Troika Entertainment’s national tour of the musical “42nd Street” has traveled to 41 states and put on more than 120 performances since it started in September 2015.
It will not be finished until July after at least 200 more performances, including a stop in Bloomington tonight and Wednesday.
“It’s easy to go stale on the road,” Kaitlin Lawrence, who plays Dorothy Brock, said. “You have to make the choice to keep growing and learning.”
The show, about young Peggy Sawyer getting her big break into Broadway, is different every night.
Lawrence said even slight changes like deeper breaths before starting to sing can make the tour an opportunity to make cast members better performers.
Performing the same role for so long has given Lawrence the opportunity to deeply connect with her character, she said. On the surface, diva Dorothy Brock is the cold-hearted prima donna of the show, the character that the audience is not supposed to like.
Dorothy talks down to people and exercises her strong will without mercy, Lawrence said, but there is still a human element to her character.
“Underneath it all, she has an extreme sense of urgency and insecurity like everyone else does,” Lawrence said. “‘42nd Street’ is set during the Great Depression, so she’s not just wanting to be a star. It’s not just about the attention or her ego — it’s really about survival.”
The part of Dorothy Lawrence said she can connect with is the character’s work ethic. Dorothy will always make it happen and get the job done.
Even Dorothy’s physical appearance in the show is inspired by Lawrence, she said. The short blonde wig Dorothy wears in the show is made of real human hair and cost more than $7,000. Lawrence has long red hair, but the wig was styled after her own hair.
“In rehearsals, to get my hair out of my face I’d put it up in a really high side ponytail,” Lawrence said. “My director loves my side pony. He thinks it’s very diva, and it’s my signature thing. All of the curls in my wig in the show are off to one side, and that’s actually modeled after my own hair.”
The director of the show is Mark Bramble, one of the original co-authors of the show in the 1980s. He will be coming to Bloomington to check up on the cast, so the show will be in top shape, Lawrence said.
Keeping healthy on the road is not easy, Lawrence said.
Between waking up at 6 a.m. to get on buses filled with more than 50 show members each and stopping at gas stations filled with junk food, Lawrence drinks liters of water at a time to keep her vocal cords healthy and stops at grocery stores to buy vegetables and quinoa.
“It is a hard lifestyle, but to get paid to do what you love deep down, there’s no way to explain how wonderful that is,” Lawrence said. “It makes me better on a daily basis.”
Performing for college students is especially enjoyable, Lawrence said, because she remembers not so long ago when she was a student looking up at the performers onstage and knowing how badly she wanted to be up there with them.
“I want to be the example,” Lawrence said. “I hope that they are sitting there dreaming, and I hope that they know it can come true for them. I hope the show inspires them.”
