Hello, Liesl! Emotional highs and lows mark N.D. auditions

Liesl Schoenberger, Notre Dame Regional High School's wunderkind violinist and fiddle player, walked into last Sunday's auditions for "Hello, Dolly!" planning to try out only for the part she really wanted: Mrs. Malloy. But when the audition for the lead role of Dolly was called first, Schoenberger decided to join the five other girls trying out just so she wouldn't have to sit around getting nervous.

Hello, Liesl!

Her selection to play larger-than-life Dolly Levi was as surprising to the wispily angular Schoenberger as it was to director Cynthia King and the rest of the school. "It was a good surprise," Schoenberger says.

"It pretty much shocked everybody," King said.

Eight emotional and nervous hours at auditions Sunday set the stage for the most important event of the Notre Dame school year, the spring musical. Students and alumni say it is so significant because participating in the musical is a tradition handed down from generation to generation within the region's Catholic families. As many as 150 students will contribute to the production both on stage and behind the scenes.

About 50 students began the auditions in the choir room before King, vocal director Ellen Seyer and pianist Lenny Kuper. Half just wanted a role in the chorus. They sang a few bars to Kuper's accompaniment. Seyer simply marked a yes or no by their names. There were lots of no's, but even those who found the right notes elusive were applauded for trying.

"You just hope the experience is still positive for them," King says. "Some go through it, and there is that glimmer of hope. You never know."

Some students had been rehearsing for prized roles ever since the title of the spring musical was announced last fall. Vying for roles can be very competitive, said Maggie Devaney hours before winning the part of Mrs. Malloy.

"There's always a little seed of jealousy when you see someone else do a good job."

But she trusted King would make the right decision.

"I think Miss King is pretty much perfection."

Each of the students trying out for a lead sang and acted, and King put them in different combinations to see how they looked together.

During the audition, Schoenberger became worried about King's comment that casting real couples as love interests usually doesn't work and can cause problems if they break up. Schoenberger's boyfriend, Blake Fisher, would win the role of Cornelius, Mrs. Malloy's paramour.

After the auditions concluded and the students went home, the faculty members discussed how easily directed certain students are and how emotionally involved with their character others are.

"It's a process of elimination," Kuper said. "It fits together like a puzzle."

King pointed to Schoenberger's name and said, "If this ends up being Dolly, this is so not her."

Schoenberger didn't think she was the type to play the brassy Dolly either. "The biggest reason it was such a shock is that I don't fit that character at all as a person," she says.

But she impressed with her vocal ability and assuredness, and Schoenberger is confident she can become Dolly.

"I have the utmost faith in Miss King after watching her work with so many different people. She has a way of pulling the best out of people," Schoenberger said.

"But I'm kind of scared."

In the weeks leading up to the auditions, speculation about who will get what roles filled the hallways. "People psyche themselves up or out so much," King says. "So and so's going to get it because she looks like Barbra Streisand, so and so has had 12 years of dance."

But nothing mattered except the results King posted on the cafeteria door and on the school Web site late Sunday night.

Bad news for some

The news was not good for Ashtia Jewell, who aspired to one of the leads. Jewell transferred from Scott City High School to Notre Dame her junior year because she wants to major in musical theater in college. The Notre Dame musical has a good reputation.

Jewell insisted on trying out only for lead roles. "I need this for my resume," she said. When she didn't get one of the leads, King offered her the speaking part of Ernestina. Jewell did a turnabout and accepted.

Amy Buehrle, who also tried out for Dolly, called the auditions "nerve-wracking. I'm self-conscious about singing," she explained. "But the hardest part for me is waiting."

This was the first time the senior was ever called back to audition for a part. Buehrle, who plans to go to law school eventually, said she will be happy just to contribute to the production.

Devaney dazzled with her acting, but a severe cold raised worries about her singing voice. A check with Seyer soothed those concerns. She could sing it.

"Miss King does a good job of taking a person and fitting them with the characters," Devaney said.

She played Gertie in "Oklahoma" and a smaller role her sophomore year in "Once Upon a Mattress."

Trying out for a lead in the Notre Dame musical your senior year can seem like a matter life and death. Some students give it a shot even though they've never been in the musical before.

"It's like trying out for the varsity soccer team when you've never played soccer," Devaney says. "You have to work up to it."

Casie Janet seized the role of Minnie, Mrs. Malloy's assistant. Her father, Chris Janet, is the school's athletic director, but nobody who has heard the 5-foot student's 10-foot voice would claim the choice was political.

His daughter was ecstatic on hearing the news, he says. "She really wanted that role as badly as I've seen her want anything."

Family history

He had roles in five Notre Dame musicals himself, including playing Winthrop in "The Music Man" as a third-grader.

Janet was a first-grader in the first "Dolly" Notre Dame staged in 1970. Karen Wibbenmeyer played Dolly. "I was in love with her," he said.

"... Afterward she came down to the crowd and kissed me on the cheek. I'll never forget it."

Adam Cox, an English teacher at the school, played the lead role of Tevya in "Fiddler on the Roof" only a few years ago, an experience he calls "incomparable -- especially during the performance. Being on stage and hearing everybody go crazy for you is something I still remember. I guess I still wish I could do it once in awhile."

But he was severely disappointed his sophomore year when he didn't get the part he wanted. "That was a hard lesson to learn," he says. "A lot more goes into it than I understood. They have to look at more than how well a person sings. Do they look right? That's hard for kids to understand and take."

One of the juniors he taught last year remembered that Cox had signed his program after the show. "It's very much like that, something you wouldn't necessarily expect," he says.

"It's kind of an oddly big deal."

Brad Bohannon will play Horace, whom Dolly is pursuing as a marriage partner. Bohannon prepared for the audition by watching tapes of the stage musical and of the movie and also watched "The Grinch" to put himself in Horace's head.

Conor Mullarney will play Barnaby, Minnie's love interest.

Smaller roles went to Justin Moore as Ambrose, the struggling artist, and to Teresa Minor as Ermengard, Horace's weepy niece.

Schoenberger will work rehearsals into her spring schedule of five auditions for music schools, including one at Julliard.

"My goal was to get into the Notre Dame musical ever since I was little," she says.

Devaney expects the last half of her senior year to revolve around "Hello, Dolly!" "You kind of go into the world of the play," she says.

The cast will do their first read through Sunday. "Hello, Dolly!" will be presented April 11-14.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182