"Theater is all of it": an interview with kianna bromley
By Sophia Jerome
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Kianna Bromley, the director of MHS’ very own Masque theater program and of the newest production, Grease. So much work has already been put into this show by Kianna, music director Molly Clark, lighting/set and crew director Joe Sanguenetti, and the entirety of auditioning students given the fact that rehearsals have barely begun. This show has already been cast but there are still many opportunities for those who are interested in crew!
Q: What was the audition/casting process like for you?
“There was a lot of preparation that went into this process. I knew we had around fifty students auditioning a couple of weeks in advance since I put out that interest survey, which was good because if I didn’t know that I would have been very unprepared to handle the amount of people. What’s tricky about having so many is you have to make sure that you schedule the time well enough to give everyone a chance to do all the components of the audition… So I spent a lot of time preparing for it and then editing it because we had a snow day, so that was kind of rough. The preparation was a lot, but then it went pretty well… It was good, it was stressful, it was really hard to cast. There was a lot of talented people and there were a lot of combinations that could have worked out differently.”
Q: How did you feel about the turnout of students during the audition process?
“Awesome. I felt awesome about it. It was so cool to see so many new faces, some returning faces from people that I worked with more in eighth grade that I hadn’t seen since and it’s been about two years and here they are coming back again. It was nice to see some new upperclassmen too… There was also a tremendous amount of recurring students that I have relationships with, so that was also really nice. So it was pretty cool.”
Q: What made you decide to do Grease?
“The major driving factor for me choosing the show was I wanted a show with a really big name and the reason why is because of the renovation and the change in the space and the money that the town spent on the space. I really wanted to do a show that was really accessible to the community since a lot of people know the name, know what it is. And even those that aren’t as knowledgeable, or maybe aren’t theater-goers all of the time could find something to relate to and get the most amount of community out to the space to see how it’s changed and how it’s developed. So it’s a little bit of an advertising decision, in fact it’s mostly driven by the desire to do something mainstream enough that more people could find a connection with it. And that was not only from the community here in Montpelier’s perspective, I wanted to bring adults and community members in, but I also wanted to draw people from this community into the space, the students, and it very clearly worked. I’m in the process of trying to change the culture around theater and that there are way more access points within people who traditionally think it’s ‘just theater nerds’. Everyone is really a theater nerd because theater is Netflix, theater is film and television. Theater is all of it, it’s the basis of all of it.”
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Q: Other than the cast, how do you feel about the size of the crew?
“It’s funny, I haven’t seen all the crew together yet. I know there is a fair number of returning crew members that worked on the first show that will definitely be working on this show. And I know there are a lot more people who are interested in just getting their hands in and participating. But we haven’t had a crew meeting yet. There are probably about fifteen or twenty people interested in helping in the crew in some way, shape, or form. It will probably end up being more than that if you count every person who just helped out a little... I feel very good about the size of the crew.”
Q: If you were in the show, what character would you be?
“One hundred percent Rizzo. A hundred percent, of course. I just love Rizzo, that’s about right.”
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The full cast list for Grease can be found by clicking this link.