Senior gains valuable experience from community theater over summer vacation

“I need a hero!” senior Corey Traina sang as she finished the last pirouette of a number. Panting and sweaty, she looked out at the packed audience who had burst into raucous applause — remembering that, despite the hardships of acting, moments like these are why loves being on stage.

This past summer, Traina embarked on a months-long journey to further develop her theater skills by starring in the West Valley Light Opera’s production of “Footloose” as the lead female role of Ariel.

“Footloose” chronicles the story of Ren, a young boy who moves from Chicago to the small town of Beaumont, where dancing is outlawed. There, he meets Traina’s character, Ariel, and they join together to break some of the unreasonable regulations on freedom of speech.

Traina found out about the role while walking out of a session with her vocal coach. After receiving a voicemail from the casting director, Traina called back and was offered the role.

The role was an opportunity for her to showcase her talents. Having done primarily school shows in the past, Traina often found herself overlooked in favor of older students. However, WVLO had no such qualms about giving a lead role to a young auditionee.

“It was definitely a huge ego boost for me because it helped me to remember that I was capable of acting in such a huge role,” Traina said.

The role showed her that the professional theater world is mostly blind to age and expects the same amount of maturity and commitment from teenagers as it does from adults.

After casting, the rehearsal process lasted for about six weeks, consisting of dance rehearsals, singing practice and staging rehearsals. The production featured complex scenes and set changes, meaning that every act had to be precisely coordinated.

“Footloose” itself offers color and emotion, and Traina described the entire process as trying to encapsulate the high energy and rebellious undertones of the story. However, the process was made more complex by the absence of key personnel.

“Our director was actually finishing up another production, so we didn’t have a director for the first few weeks,” Traina said. “It was definitely an interesting experience to try and deal with that, but everything ended up going really well.”

The shows ran throughout July, with three shows every weekend.

“It was 12 shows in the course of one month, not counting the preview, so it was definitely pretty exhausting,” Traina said. “Every single show is super high energy and we try to put in the maximum effort, so doing three shows every weekend definitely took its toll.”

The fast pace of the shows demanded a lot of the actors, with many injuries occurring during the run of the production.

During one show, the male lead injured his back, rendering much of the choreography useless. The entire cast had to modify the dance numbers and stunts in order to accommodate the injury.

These “aches and pains,” as Traina described them, did not detract at all from the cast’s determination and energy. She described overcoming each injury and setback in order to keep the show at its best possible form.

Despite the taxing schedule and tiring performances of the production, Traina can only begin to describe all that she learned.

“It was such an amazing community at WVLO and I enjoyed every minute of being in ‘Footloose,’” Traina said. “I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything.”