“Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him.”
– Genesis 37:3-4
This weekend, the curtain will open on Jacob and his 11 sons in the land of Canaan, as STARZ Theater Company presents Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat January 13-15 at the ENT Center’s Shockley Zalabak Theater. It’s a traditional scene one would expect to see in the re-telling of a biblical story.
“And then comes the hoedown,” Laura Bergen, Artistic Director for STC, explained.
The show, which originally debuted in London’s West End in the early 1970s, follows the Genesis story of Joseph’s coat of many colors, and the brotherly jealousy that sold him into slavery in Egypt—which, much like the curveball of a hoedown, is depicted shortly after as a tap dance.
“That makes the audience realize that they really can’t predict what they’re going to see next,” Bergen, who also serves as the show’s choreography lead, continued. “It’s a really fun adventure that’s tied into this really powerful story. The message within it all is still something a lot of kids can relate to. There’s this feeling of hopelessness, but then there’s something that’s beyond that because God is faithful. It’s a really cool blend of the power of the traditional story of Joseph and the thrill of not knowing what’s coming next.”
Audiences can expect to see a variety of musical genres on display, from country-western to a French-style ballad, a 1950s swing dancing number and hip hop-style Broadway jazz.
“There’s even a little bit of ballet en pointe thrown in,” Bergen said, “so the show really has a lot of every dance style in it.”
“Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the production to where it has all these very unexpected twists, like a hoedown in what should be the saddest moment of the show,” she continued. “There’s a lot of opposites. You would expect Pharaoh, the leader of the land, to be a very prim and proper ruler, and instead it’s an Elvis impersonator. It’s like whatever you’re expecting these characters to be, he (Lloyd Webber) has written it to be almost the exact opposite. It makes it so interesting, and very entertaining.”
And while the talented cast will make it look effortless, putting together a show with an entertainment value of this magnitude is no easy feat – and one STC achieved in just a matter of weeks.
“We started rehearsals at the end of October, and we put the whole show together in eight weeks,” Bergen said. “It’s a two-hour show, and the entire thing is music – there are no spoken lines.”
The cast and crew hit the ground running to learn all the vocals, all the choreography, and all the staging within the iconic songs in eight weekends, then had just a few weekends to spare to put everything together.
“It’s been a pretty fast-paced season for sure,” Bergen said. “It’s a whirlwind, but in a way, it’s fun because you gain momentum. You get to rehearsals and you can’t look back and go over things you’ve already done, you just have to move on and roll forward. The energy that that pace brings to a show is great because everything is so exciting.”
What’s more, students cast in the production needed to be well-rounded enough to pull off the gamut of numbers within the show–an element which Bergen credits to STC’s home and the theater program at Turning Pointe Dance.
“One thing that this show has made me grateful for, over and over, is all of the amazing training that the kids in our cast have had,” she said. “Most of this show’s cast have trained at Turning Pointe, at least in some capacity, and it speaks to the students’ level of commitment to their training, and to the quality of the training they’ve received across the board here. It’s so much fun as a choreographer, because these kids are up for anything.”
Audiences have five chances to catch a performance this weekend, beginning Friday, January 13, at 6 p.m., followed by a 1 p.m. matinee on January 14, which will be translated into American Sign Language by students of the Pikes Peak Community College Interpreter Preparation Program. The 6 p.m. show on January 14 will welcome the company’s alumni, while the 6 p.m. show on the 16th will celebrate the cast’s senior students set to graduate this year.
“This whole season has been really fun,” Bergen said. “I’ve never choreographed a show that’s quite this varied in the styles that it needs, and it has been the best time. It’s a biblical story with a few fun twists to it that the audience might not be expecting. We’ve really just had the best time, and I think the audience will, too.”
For more information, including performance details, photos, merch and Starburst orders, head to http://www.starztheater.org/ticketsjatatd-1. To purchase tickets, visit https://tickets.entcenterforthearts.org/4014.
