"This is devolving into chaos," she said. "I'm loving it."
It wasn't exactly chaos, though the staging rehearsal, one of the first for this 16-person cast, did have more laughs than on-key notes. A number of actors wore no shoes, and others danced and joked around between run-throughs. With a cast that has characters named "Bearded Lady" and "Reptile Man," it might just be impossible to get through rehearsal with a straight face.
But there's still plenty of time. "Side Show" premieres May 17 at 8 p.m. in Moore Theater in the Hopkins Center, followed by performances on May 18 at 8 p.m. and May 20 at 2 p.m.
Courtney Davis '09 and Anike Adekoya '08 star as Daisy and Violet Hilton, a pair of true-life Siamese twins whose rise from the circus to vaudeville to Hollywood stardom (appropriately enough, in the 1932 film "Freaks") is fictionalized in the musical. Two men, Terry (Tyler Putnam '09) and Buddy (Matt Cohn '08), invite the twins into showbiz and later court them.
For a pair so presumably extraordinary, in the end the Hiltons find themselves remarkably lonely and ordinary. (Forecasting the fate of a certain other Hilton sister duo?)
"We are all freaks, and that's the reason we connect with the twins," King said. "We are all freaks in our search for love and fame."
"Side Show" is the senior culminating experience for King, a theater and psychology double major who first made her mark in Dartmouth theater only two weeks into her freshman year directing "Car #6649" with Sarah Hughes '07.
"They really throw you into the department," said King. "It's great that they trust you to do that."
Since that early start, King has gained a reputation at Dartmouth as accomplished actress, director and writer.
"I feel as though Lily is the theater department," ensemble member Jay Ben Markson '10 said. "Every term she's directing a show or acting in a show or directing the ten-minute plays or writing for WiRED. Unsurprisingly, she frequently complains that her entire life is spent in the Hop."
King's culminating experience is the last time she will be given full autonomy to run a show at Dartmouth. And starting next year, graduating theater majors will work intensely in a specific area of interest, such as stage managing or technical production, to create a collaborative project.
But that's the future. With "Side Show," King is alone at the helm. To begin, she established her own design, music, costume and production teams to divvy up responsibilities. One critical member of that network is Jessica Todtman '07, the show's stage manager. She's in charge of synthesizing communication from different levels of management and ensuring that the performances and rehearsals run as planned.
"Less experienced stage managers require more attention," King said. "Jessica has done some before, so there was a lot of begging [to get her] involved."
For a show whose every moment is staged, blocked and/or sung, Todtman's responsibilities are tremendous. Thankfully Victoria Toumanoff '09 and David Mavricos '10 are around as assistant stage managers to reduce the burden. Together with choreographer (and ensemble member) Josh Feder '08 and pianist Henry Danaher '08, they meet with King weekly to develop ideas for the show.
Finding a musical director to complete the "Side Show" management team was particularly difficult.
"I needed one that knew how to teach singers. Louis [Burkot] is the Glee Club director, and he was wonderful to help out," King said. Burkot ordinarily serves as musical director for Mainstage productions - those directed by theater faculty or guest professional directors instead of by students. In an unusual turn of events, this term does not feature a Mainstage production. Its absence, coincidentally for King, means more student and departmental resources are on hand.
Still, with only a $400 budget, King can't possibly match the extravagance of the acclaimed 1997 Broadway version of "Side Show." Daisy and Violet Hilton underwent somewhere around two dozen costume and wig changes in the original production, a logistical impossibility for the Dartmouth show. Yet with a few ingenious tweaks, King hopes to convincingly adapt "Side Show" to the Moore Theater (which, at 480 seats, is nearly four times smaller than its Broadway counterpart, the Richard Rodgers Theatre).
The adaptation is ambitious. When "Side Show" opened to a warm critical reception nearly a decade ago, it was largely because of its genuine, challenging vision of the struggle between social acceptance and personal integrity. In a series of large-scale staging alterations, King seeks to refocus on this human quality of the story and the urgency of its message. Indeed, King wants her production to be "about telling the story and connecting with the audience."
To that end, the audience will sit on high risers built directly on the stage, from which vantage point viewers might see lights, actors moving set pieces and other offstage effects. It's a way to erase "stage magic" - actors appearing and disappearing, sets suddenly changing. This way, the audience has a purer view of the story.
"We're not trying to hide anything," King insisted.
Because it's a musical, "Side Show" defies the theater department's traditional affinity for dramatic theater, King said. She has come to love so-called straight shows, especially after her theater foreign study program in London - a whirlwind 10 weeks during which she saw 40 shows. But when choosing a culminating experience, this self-professed Stephen Sondheim fan couldn't abandon the genre she grew up loving. And it's in that genre that King is bound to realize her greatest theatrical achievement yet.
Ensemble member Markson is confident King will succeed.
"She's a fun director to work with - firm enough to keep the cast under control but not angry or tyrannical. She makes things run smoothly, which is really the highest praise a director can get."
Markson may have misspoken, because he later supplied what actually might be the highest praise a director can get - at least in this inimitable universe known as Dartmouth College.
"In conclusion, if somebody posted 'Lily King' on Bored at Baker, I would agree."
