Choreographer Colby Schwartzwalter leads a large choreography session through “Ways to be Wicked,” a featured number in “Descendants.”
Nancy Edmonds Hanson
If you’ve raised pre-teens over the past decade, chances are that Disney’s “Descendants: The Musical” is already engraved forever in your memory. If you haven’t been so blessed, the Gooseberry Park Players aim to introduce you next week in their high-energy portrayal of the classic Generation Z favorite.
“Our sons were 3 and 6 when the first of the three movies came out on the Disney Channel,” Scott Brusven reports, “so I’ve certainly seen ‘Descendants’ on repeat. But most everyone has the great Disney villains – Cruella deVille, Maleficent, Jafar, the Evil Queen – ingrained forever in their minds. This is about their kids, so this show is going to ring a bell.”
Brusven is in his first year as managing artistic director of the Moorhead summer theater, now in its 41st season. He’s more than excited about the show that’s coming up next week at Horizon Middle School.
“We have just the right group of young people to do this show. They’re a great group of talented kids,” he says of the 80 or so 11- to 18-year-olds who auditioned in March or signed up for the technical crew. “Fargo-Moorhead does a great job of training its young people up in theater, with strong programs in every high school and many middle schools, as well as the F-M Community Theater. As directors, people like me get to see the fruit of that.”
And so do local audiences. The Gooseberry troupe of 58 young actors and singers from 11 to 18 take the stage at Horizon Middle School next Tuesday, July 18. They perform each evening at 7 p.m. Through Friday, then present 2 p.m. Matinees on Saturday and Sunday.
While most of Brusven’s cast members hail from Moorhead, every school in town is usually represented in Gooseberry Park’s casts and technical crews, along with a smattering of teens from surrounding towns. The students are near the end of a grueling practice schedule that began in early June. The 14 young tech students – who work with stagecraft, lighting, sound, costume creation, and hair and makeup — gather in the morning in Horizon’s spacious theater area. Performers arrive at noon for five hours of rehearsals; many also devote 90 minutes each morning to developing their skills, alternating classes in dance and physical training with voice training and projection.
Brusven notes that while the Gooseberry program isn’t the only youth summer theater in the community, one principle has always set them apart: “We charge no fees to take part. Cost is never a barrier. That makes us unique.
“We are open to every kid who wants an experience in theater,” he explains. “That’s a key to why I wanted to join this organization. Anybody is welcome to take part, regardless of their ages or abilities or their socioeconomic status. Gooseberry gives them a home where they can grow and shine.”
The director, a native of Fergus Falls, came to Moorhead to major in theater arts at Concordia College and made it his own home. He was hired with the FMCT after graduation, working his way through virtually every position, from tour management and education director to, in 2009, the first of five years as its managing artistic director. He stepped back briefly to work in marketing with Eco Chic Boutique and Emerging Prairie while he and wife Carrie’s sons Miles and Simon were young, but returned to the field as Oak Grove High School’s managing artistic director, the job he still holds during the school year.
The much-loved “Descendants” tale traces the story of children of four of Disney’s most notorious bad actors. Presumed to be just as evil as the parents who begat them, they’re imprisoned on the Isle of the Lost for the safety of humanity … until the young prince of Auradon decrees that they come to his kingdom, away from the influence of their villainous parents. Will they carry out their parents’ evil wishes or forge their own identities? Were they truly born to be bad?
It’s the 41st show that the Gooseberry Park Players have staged. First dreamed up by Ann Van Der Maten in the 1970s, the organization was incorporated as a nonprofit in 1982 and staged its first show, “Robin Hood,” in 1983. Some of those alumni have seen their own offspring go on to take the stage – first in the park that lent them its name, then in Concordia’s Frances Frazier Comstock Theater and Minnesota State University Moorhead’s Hansen Theater. It has made its home in Horizon Middle School’s 700-seat theater for the past three years.
The program runs on the thinnest of budgets. Ticket sales make up the bulk of its funding. It has also received grants from the Lake Region Arts Council, the Alex Stern and F-M Area foundations, and the Moorhead Rotary Club. The Sertoma Club has covered the cost of a special feature of Thursday’s performance , when ASL interpreters will be on hand to help theater-goers with hearing deficits enjoy the evening.
Brusven says, “Our cast is a very committed, connected ensemble. They all like each other! That’s the special sauce that audiences will sense up on the stage.”
He thinks the story of youthful heroes and villains challenging the legacy of their parents will both entertain and raise theater-goers’ spirits. In the end, though, the Gooseberry Park Players’ production has a broader objective in sight.
“This isn’t necessarily all about putting on an incredible production,” the director muses. “At its heart, Gooseberry is about the growth of the students who participate. We want them all to have a first-class experience … to grow and become the community’s arts advocates for the future.”
To reserve tickets for the Gooseberry Park Players’ “Descendants,” go to www.GooseberryParkPlayers.org/tickets.html.
