By: Derek Hottenstein
Someone wise once said that music is a way of expressing things that can’t be stated in mere words. It’s a concept that has led to musicals being such a predominant art form, one that St. Norbert College just so happens to be no stranger to pulling off. Every year, like clockwork, the student organization Knight Theater spends the majority of January rehearsing and then performing a musical of their choice for the campus community to witness. The cast, the crew, the band, the directors, and every last one of them are fellow students fully committed to putting on the best production possible. And with this year’s production of Big Fish: The Musical, it’s safe to say that they accomplished a performance not soon to be forgotten.
It’s definitely a tricky business for a group of students to create a musical from the ground up, but the secret weapon of Big Fish was simple. It just so happened to have some of SNC’s best and brightest behind it, both within the Honors Program and outside of it. Our stage director this year was Tyler Blom, a junior Honors student with an abundance of theater experience and a pitch-perfect vision of how to execute a show as strong and nuanced as this. He testified that “I think the show really excels in a lot of different ways. It blends realism and fantasy in a very interesting way where you’ll go from something really cartoonish to something really down to earth, really quickly.” Juggling realistic drama with fantastical comedy is not an easy balance to strike, but thanks to his guiding hand and artistic momentum, the cast quickly found their footing and grew quite comfortable with the unusual world of Big Fish.
The big picture of the show’s message is one of finding meaning and enjoyment in the strangest of places. And that’s precisely what the cast and crew accomplished. Whether it’s dancing the “Alabama Stomp” to summon a swarm of plastic fish to get thrown across the stage, tossing handfuls of daffodil petals around like confetti to usher in a marriage proposal between our two protagonists, or me frantically rolling around the stage pretending to be attacked by vicious insects; the off-the-wall-whimsy of the show’s content was matched only by how much fun everyone had doing it.
Honors sophomore Liz Renier said that her favorite part of being in the show was “putting an entire show together in a month. Seeing it all come together so quickly was really amazing.” While fellow Honors second year Daniel Walter attested to his most cherished aspect from the show being that “with such a tight schedule, it’s really easy for everyone to see how far we progress. Everyone is so close to each other by design that you get to know everyone really well.” Everyone else in the show, and I can attest, there’s just something incredible about working alongside an entire cast of friends shooting for the same exact goal, making the best show possible, and having the best possible time doing it.
Even when the show moved away from the goofiness and started to genuinely tug heartstrings, everyone rose to the challenge to open the emotional floodgates time and time again. Not an easy feat, but I’m pleased to honestly say that, by the time of curtain call on each performance, dry eyes in the audience were few and far between. So while Big Fish is now nothing more than a great memory in the hearts and minds of its performers and audience, we who were involved here at the Honors Program and Knight Theater should still always be proud of the magic we helped unleash on that stage back in January. And the show’s not over yet! Later this semester, on the weekend of May 1-3, Knight Theater will be performing an entirely new theater project that you won’t want to miss.
