, the 19-year-old hadn’t heard of the Canadian singer. “I knew songs likeon the cast recording I knew the words, but I don’t know how I knew them.”She sent in a recording at the suggestion of her agent, and before long she was getting callbacks. “The more I was researching the musical and getting really invested in it, the more I was like: I kind of need to be in this.”isn’t like most musicals.
It’s an emotionally demanding role, and it’s fitting that a musical that proudly owns its progressive politics is equally progressive backstage. “We had an intimacy coach who came in, and she was telling us about ways to separate ourselves from our character so that those emotions don’t leak back into your own life. Things like wearing different clothes when you’re being the character, and tapping in and out, where you tap in to being the character and tap back out when we’re back to ourselves.
“When you consider how folk music travels across the world and is then adapted and re-imagined from region to region, this is very much part of that ethic. From hymns, to community choirs, to gospel to a more rhythmic sound, the show has many tones but always rooted in folk music and the expression of humans through singing.”
Elsewhere next year we’ll continue to see other artforms bleeding into music theatre. Victorian Opera will mount Brecht, Weill and Hauptmann’s 1920s “anti-capitalist musical comedy”Guys and Dollsthat has been delayed year upon year by the pandemic.