Among the many remarkable aspects of the musical production of "The Addams Family," continuing its run this weekend in Tyler Hall's Waterman Theatre, is that the directing team is composed completely of women.
"I think that something that makes Addams Family particularly great this time around is that we actually have an all-female, directorial team," said theatre major Kat McGreevy, who serves as assistant director. "That means that we have a female director, assistant director, assistant to the director, assistant stage manager, a stage manager, assistant stage manager again, as well as the choreographing team of all women."
Theatre professor Jonel Langenfeld directs the show, with musical direction from Amanda Li of the music faculty, and Julie Ano and Stephanie Standish serving as choreographers, joined by accompanist and music faculty member Rebecca Hornun. The student directing team also includes students Bianca Stevenson as assistant to the director, Kat Larrabee as stage manager, and assistant stage managers Victoria Evanchick and Malanie Atuill.
"The industry is definitely more male-dominated, and a lot of the places I've worked in the past have been working either like under men. or working with men and stuff like that," said Larrabee, a theatre major.
"It's kind of nice to be like, oh, like, you get that, you understand?" Stevenson, also a theatre major noted. "And it's just, I don't know, it's just comfy and fun."
"The whole table right here sitting -- all these women right here, it is really awesome," added Webber, another theatre major who also plays the role of Morticia and serves as a dance captain. "And especially a lot of the team too: Bianca, Kat, Kat, Melanie, we all it came to college at the same time, so it's really interesting to see all of us now working together on a show."
"Being able to have that collaborative experience really puts an emphasis on experiencing the most in our college years, and getting an outlet to put all of our creativity into," McGreevy said.
Coming together
"Something I really like in our story is that at the end, our cast comes together as a family," Evanchick said. "I think you're going to expect not just superior acting, but you're going to expect tech departments and the lobby displays to immerse you into the show, and it's going to be not just an acting spectacle and a musical spectacle, but it's going to be, technological and something really just fun to watch."
"You can see, different lighting things, cool set pieces," Webber said. "The pit is amazing with the music. All the songs are great little details here and there that you might not notice unless you see it again. So it's going to be really cool."
"I guess you can expect to be immersed in, a silly, kooky fun, comical, story of the Addams Family," Stevenson said. "And, you can escape from the real world, which we all kind of want to do sometimes."
"The Addams Family" will have 7:30 p.m. curtains on April 20 and 21, with a 2 p.m. Sunday matinee on April 21.
Tickets are free for students, $15 for the general public, and available via tickets.oswego.edu or any campus box office.