As curtains continue to rise on stages across the Valley after a longer-than-anticipated pandemic pause, it’s difficult to gage who is more eager for the return of in-person productions – audiences or actors.
Perhaps no one is more excited than the cast and crew of Phoenix Theatre Company’s production of the iconic feel-good musical Singin’ in the Rain, which runs through April 3. The production team has made it possible for it to rain on stage every night, which has been “pure joy personified,” according to Kat Wolff, an understudy for the play.
Wolff is responsible for preparing for multiple roles and is a huge asset to ensuring that the show, as they say, goes on. Wolff and her fellow understudies and swings must learn dialogue, staging, songs and choreography for multiple characters – and be prepared to play them at a moment’s notice.
“This has been my first show back on-stage post-pandemic. It’s been a lovely and exciting welcome back,” Wolff says. “At first, I was nervous because I found out that a lot of the people in the cast are longtime Phoenix Theatre people who had worked here before and all know each other, so I was very nervous coming in as the outsider, but everyone has been so welcoming.”
It’s also Wolff’s first time understudying, a dynamic and difficult role, but one that is essential in ensuring that the show goes off without a hitch. “Early on in the process, as an understudy you attend every rehearsal the people who you’re understudying for go to. I was attending rehearsals and sitting on the side and taking notes and writing down what they’re doing,” she explains. “Learning it felt like it was going to take forever because I don’t get to stand up and do it in rehearsal every day. I would spend all day at rehearsal and then go home at night and have my own rehearsals in company housing and kind of stand up and try and do it in my little apartment as best as I can.”
Wolff is an understudy for Sally Jo Bannow (Dora Bailey) and Emily Mohney (Lina Lamont), whose characters happen to frequently be on stage at the same time. “It was challenging to not have my eyes flip back and forth between who I’m following on stage based on the action of the show,” Wolff says. “I had to train my brain to say, ‘This time, I’m just watching Emily. This time they do it, I’m just going to watch Sally Jo,’ and try to learn them as separate things and separate people rather than getting lost in the jumble.”
Though the role has its obvious challenges, Wolff says it has made her a better overall actor. “It’s definitely pushed me in really awesome ways. For example, there’s a scene in the show that is directly between Sally Jo and Emily as Lina and her dialect coach, so in that scene it’s just the two of them going back and forth between Lina’s nasally obnoxious voice and the diction coach who is very hooty,” she says. “That one is fun to practice in my room because I sound like I’m having a conversation with myself. Just running that scene alone kind of helps me. I usually use it as a warmup if I have to go in for the show because switching back and forth like that makes you kind of take it to the extreme. That’s where the comedy comes from and why the show works so well.”
This production of Singin’ in the Rain is the company’s largest cast of any production since 2019, which Wolff says has its benefits and drawbacks. “The pros are that it’s a big, happy family and we’re all just so excited from the very first day,” she says. “The only con is that once we start performances and we’re not in rehearsals every day, I don’t get to see everyone because we don’t get to be in the dressing rooms with them.”
Wolff was excited and nervous the first time she performed Lina’s part in front of an audience. “It was a Sunday, so we had two performances,” she recalls. “The first performance was great. I feel good about the work I did. I just don’t remember much of it because it’s like an out-of-body experience a little bit.”
When she’s not practicing or performing, Wolff can often be found in the audience, where she says it’s “magical” to watch the scene where it rains on stage – and observe others’ reactions, especially young children. “I think it does bring out even the inner child in any audience member of any age to see the real rain and be so close to it,” she says. “It doesn’t get old… I think it’s exactly what audiences returning to the theater are craving, just a little bit of escapism after the crazy couple of years we’ve had.”
