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“Good morning, everyone,” Andrew McCormick called to the young actors walking toward the stage at Brewer Middle School’s auditorium.
“Good morning, Andrew,” they replied, in unison, as they gathered around the baby grand and prepared for voice warmups.
“Breathe in, two, three, four,” McCormick counted. “Let it out for as long as you can go.”
When they did, they sounded like balloons, slowly deflating.
McCormick switched to scales and then musical tongue twisters: “many, many, many, many, men, men, men, men, men, what a pity, what a pity, what, what, what, what, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom.” When he went up an octave, the music picked up speed, and the singers scrambled to keep up.
Nathan Halvorson marched across the stage like a drill sergeant.
“There is absolutely no way for you to spit out these consonants if you’re going like this,” Halvorson said, then he made a face, closing his lips in an exaggerated way. “Open your mouths!”
The drama, the singing – and later, the dancing – are all in a day’s work for the youth at Penobscot Theatre’s musical theater workshop. This year’s summer session has attracted nearly 30 teens, tweens and 20-somethings for two weeks of intensive training.
This weekend, they will take the stage alongside professional actors in PTC’s production of “Anything Goes.” They’ll also give a pre-performance concert – with solos – of show tunes they’ve learned. Both events will take place Friday, Saturday and Sunday in Bangor’s Pickering Square.
“My main goal is to make them sing alone at the end of two weeks,” said Halvorson, a New York-based actor who has directed several plays for Penobscot Theatre Company. “My goal is to give enough confidence to make them feel safe and secure. This age group is full of fear and anxiety. I try to give them a safe place to play.”
On a recent morning, McCormick played the tune to “You Gotta Have Heart” from Bill Finn’s “A New Brain” while Halvorson encouraged the performers in his trademark theatrical style.
“We’re going to work it today,” he said, then he turned to a petite 12-year-old standing beside the piano. “It’s gonna be fierce, girl, fierce.”
At this workshop, fierce is the highest of praise.
As the performers took turns singing, it was clear that some had found their voices while others were still searching. After a round of solos that Halvorson deemed less than fierce, he shook his head and took a step back.
“Singing quietly does not make you invisible,” he told the crowd. “It does not make you not doing it – because you are. It doesn’t make you sound better, because it doesn’t. Yelling it sounds better than pretending to sing it in front of people. So sing out, Louise. What’s it from?”
“Gypsy!” someone called out.
“Who said it?” Halvorson asked, and a boy raised his hand. “Fierce!”
“If you say you have a small voice, you’re choosing to be small,” he continued. “If there’s anything I can give you over these two weeks, it’s the courage to sing big.”
“FIERCE!” the group shouted, then they got to work, hammering out harmonies and singing in the round. After nearly two hours, they stopped for rest and water. During the break, some of the teens reflected on their acting experience, their love for musical theater, and their nonexistent stage fright.
“You’re kind of in a character, and when you’re in a character, you’re not really yourself anymore,” said Michaela Hoffman, 15, of Hampden.
“If you act like you’re nervous, you’re not in character, and you look weird if you’re not completely in character,” her friend Jennifer Dixon, 14, added.
“When did we care about being weird?” Michaela asked, laughing.
Like Halvorson, these young performers are wild about musicals. During their breaks, they play show tunes on a boombox, and throughout the morning, they happily answer Halvorson’s theater trivia questions.
One actor, Alex Foley of Bangor, skipped a family trip to Old Orchard Beach because he needed to work on his music. He didn’t miss the beach, even on a sweltering day.
“I can go to Old Orchard Beach any time,” Foley, 14, said. Then he went on to describe the collaborative nature of the workshop. “Any time you’re in a musical or a big group production, you learn a lot about other people’s methods. You can learn from that, introduce them into your own method and become a better actor.”
On this day, Foley and his friends became better dancers, as well. During the choreography portion of the class, McCormick played piano and Halvorson stood on stage, demonstrating the moves to the crowd below him.
“It’s gotta be fun,” he says with an exaggerated smile. “Big arms! Really get those legs moving and your shimmies!”
After a few near-collisions and some confusion about who was supposed to stand where, the group hit a groove. For a few minutes, they let down their guard and it was clear that they were having a blast. As the music came to an end, the dancers in the front row high-fived one another. A few even jumped up and down.
“So, how’d it go?” Halvorson asked.
“Fierce!” the group replied.
“Were there any collisions?” he asked.
“It was delicious!” exclaimed Zole Hawthorn , 20, of Bangor.
The buoyant mood continued as they rehearsed the score from “Anything Goes.” After class, as a few teens stayed behind to practice, Halvorson sat at the edge of the stage and talked about the rewards of working with young people. At a time when arts budgets are tight – or nonexistent – in public schools, a program like this workshop is more important than ever, he said.
Halvorson is a good friend of PTC artistic director Scott Levy, and he comes to Bangor three times a year to direct or act in plays. Though he loves his professional work, he finds the workshops he conducts for Penobscot and other theater groups to be especially rewarding.
“I get to actually see the moment where it makes sense, or the moment where they think, ‘I was really good there,'” he said. “In my real life, when I’m directing plays, everyone already knows they want to do that. … This is where it begins.”
“Anything Goes”
Who: Penobscot Theatre Company
When: 6 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Pre-show concerts start at 5:30.
Where: Pickering Square, Bangor
Admission: Free with lawn chair, $10 for reserved seating.
Information: 942-3333, www.penobscottheatre.org
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