his showgirl fiancée, Miss Adelaide (junior Kit Flaherty), in distress. Accompanied by an energetic ensemble of gamblers, missionaries, and showgirls, the musical takes wild turns as what began as a pact for mutual gain leads the four to discover more than what they bargained for about their purpose in life.
Along the way, the Black Maskers pride themselves on building real relationships between their members. “We do a lot of character work with the people we’re working closely with, like bonding activities to learn about each other, so that the chemistry between each character is real as well as acting,” explained senior Isabel Leiva, who plays Arvida Abernathy, Sarah’s grandmother.
Students who are part of the cast enjoy plenty of freedom in how they present their characters, allowing them to expand their limits and hone their acting skills. “When you have a set character, there’s already kind of a universal acceptance of your basic characteristics, but when you’re in ensemble, you have a lot more leeway to design your character,” added Leiva. “You can be anybody.”
For actors who play lead roles, embodying their roles is both thrilling and challenging. “The best part about being Sky is that you get to act like a jerk on stage,” revealed Montemarano. “On the other hand, he’s not a very likable character, so you can feel everyone hating you, and that’s a bad feeling,” he added jokingly.
Nevertheless, actors with speaking lines often feel the pressure to carry the weight of their parts. “There’s always the worry during rehearsals that you’re going to mess up and slow everyone else down,” said junior Matthew Pease, who portrays Nicely-Nicely Johnson, a gambler.
Each show brings challenges in the form of not only spoken lines and singing, but physical acting. “For this show, the most difficult thing for me is all the dancing—we have a choreographer, and it’s way more intense than any other dance I’ve really done before,” explained Moore. “But all in all, rehearsals are so much fun—there’s a lot of work getting done, but you’re still just hanging out with friends and going through what you’re doing.”
Apart from the actors, the Black Maskers’ many crews play an integral part in bringing the musical to life. One of these crews is set decoration, known colloquially as “set dec,” which is in charge of painting and decorating the various backdrops. “I’m really excited about building a set in New York City, a setting we’re kind of familiar with but not really, because it’s from so many years ago—around the ‘50s,” remarked senior Jeani Choe, an assistant chief of set dec.
Although the setting of Guys and Dolls is indeed closer to home than those of previous shows, such as Les Miserables’ backdrop of 1800s France, the Black Maskers have plenty of room to make it vibrant and exciting in larger-than-life proportions. As explained by junior Kate McHale, a costumes chief, “the costumes don’t have to be super time-specific. They just have to be generally correct, and they can be glitzy, fun, and really colorful, compared to Les Mis where it was a lot of people wearing gross clothes.”
As a whole, the Black Maskers club is a refreshing environment where students labor to put on a successful show while having fun in the meantime. “I think my favorite thing is that we interact a lot with people in drama—we talk with the actors a lot because they need their costumes, but we also share the same space as props crew and makeup crew, so we see them and talk to them,” said McHale. “Even though sometimes we have a lot of work to do, we can still have a good time and have fun with each other.”
The Black Maskers forge lasting friendships after spending so much time together, often joking about one another. On his fellow cast members, Montemarano commented, “They’re all great, except Oscar Saywell (a senior who portrays Benny Southwest, a gambler)—he’s a bit of a diva, but everyone else is very professional. Yeah, I honestly don’t know why he’s still part of the club—they just keep inviting him back, which baffles me.”
All in all, the cast and crew members of the Black Maskers, the largest club in RM, are working hard to deliver a musical that features gamblers who lead entertaining lives beyond their dice, showgirls who long for love, and missionaries who labor in vain to reform Times Square. Be sure to buy a ticket to see Guys and Dolls, which will be shown in the auditorium from 7:00-10:00 p.m. on November 11, 12, 18, and 19.
