Guys and Dolls

For the first time in nearly 30 years, Green Bay Preble High School will put on Guys and Dolls, a classic Broadway show following the overlapping stories of Nathan Detroit and Miss Adelaide and Sky Masterson’s pursuit of Sergeant Sarah Brown.

“The show was on Broadway in 1950, but a lot of people know the movie version with Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe — that one came out in 1955,” said the show’s director Megan Sweeney. “It’s a very classic Broadway show from the golden age of Broadway musicals and it’s very different for us. It’s kind of a departure because we have not done a classic show in quite a long time. Contemporary shows have a lot more music in them and in these classic shows there tends to be a lot more dialogue and acting, which is good for us to help us keep growing.”

With recent shows including Beauty and the Beast and The Addams Family, Sweeney said her students have had to learn a very different style of acting for this year’s show.

“These kids are trying to be middled-aged gangsters in the 1950s,” she said. “Damon Runyon, who wrote the short stories that this show is based on, had a very specific style of writing. It’s highly formal language with no contractions paired with really off-color puns and slang. It makes it have this unique voice and it’s hilarious, but [the students] had to learn how to speak in a certain accent and hold it all the way through the show and keep their character.

We’ve had kids as the Beast and Belle and Uncle Fester and all these things that are a departure from being a normal person, so these characters are much more human and that’s a different kind of acting for us.”

The acting hasn’t been the only challenge in putting together this year’s production, though, as renovations to Preble’s auditorium mean the students will have only had three weeks of practice on the new stage before opening night.

“We had such a different schedule this year with the renovation of our auditorium,” she said. “We knew we didn’t have as much focus time just on the musical — we are doing our musical season and our competitive show choir season at the same time so our kids are really busy. We knew we could do a show this size and length with the time and the resources that we had available. We didn’t step foot in this auditorium until Jan. 2 and we open on Jan. 23.”

“It’s always fun to start in a new space and it’s helped the cast a lot to get out of the choir room and actually put it on stage,” said Meredith Stoa, who plays Sarah Brown in the show. “A lot of people in the cast have found it hard to envision themselves being on stage when we’ve had to practice in other rooms that just aren’t the same. In the early stages, it felt hard to feel like we were putting on a show.”

Despite the challenges the renovations added to the rehearsal process, Sweeney said the results have been nothing short of incredible.

“It was basically stripped down to the concrete and the cinder block walls and the entire thing was rebuilt,” she said. “All the catwalks above the audience’s head that we would use to replace lighting and to do other effects were all rebuilt. There was steel added to the ceiling and there were girders added underneath to support everything. We have brand new seating, new lights, new sound, a new stage floor and new curtains. Pretty much anything you see has been replaced. We have so many more capabilities — a digital soundboard and a digital lightboard. We have almost unlimited capabilities, which is really incredible. And it’s more acoustically sound in here. Before, there was no ring in the air. The sound did not live in the space and now it just does, so we’re getting used to that, too, because we’ve all been used to it sounding how it used to sound like.”

And the difference has been noticeable for the students on stage, too.

“Somethign significant about this auditorium specifically is the acoustics of it,” Stoa said. “So whether I’m performing in the musical or in a choir, I’m never worried about, ‘Am I loud enough?’ The sound used to just stop and now it really rings.”

As they’ve navigated a different type of show and worked around a new schedule, Sweeney said she’s proud of how her students have stepped up to the challenge to put on a quality show.

“Their resilience and their work ethic and just keeping on top of everything while doing show choir and while having classes…” she said. “They are balancing so many things and they’re doing incredibly well.”

Performances of Guys and Dolls will take place Jan. 23, 24 and 25 at 7 p.m. with an additional showing Jan. 26 at 1 p.m.

To catch a showing of the first production put on in Preble’s new auditorium, visit preble.gbaps.org.