This week, a cathedral is being built on the John Brown University campus. While this one won’t rival the Cathedral of the Ozarks already on the Siloam Springs campus, it is impressive. Tuesday afternoon, the set for JBU’s music and theater department production of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” was being created.
Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” is one of the most enduring stories of the past two centuries. In the 195 years since publication, there have been at least 22 film adaptations, five ballets, at least a half dozen operas, radio serials, comic books, even video games.
Heath Stark, who plays Captain Phoebus de Martin, says a simple reason the story lives on can be found in the song “Someday.”
“Finding some way to see a brighter side and hold on to hope when literally everything around you is going against that, and that there seems like there could be no possible way that you could get out of this darkest hour that you’re finding yourself in. And even when, I don’t want to spoil the show, but even when there’s really nothing else to take with you, you’re just kind of left with, like, what could be just emptiness. But if you’re needing something to fill that with, all you can do is try to hope that things will get better no matter how dark they look.”
Liesl Dromi, associate professor of music at JBU and director of the production, says while this version has its origins in the Disney animated “Hunchback,” it actually returns the story to the pre-Disney approach of the source material.
“And one of the most challenging things about the story is that it doesn’t provide easy answers, or any answers. It just leaves us with questions. And then it leaves us with this sense of hope, right? This hope in the face of great suffering and seemingly no way out. And what do you do with that? And that’s the beauty of it. But that’s the struggle of it too, right? That we can’t provide an easy answer for our audience. We have to get them thinking.
“That’s what attracted me to the story. I love stories that require something from the audience and require us to think and acknowledges that I’m an intelligent human being too. I don’t need to be spoon-fed, right? And that’s this story.”
Members of the JBU cast say they came to the musical with shared, if slightly different pathways of reverence to the story. Here are Heath Stark, Jack Sampson, Lauren Blackman and Ava Villarreal.
“Jack and I actually went and saw a community theater production of it in Oklahoma our freshman year, so three years ago. And the entire drive back, we were listening to the soundtrack and just talking about how much fun it would be to do the show.”
“Yeah, I fell in love with the story whenever I was younger and I watched the animated movie, and then I was always a big fan of any vocal parts that sang really low. And so naturally, I looked at the cast recording that has Patrick Page on it, and when listening to him, I was just so floored by how the music is created and how the characters are done.”
“But I distinctly remember being in my freshman dorm room and stumbling across ‘Rhythm of the Tambourine,’ which is one of Esmeralda’s songs, and being like, ‘Oh man, I really wish that I could sing this song, but that’s probably never gonna happen.’ And here I am, sitting with some of my closest friends, and I get to just make art with them.”
“Once it was announced that we were going to do the show in the fall, I just deep dove into all the different movies. And specifically, there’s a black and white film of it that is such a beautiful rendition of it.”
For director Liesl Dromi, a cast that comes to a production with baked-in admiration for the story is a big plus. In fact, she says, their love of the musical, created by Alan Menken, Stephen Schwartz and Peter Parnell, is more than just a bonus. It turns out it’s a necessary element of this production.
“And in fact, these guys introduced me to the musical. I knew the movie, I knew the animated movie, I knew the book, and I knew the old black and white Charles Laughton and Lon Chaney and all of that. But I had no idea that there was a better version of the Disney movie, and it has been there the whole time since 2014 on Broadway. So yeah, thanks to them, I know about this production, and thanks to their passion for this show, I think that’s why this is becoming so magical, because I knew I couldn’t let them down.”
Spend enough time with cast and crew and you’ll hear almost all of them say something about not wanting to let each other down or making sure they rise to the quality of the script. So then why take on this internal pressure in the middle of a college semester? Seth Childs, who is Quasimodo in this production, says it’s because of the conversation the actors and audience get to have.
“I don’t know, I just, this story is hard. It’s tragic. And so, I mean, there’s a lyric in the end, like, ‘Now we wish we could give you a moral, like a trinket you hold in your palm. But here is a riddle to guess if you can, sing the bells of Notre Dame. What makes a monster and what makes a man?’ And so the musical is beautiful because it’s not trying to give you anything concretely. It’s presenting this tragic story, and you watch it and somehow you’re filled with hope at the end of it.”
Tuesday was the first rehearsal with all the elements: actors, the 14-piece live orchestra, the tech. Lighting director Josiah Wallace says bringing Notre Dame to life is actually about knowing when to be subtle with the tech.
“Find ways that you can support the story and make the story stronger without drawing attention from the core of the story. So yeah, I think a lot of that comes from just having a good, solid design foundation.”
And for Jack Sampson, who is Dom Claude Frollo, the production is his last at JBU. He graduates in December and gets married a few days after that. He says he wouldn’t have committed so much time to any other production.
“This is not a Christian-forward show. The text itself is not Christian by nature. One of the reasons that I love the show is because of the thread that it does create about our creator and about the character of Christ and the character of God, and doing this show, what are we presenting about that character really? Like, you see a lot of, for my character in particular, it’s an absence of a living relationship with God. And how do I communicate that to the audience, to tell them I’m very much the opposite of whatever you’re seeking in life, and what does that communicate about God? If I’m the opposite, what is the opposite of my character? It must be so good. It must be so enriching and so beautiful.
“And so I think there’s a lot of elements within this show and these characters that is these little threads of faith and these threads of characteristics of God and stuff like that. And that’s why I really, really love performing it, in particular.”
John Brown University’s production of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” will be presented tomorrow night and Saturday night, then again Nov. 6 and 7 at 7:30 each evening, with a Sunday matinee Sunday, Nov. 8 at 3 at the Berry Performing Arts Center on the JBU campus in Siloam Springs.
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