Director Tess Cruz ’16 isn’t sorry about bringing the darkly hilarious musical to the Athey Center at Palmer Auditorium
It all started with a European pay toilet. Back in the late ’90s, that’s what first inspired Urinetown writer Greg Kotis to create the musical. Then, in a bit of history repeating, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Theater Tess Cruz ’16 visited Europe last year and encountered the same coin-operated facilities. Fate’s will made manifest.
And so, for two evening shows and a Sunday matinee March 1-3, Urinetown claims the Athey Center at Palmer Auditorium as its temporary home. The cosmos cannot be denied.
“It’s funny. Like many professional things, I actually didn’t get to choose [Urinetown],” admits Cruz, bringing some pesky truth into the story.
Still, whether she chose Urinetown for the Theater Department’s spring mainstage production or not, she did encounter that pay toilet abroad. Between the show and the commode, the experience has put her in a political state of mind.
“It’s cheesy to say, but it made me think about how we are all in the same boat,” she says. “That’s the punch at the end of Urinetown. We have to go through it all together, whether we’re doomed or not.”
The cast of “Urinetown” rehearses in the Athey Center for Performance and Research. Adjunct Assistant Professor of Theater Tess Cruz ’16, right, works with student actors to prepare for the Theater Department’s production of “Urinetown.”
The play, written by Kotis with music and lyrics by Mark Hollman, satirizes capitalism, the legal system, populism and “do-good” musical theater itself. The winner of three Tony Awards, it was originally produced on Broadway in September 2001.
But more than two decades later, it still resonates, Cruz says.
“I talked to the students a lot about how we couldn’t even flush a toilet without thinking about it. Urinetown’s story connects with climate change and what that means for droughts or water consumption. But there’s more. [Like] housing prices now, which then connect with the idea of migration to survive during the Great Depression. The show’s grounded, but not in a specific time. It’s more of a pre-apocalyptic notion of all these crises building from history to the present moment.”
Cruz points to Connecticut College’s commitment to the liberal arts as a critical factor in the student actors’ willingness to dive so deeply into the material.
“It’s always your fear that you’re going to start, especially with undergrads, and no one’s going to say anything,” she says. “And right off, everyone’s giving such high-dimensional perspectives. After a minute, I was like, ‘Oh, right. I was raised at Conn, too, to think that way.’ These are students with a liberal arts mentality actively choosing to engage with theater in this way.”
While the musical shoulders heavy notions, it also pulsates with a dark, undeniable humor. Aside from the music, conceived to tell the tale of Urinetown and parody several well-known musicals and musical tropes, Cruz points to the set design as a source of humor.
“It’s clowning, almost, in a presentational way. Like there’s a secret hideout, but the set isn’t much; instead, we have this giant sign that says ‘Secret Hideout,’” she notes. “It’s absurd. I can’t believe we get to get onstage and tell this story, use this kind of humor.”
The director also cites the student actors’ commitment to taking the work seriously, ensuring the humor lands.
“You never want to quash people having fun, especially in a show like Urinetown, but you have to also teach them to do the work for each other,” says Cruz. “But then, the seriousness of the actors when they were onstage was really special. That’s why the jokes work.”
Besides snagging laughs, it is all about giving freedom to the theater-goers as well as the performers.
“We want people to activate themselves as audience members so they can each engage with the show differently,” Cruz says. “It’s great.”
The Theater Department’s production of Urinetown will be performed at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, March 1, and Saturday, March 2, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, March 3, in the Athey Center for Performance and Research at Palmer Auditorium. Tickets are $15 for general admission, $10 for students and seniors, and $5 for those with a Conn ID. Tickets can be purchased here.
The cast of “Urinetown” during a late February tech rehearsal. The actors are wearing masks to minimize the spread of germs in advance of the March 1-3 performances.
