'Wicked Busy'

Sunday afternoon, five minutes before dress rehearsal for “Gypsy” is scheduled to begin, actors and stage crew are still hustling around working on sets, doing their makeup and rehearsing lines.

“Show me one rehearsal that starts on time,” said director Teresa Waldorf, smiling and shrugging her shoulders as she tucks wisps of blond hair back behind ears that are already supporting her glasses.

“The show has a real dog and a real lamb and six children under 10,” Waldorf said. Throw in the pressure of teaching some untrained actors the complicated dance sequences and over 16 songs, and one can understand why almost four months of practice might not seem like enough time.

Actors at the University of Montana have been rehearsing for “Gypsy” since before Christmas, and stage crews and costumers have been busy all semester.

It must be the 200 costumes and 12 scene changes that make things a little hectic. 

Downstairs in the costume shop, Wendy Stark, assistant director of costume and design technology, seems to be everywhere at once: tweaking a glittery blue hemline, yelling directions to students as they stitch silver Christmas garlands onto hoopskirts, running back and forth across the room to make sure everything is flowing smoothly.

“This is our largest show of the year,” Stark said. “We’re really wicked busy.”

“Wicked busy” works out to about 18 hours per day, 7 days per week, explains costume shop manager Angelina Herin.

The small staff is made up of people from a UM costume class and a few volunteers with sewing expertise who came in for the weekend. Volunteer Laura Alvarez has 31 years of costume-making experience, some of it in Hollywood.

Upstairs, chairs and set pieces squeak across the floor as actors and stage-crew members push them into place. Stage-side, several actors stand in relative darkness, their lips moving soundlessly as they rehearse their lines.

“Audience Discretion Advised,” warns the playbill advertising UM’s production of “Gypsy,” a Tony Award-winning musical inspired by the memoirs of famed burlesque dancer Gypsy Rose Lee, who was driven to stardom by her relentless stage mother.

Backstage, parents Bruce Giffin and Angela Hardy wait for their respective children to emerge.

When asked how she feels about being a stage parent involved in a play about the quintessential pushy stage mom, Hardy laughs.

“The running joke is that I am Mama Rose,” she said. “But the difference is that I provide my daughter with an opportunity, I don’t push. I don’t need to. My kid eats, sleeps, breathes and shits this stuff (theater).”

That degree of passion makes the sometimes 5-hour-long rehearsals bearable, and even fun, said UM student Andrea Asta, who plays stripper Electra in the play.

“I have never drank or smoked anything, so being on stage is my high. There is no better feeling in the world for me,” Asta said, her eyes glittering as she plays with her neatly curled, dark hair.

To get into character, Asta went to a strip club and talked to a stripper, and even watched both movie versions of “Gypsy.” Before rehearsing each night, she rocks out to music that fits her character, like T-Pain’s “I’m in Love with a Stripper.”

“There is always a part of you in any of your characters,” she said, but adds that playing a stripper hasn’t made her want to change anything about herself. 

For Asta, the rehearsals can be the best part, and skipping is never an option.

“We (the cast and crew) are like a huge family, we’re very good friends,” she said. 

“Gypsy” runs April 8-12 and 15-19 in the Montana Theatre. Evening shows start at 7:30 p.m. Saturday matinees are April 12 and 19 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15 for the general public, $12 for senior citizens and students, and $5 for children 12 and under.