Kiyomi Kishaba
Opinion Editor
On Thursday, March 5, senior Jessica Furnstahl and her cast of the musical Urinetown rehearsed into the night, fueled with excitement for the next week’s performances. On Friday, March 6, the cast sang together for the last time.
Urinetown, which premiered on Broadway in 2001, takes place in a post-apocalyptic environment where the world has run out of water. A private corporation controls all the bathrooms, and charges people to pee. If they can’t pay, they are thrown off a building and killed. As the show progresses, the lower class revolts against the upper class and destroys the corporation. However, the lower class ends up drinking all the water and dies anyway.
Furnstahl played the role of Hope Cladwell, daughter of the big man running the pee-monitoring company. She described the character as a positive and optimistic person, who tries to help the people around her despite feeling conflicted about her evil father. This kind of optimism, however, didn’t save the character from dying, nor did it save the planned performances of the musical from COVID-19.
On Saturday, March 10, the cast received an email notifying them that the musical was postponed until an unknown date. This decision came from the Dean of the School of Arts and Communication, Dr. Cameron Bennet. According to the director of Urinetown, Jeffery Clapp, it was a difficult decision ultimately made to keep the actors and potential audience members safe.
Junior Casey Burgess, who played Mr. McQueen, the assistant to the main villain, was extremely disappointed with the news. As a transfer student this year, Urinetown was his first PLU musical and he was thrilled to be onstage again after a couple years off. In the months of rehearsal leading up to the postponement, he believed he grew as a performer by learning the many dance numbers in the show, and was eager to perform them for an audience.
“I didn’t do very much theatre for the last two years,” Burgess said. “So getting back into that role has been really great and I’ve had to remind myself how to be a good performer and a good actor.”
Furnstahl agreed, mentioning the challenge of being bound and gagged for most of the second act, and adapting to still convey her character to the audience. Unfortunately, she now has no audience to communicate with.
On Tuesday, March 10, the cast was given a spark of false hope. After classes would allegedly return after spring break, Urinetown could be presented as a concert performance. This means no mics, no costumes, and no band; just the actors and a piano. Burgess was still disappointed, not wanting to do a “half-assed” performance.
The next day, the musical was cancelled all-together. No postponement, no concert performance, nothing.
“As I have told my students, just be glad this isn’t the beginning of the English Renaissance. They would have burned the theatre down, possibly with us in it,” said Clapp, referring to how plagues were dealt with in that era.
It may not be the English Renaissance, but COVID-19 has stolen performances from the cast without a confirmed case on PLU campus. No one will ever see the PLU production of Urinetown, one of the many theatres around the country performing the musical at this time.
“Take the show out of its context and apply it to political situations around the world. The show at its core is about class struggle,” said junior Henry Temple, a member of the Urinetown ensemble. “America is divided right now and that’s the reason why this show is being done a lot, which is something I think is really interesting about the choice to do the show right now.”
Along with the timeless theme of class struggle, the musical strikes a tone about fighting for the less fortunate. When asked for the most important takeaway of the show, Furnstahl said: “standing up for people when there’s moments that you see injustice, and trying to use your voice in a way that helps them be lifted up.”
The PLU and Parkland community no longer have the chance to see Urinetown, but in this scary and unfamiliar time, we could really use its message of hope and bravery.
