LITTLE ROCK — Theater. The Wizard of Oz. 7:30 p.m. Monday-Tuesday and 1 and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Robinson Center Music Hall, West Markham Street and Broadway, Little Rock. Music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by E.Y. “Yip” Harburg, based on the 1939 MGM classic. Sponsor: Arkansas Federal Credit Union. Tickets: $52, $47, $37 and $27 (all matinee tickets are $27), plus Ticketmaster handling charges (501) 244-8800; (800) 982-2787. ticketmaster.com
At first glance, it looks like an ordinary dance studio — hardwood floor, one wall a mirror and a projecting barre.
But for the last couple of weeks, the studio at Shuffles & Ballet II in west Little Rock has actually been Munchkinland.
Twelve local girls, ages 8-11, have been intensively rehearsing to join the cast of a national touring production of The Wizard of Oz. There will be four performances of the movie-to-stage musical Monday-Wednesday at Little Rock’s Robinson Center Music Hall.
In the first act, the girls will fill out the touring company’s Munchkin corps, welcoming Dorothy to Oz and singing “Ding, Dong, the Witch Is Dead” and “Follow the Yellow Brick Road.”
In the second act, they’ll join the Army of the Winkies that guards the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West, marching, tallest to smallest, while lip-synching the “O-ee-o” lyric and doing a “Ding, Dong” reprise.
Then it’s a quick dash back into the Munchkin costumes for the curtain call.
Lauren Frances Wood and Elena McKinniss, both 11, will be two of the three members of the Lullaby League, while Gracie Daniel, 9, and Natalie Tonti, 10, “boy up” as two of the three members of the Lollipop Guild.
Torrie Vinz, 8; Eden McCormack, Sophia Young and Journey Henry, all 9; Annabeth Hall, Josie Collins and Amber Hobbs, all 10; and Maggie Jones, 11, play Munchkin City officials and members of the Munchkin town band.
Several of the local Munchkins have appeared in school shows and locally produced ballets, and a few have danced The Nutcracker with Ballet Arkansas on the Robinson stage. But only Annabeth has been in a professionally staged musical, as one of the tinier Siamese princesses in Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I in 2006.
Jana Hendrix, who runs Shuffles & Ballet II, and her daughter, dancer-choreographer Allison Stodola, have been teaching their charges the choreography. Pianist/ vocal coach Lori Loree has been helping them learn the songs.
“[The tour] supplied the specific choreography,” Hendrix says. “They sent a DVD and tracking sheets for every second. There’s zero being left to chance.”
“We supply them with a DVD and written information and Powerpoint documentation, music and lyric sheets,” explains Kim Reiter, whose official title with the national tour is Munchkin coordinator. “It makes it a lot more clear for them and easier for them as well. They don’t have to guess that much, they know exactly where to be and when.”
MUNCHKIN CITY’S ‘MAYOR’
Reiter works out of producer NETworks Presentations’ Columbia, Md., headquarters, overseeing the entire Munchkin operation — the mayor of the Munchkin City, you might say.
But “I’m always at the end of a phone or an e-mail to help answer any questions,” she says. She contacted Shuffles on a recommendation from Celebrity Attractions, the local promoter.
“We go straight to a group that’s already established, a choir or a theater group or a dance studio, as opposed to just the general public, because this is sort of an outreach program,” Reiter says. “It’s an opportunity for the kids who are already studying to actually take their lessons and put them right on stage with a professional company.
“They have a built-in place to rehearse, they have a teacher that they know and are working with, rather than having them come from all different walks of life and trying to coordinate schedules and times and places; it becomes very difficult and we want this to be a pleasurable experience.”
Reiter left the choice of the students to Hendrix, but according to strict criteria.
“They wanted dancers first, singers second,” Hendrix says. “They were very specific about sizes, age, height, weight.”
That’s because the kids have to fit into pre-existing Munchkin and Winkie costumes. While a touring seamstress can stitch a youngster into a costume if it’s a little too big, there’s not a lot of room to let the costume out if the child is a little too big.
“We need 12 kids between the ages of 8 and 13, no taller than 5 feet and no heavier than 100 pounds,” Reiter says. “We travel with an assortment of costumes that can be altered to one size or another, but we have a limit as to how many combinations of costumes we would need.
“We do have a variety of costumes, so even with those parameters there are different shapes and sizes. Which is great. We ask that they have a nice variation in height; there are situations where we have nice visual of them in a line.”
(There’s a precedent by the way — the Moscow Ballet casts a corps of local children here every year for its touring production of The Great Russian Nutcracker. That, too, is based on the sizes of the touring costumes.)
WANTED: LIVELY FACES
Reiter’s other requirement: The children must be able to produce big, lively facial expressions that their family members (as well as the rest of the audience) can see from the back of the theater.
“Hopefully they have some singing background and some dancing and performance know-how, [and that they can give us] nice, big, broad characters and lots of energy and have fun on the stage,” she says.
Hendrix chose her Munchkins out of the studio’s student pool; there wasn’t an actual audition, but, as Amber calmly observes, “We’ve been auditioning our whole lives.”
The children have been rehearsing since May 27. Rehearsal uniform is white A-shirts, emblazoned with each girl’s name and Winkie number — Elena is the tallest and gets to wear No. 1; Annabeth, No. 12, is the shortest and will bring up the Winkie rear — over black jazz pants and an Emerald City-green hair bow.
Each girl also received a green “I was a Munchkin in the National Tour of The Wizard of Oz” T-shirt. That, plus a couple of complimentary tickets, a lifelong memory and a chance to put the show on their theatrical resume, comprises the compensation.
At 1:15 p.m. Monday, once the company has arrived and everything is in place on the Robinson stage, they’ll have a day-long rehearsal, starting with costume fittings and orientation.
Then they’ll go through their choreography with the set pieces and the actors, including the touring Munchkins, Dorothy and Glinda (or their understudies).
“For about six hours before opening night we work with them, fix anything if they’ve learned something a little quirky and then we just throw them in opening night,” says Cassie Okenka, who has played Dorothy on tour since September 2008.
“We try to make it so they kind of blend into us and you can’t really tell that there’s a bunch of 8- and 9-year-olds running around the stage,” Okenka says.
“And they do fantastically. I’m always so impressed. The kids always have a ton of fun. I got to be a ‘local kid’ when I was younger in a couple of shows. I know exactly what they’re going through and it’s a great opportunity for them.”
Style, Pages 49 on 06/20/2010