Beowulf Part 1 "The Beginning Of An Epic Tale"

Okay so here's how I'm gonna establish myself as the theatre afficianado I have come to be. I'm going to show off some bits and pieces of my last great theatre project - Beowulf. Now, I usually act and sing through the local community theatre (The Wichita Theatre & Performing Arts Centre), and that place has come to be a second home to me. But everything they do is a musical, and family friendly. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for family friendly, but such limitations naturally prohibit shows of a darker nature. For instance, it's been a dream of mine to perform in the show "Macbeth". I even have a great stagingg device to use on it. "Macbeth" was actually the play I was attempting to convince my theatre friends to help me produce and perform, but very few wanted to perform in such a morbid production, so I had to tone it down a bit, hence Beowulf came into play.

Okay here's a quick synopsis of our version of Beowulf. The Norse gods Loki, Thor and Odin are alive and titan like. Loki grows bored with normal godly activites and wagers with Thor that he can turn the bravest man alive into a coward. Naturally, Thor accepts. Odin claims that Beowulf, a small boy is the bravest man alive. Loki, being the god of mischief that he is, sends monsters after Beowulf to test him, but in the end, Beowulf proves to be braver than even Odin could have imagined, slaying everything that Loki threw at him. unfortunately, as the epic tale concludes, Beowulf is mortally wounded by the final monster, and dies shortly thereafter.

With that premise in mind, I began to build a play. I had a director lined up (interesting story), a stage, a script, all I needed was actors. Now I have a group of friends, all of which are experianced actors and singers. I'm proud to say that they are all excellent artists in their respective fields, and I desperately wanted them in this production. But in a strange twist of fate, I couldn't get any of them to act in this. Being theatre people, they were already busy or unavailable. So When everyone showed up for the auditions, I was surrounded by a group of people who had either A). never acted B). acted once or twice or C). only come because their parents wanted them to.

 I should explain something real quick, this production was to be produced via 4-H. 4-H usually is only for things that will help around the home or a farm, but one daring mother started a club in it called A.C.T. (Actors Creating Together, cute right?) and managed to get 4-H to sponsor it. The main reason I tell you this is because that made our show officially a "school show"...A.K.A. a "learning experiance for young actors"...A.K.A. not something I would have wanted to show off to my friends. Now all these actors were teenagers, I had already put my foot down on that, this was to be a serious play, done seriously, with serious attitudes. Or something like that at any rate haha.

Anyway so there we were, running through auditions. Now I had a very clear image of how I wanted this show run, but I wanted to be in it as well, so with some help from a very generous mother of mine we got a group of MSU theatre majors to cast the show (for some reason I figured it would be biased if I did it.)

The show had 25 characters, but was written in a way for 10 actors to double/triple/quadruple specific roles. Well we had exactly 10 actors show up, so it was just a matter of doling out the roles. Here are the different main characters:
* Beowulf - The Hero
* Loki/Grendel/Grendel's Mother/The Dragon - The Villain
* Scop - The Story Teller
* Sister Mary Alfric - The Nun/Priest
* Thor - The God of Thunder
* Odin/ King Hrothgar - The King of the Gods/King of the Thanes
* Sigrid - The Love Interest
* Hunding/Wiglaf - The Best Friend/Best Friends Son
* Wealtheow - Hrothgar's Wife
* Unferth - The Snooty Jerk Guy (Draco Malfoy basically)
A lot of these characters had other small roles they doubled with, but these are the important ones. With the exception of Loki, Thor & Odin, all these characters are straight from the epic tale itself. With experianced talent short in supply, I was nervous for the production, but I barrelled on. I was cast as the villain, Loki. With the roles set, we were ready to begin the fun part: rehearsals. But all that's for another post, if anyone's interested. Until next time (I promise next time will involve cool pics of the show!), later interwebs!