The group of Pacific Conservatory Theatre (PCPA) students sits in rows, waiting for their que, eyeing the swish of Callum Morris’ wrist.
Morris, the current interim music director for PCPA, guides the piano accompanist as acting intern Chynna Walker stands, singing the part penned for the title character of the upcoming production of Peter Pan at an early October rehearsal.
“Let’s be quiet as a mouse and fill the lovely little house for Wendy/Oh for Wendy, she’s gone to stay,” Walker puts out with a nasally British accent.
“And be our mother, at last we have a mother,” the group chimes in as Pan’s Lost Boys.
Just after their second entrance, Morris’ hands drop, and the music with them.
“Can you make that not so lovely?” he asked to some murmured laughter. “I just want it to sound like a group of Lost Boys.”
PCPA’s upcoming production of Peter Pan is the season’s opening musical, and the conservatory’s large-scale, family-friendly holiday production. From the first days of running their lines, the actors have worked on the music alongside the dialogue.
Morris was the music director at PCPA from 2004 to 2016 and got called back for the semester to fill in until a new permanent instructor is hired. After two years away, he returned to direct music and teach classes, sliding again into the workflow at the conservatory.
“The nice thing about it is, because I did the job so long, it’s very familiar,” Morris told the Sun. “It was just trying to get back into the swing of things, because things move fast at PCPA.”
Peter Pan isn’t the most musically complicated play ever penned, but it is involved. All the characters have accents, and there’s plenty of action, including a choreographed stick fight with the aforementioned Lost Boys.
From the beginning, Morris has worked closely with the show’s director, PCPA Artistic Director Mark Booher, and Assistant Director Kitty Balay. He was a part of student auditions, he said, and led the musical direction during the first rehearsals.
“I’m working with all the cast over those three days, I’m teaching them all the songs they need to know, working on the harmonies with them if there’s any harmonies for them to sing,” he said. “And just kind of figuring out what they need to work on and help guide them through how the score works.”
The students should be used to following Morris’ baton, they’ll be doing so during production. PCPA performers take musical ques from the music director via television screens offstage that are visible from onstage, he explained.
Once the music is learned, interpretation and character factor more into the conversation. That’s where the group was during the Oct. 4 rehearsal, already working on finer points of pronunciation, phrasing, and character.
Hence the request for a “not so lovely” sound.
“We’re trying to figure out, what is the sound of the character?” Morris said. “Especially when I’m working with young actors who are new, sometimes I have to ask male actors, ‘I need you to sound like men.’ But in this case it was the opposite, I needed them to sound like young boys. I needed a brighter tone that didn’t sound as developed.”
Another aspect of Peter Pan is the tradition of casting the title character with a female actor. A number of “major actresses have played the role,” Morris said, and how they approach Pan’s voice is directly connected to the play’s music.
“It’s written for a woman to perform, but is written quite low,” he said. “That was also part of having the character sound like a boy even though it was being played by a woman.”
There are a number of singing techniques, or lack thereof, that can help an actress sound more like the boy who never wanted to grow up, he explained.
“We work on kind of going for a little more of a straight tone,” he said. “A boy’s sound wouldn’t necessarily have a really developed vibrato the way a trained female sound would have.”
The decisions the director makes along the way affects how the music is performed as well, whether it’s the emotional approach a character takes to a scene or the sound they’re reaching for in the voice.
Performing in musicals is something that all PCPA acting students must learn. Morris also teaches classes during the week, including instructing first-year students in singing and music fundamentals and theory. After Peter Pan opens, he’ll also co-teach a musical theater ensemble class with resident artist Brad Carroll.
“It’s an opportunity for them to experience how to be in an ensemble and how to create character when you might not even have a character name,” he said, “and create relationships and also understand how to give and take focus for the featured roles in a number.”
Classes like those make sure that PCPA’s acting interns know how to follow a score and stay in tune. For productions like Peter Pan, which take an audience into a fantastical world populated by Lost Boys, pirates, and more, creating character is what it’s all about.
And that’s what PCPA is all about too, Morris said, and it’s why returning to take the musical helm of the pirate ship for a semester was an opportunity he was excited to take.
“It is a special place,” he said. “You really get to work on the art, and everyone is there to work on the art and work together to create a really interesting piece that we get to present to this community. Everyone’s goal is the same.”
Managing Editor Joe Payne’s goal is always good music. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 1-7, 2018.