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Friday, February 10, 2023 3 Brooklin Town Crier Andrea Akers has a way of keeping the child performers in her troupe quiet, using just one word. She says, "Waterfall" and everyone quietly utters "shhh." The next sound is, well, no sound at all. When you're dealing with an eager bunch of children chomping at the bit to perform, you need to resort to whatever trickery you can come up with. Which is appropriate since Akers, owner of Brooklin's unique music and performing arts school, The Song Spot, is about to produce "Matilda the Musical Jr.," a show about a little girl with certain mystical powers. The production is based on the original musical which played in London and Broadway, winning four Tony awards, before a world tour that included a Toronto Mirvish production. It was spawned by the 1996 movie "Matilda" directed by Danny De Vito, all of which came from the novel by the late British writer (and World War II RAF fighter pilot) Roald Dahl. Naturally, the stage play and ultimately the film became the most recent adaptation, the movie musical that featured Emma Thompson as a positively evil school headmistress, Miss Trunchbull. When you have a show with singing and dancing children doing numbers like "Revolting children" and "Naughty," you know this is not going to be a Disney princess revue. Previous shows For The Song Spot and Akers, in the first post-Covid production, the challenges aren't likely to be much more than what they did pre-Covid. Back then, she'd staged "Alice in Wonderland" and "Peter Pan." The company was about to put on "The Sound of Music" in March of 2020 when the world suddenly shut down. The 22-person ensemble cast involves every child who's in the theatre program. This includes 16-year old sing- er Jessica Docherty who last fall soloed with Phil Nero's Dreamco show "Songs of Hope, a benefit concert for Ukraine" (https://www.dreamcotheatre.com/home). " Everyone gets a role," Akers notes. "Some are ensemble roles vs. lead ones. We double cast the lead of Matilda with two nine year olds and they will each do two shows." The production will be at Port Perry's Town Hall Theatre on March 18-19 at the tail end of school March Break. It won't be much of a break though for the cast of 9-17 year olds. Every day that week, from 9 am to 5 pm, Akers, the musical director working alongside Director Marissa Blagrove, will run the cast through a series of exercises, games, and rehearsals in what is known in theatre parlance as Tech Week. She's hoping to get access to the theatre for the entire week versus just the last two days so the cast can become better acquainted with the space and, yes, the mikes. Getting miked "They're not used to being miked," she says. "It's a super chatty bunch. So clearly one of the challenges will be getting them to be absolutely quiet off stage since every sound will be heard. That and learning things like not to turn your back to the audience." The tech week rehearsals are important for another reason: stage shows require actors learn how to move set props on and off stage, let alone place them on the right marks. It's probably Akers's one real worry heading into the last month of preparation. Finding a venue was an adventure in itself. There were basically two choices, the Port Perry theatre and Whitby's in the former town hall. "Port Perry was easier to rent. We had a lot more freedom, such as being able to use our own sound people. They've been very accommodating. Whitby wanted us to use their sound technicians which would have cost much more." As to why it has Jr. affixed to the title, it's because the full-on stage show without Jr would mean requiring an orchestra, an obviously out-of-reach expense. Now though they have the musical tracks for the performers to sing to. Return from Covid "Matilda the Musical Jr." isn't just a return to live shows for Akers. In the wake of the Covid shutdowns, the BTC did a story in June, 2020, about how close The Song Spot had been to shutting down for good. Voice classes were canceled and music teachers vanished because of the lack of work. In that 2020 interview, she'd lamented, "For piano, the instructor needs to see the student's hands and touch both the student and the keys. It means taking perhaps a 10 minute buffer of every hour to disinfect the keys and the room between lessons. I don't think many teachers are willing to lose that much time." Making up the losses from the two year hiatus remains a work in progress as she says even getting kids to register for classes was at first difficult. "We'd had many of the same kids for years," she explains, "so the shut down created a real gap in momentum. Two years later, the older ones were now away at university." The 75-minute show - no intermission - will run on each of Saturday and Sunday, March 18-19, at 12 pm and 7 pm. When that first curtain opens, it will mean that Durham's youngest theatre troupe, and Brooklin's own, will be back on stage. The Song Spot Producing Matilda the Musical Jr. By Richard Bercuson Rebellion is nigh in MATILDA JR., a gleefully witty ode to the anarchy of childhood and the power of imagination! This story of a girl who dreams of a better life and the children she inspires will have audiences rooting for the "revolting children" who are out to teach the grown-ups a lesson. Matilda has astonishing wit, intelligence... and special powers! She's unloved by her cruel parents but impresses her schoolteacher, the highly loveable Miss Honey. Matilda's school life isn't completely smooth sailing, however - the school's mean headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, hates children and just loves thinking up new punishments for those who don't abide by her rules. But Matilda has courage and cleverness in equal amounts, and could be the school pupils' saving grace! Packed with high-energy dance numbers and catchy songs, MATILDA JR. is a joyous girl power romp. Children and adults alike will be thrilled and delighted by the story of the special little girl with an extraordinary imagination. About "Matilda the Musical Jr." Andrea Akers Marissa Blagrove