An
Open Letter to the cast of Children's Musical Theatre of Oregon's
production of Disney's "High School Musical"
Hello
"High School Musical" Cast !
We wanted to congratulate and welcome all of you to CMTO's THIRD (!)
musical theatre presentation. We are very excited and proud to have all
of you in our
family for this exciting and historic production !
Casting this show was very difficult, indeed. All of you have so much
talent, and did so well at auditions and callbacks ; making the final
decisions on casting was really quite a puzzle to figure out. In the
end, we had to keep in mind that the whole of
the show was the most important thing to remember. We would have loved
to have given everyone the part that he / she, wanted. But tough
choices have to be made so that the success of the production as a
whole can be assured. It can be a painful process, and not a pleasant or
popular one at times. But from our experience, keeping the "whole picture"
in focus, has indeed brought us success as a theatre.
So, many of you were perfect for the roles in "High School
Musical" ; for the first time in our experience in casting with CMTO, there weren't many "obvious" choices for
certain roles. In many instances, it came down to very small details in
making the choices that were made. Your performances at the auditions
and callbacks were truly outstanding, and please know that many of you
had "just the right stuff" for the same role.
Unfortunately, there are only "one" of each of the roles in a show, so
we had to choose based on what we viewed as the right choices from the
most obvious strengths we saw at the moment. The reality of the
situation, is that without EVERYONE in their particular role in the
show, the show CANNOT go on. We view ALL roles as equally important,
for without any one of them, the show would suffer, or potentially, fail.
Thank you all for your talent, your energy, your faith in us, and your
determination to succeed and not stop in the face of disappointment.
We need your talent and spirit for this show to truly be what it WILL
be ; a spectacular "first" creation of "High School Musical" on-stage, in Oregon.
We look forward to a wonderful production with ALL of you ; thanks to
you and your talent and hard work, we will have an incredible
experience we're all sure to remember for a lifetime !
With love and support,
John and Rhonda.