Twirl, kick and dip. Repeat. Sing a few measures. Twirl, kick and dip.
For an actress performing in a musical, these are all normal parts of life and that holds true for Ball State senior theater major Tayler Seymour, who has been acting since the age of eight.
Seymour had her first role as the little balloon girl, a non-speaking part, in a production of “Gypsy” in Columbus, Indiana, However, when the director noticed that she was learning the lines of the scene she was in, he gave her another part.
“I was like, ‘Oh, cool, this is something I might actually be good at.’ From there, I never stopped thinking that’s what I wanted to do with my life,” Seymour said.
Now, as a young adult, Seymour is currently cast to play Anita in Muncie Civic Theatre’s upcoming production of “West Side Story.”
“She’s…the saucy one,” Seymour said about her character. “She’s very different compared to [the main character] Maria, who’s a young girl who just moved to America. She’s very naïve and wants to experience the world for what it is, but [Anita knows] how things are. [She’s] not going to sugar-coat them for you.
Fresh off a summer of playing Ariel in her hometown production of “The Little Mermaid,” Seymour said that playing Anita is a very different and interesting role compared to the famous red-headed mermaid.
Because the full Sharks gang is comprised of Puerto Rican immigrants, Seymour had to adopt a full accent to match her character. Additionally, she had the added challenge of incorporating Spanish because she is portraying a character who speaks English as a second language.
“There’s things like, ‘Oh yeah, this is how you would say this word,’ but you have to think of it as someone who doesn’t know English as their first language saying it in their accent,” Seymour said. “There’s a lot of layers of the dialect that goes on top of all the storytelling and the singing and the dancing.”
This show is also one of the more serious stories that she has performed in.
“The subject is a lot more high-stakes. Disney is timeless. It’s going to be good no matter what, but I feel like this actually is a show that is very important to today’s times,” she said.
“One of the concepts of the set design is fences. [They] create the space as a physical barrier between people. It’s a constant reminder that there’s us, and there’s you.”
The story, a retelling of William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” is set in New York in the 1950s and follows two rival gangs, the Sharks and the Jets. Maria, the younger sister of the Sharks leader, falls in love with ex-Jet member Tony. Featuring a plethora of musical numbers and sass from all sides, it’s a show that will really make audiences think. “West Side Story” opens on the main stage at at 7 p.m. Oct. 12 at Muncie Civic Theatre. It will run every weekend until Oct. 27th.
Comments