If you’ve seen the movie “Mamma Mia,” you’ll probably recognize the classic ABBA soundtrack and kooky plot of the stage production featuring local middle and high school students in Basalt this week.
The premise: A young woman named Sophie, living on a Greek island with her single mother Donna, invites three men who could be her father to her wedding. Antics, naturally, ensue.
But at the local shows, staged at Basalt Middle School from Thursday through Sunday, audiences may also notice some changes, namely in the casting of some starring roles.
Sophie’s fiancée Sky, a role usually played by a man, is a woman in this production, performed by Basalt High School senior Jenna Power Smith.
“It’s different and it’s fun and I feel so accepting, and [feel] how accepting they’ve been of me to be cast as this role,” Power Smith said in an interview during tech rehearsals on Tuesday. “And honestly, I don’t think people will see it as this big difference, almost, because in all honesty, it’s just about the energy and the music and the love I have for my fiancée.”
Basalt High senior Ella Gutierrez agrees with Power Smith. She said the show is about how it feels, not what the cast looks like.
“We aren't addressing [the casting], and I feel like that should just be something that doesn't have to be addressed,” Gutierrez said.
But she also sees the significance of her casting as Sophie, a role typically played by a blond, white woman.
“I am a woman of color, … and I love being able to play it as me,” Gutierrez said. “It’s so fun. I just wish that when I was younger I could see someone who looked like me on stage, growing up, because I think I would have just felt so much better about myself and about the industry. I think it would have been amazing.”
Sonya Meyer is the show’s director, choreographer, set designer and costume designer. (The show also has production help from Music Director and Producer Christina Wenning, Assistant Director Betsy Zaubler and Assistant Choreographer Vreni Nielsen.)
Meyer said she chose “Mamma Mia” for this year’s production because the show is rich in strong female roles.
“It's true, we have great female friendships, a great mother and daughter relationship, and the dads are kind of the extra bonus that Sophie wants, but it makes sense that the women are the strong members of the story,” Meyer said.
Casting Sky as a woman augmented that roster, she said.
“I thought, “We’re in 2023, it's a love story, but having a female Sky just felt like the obvious choice really, to me,” Meyer said.”I've always been in musical theater my whole life, and I always think … there's not as many roles for women, as I think there should be.”
That aspect of the show stood out to Basalt High senior Evie Becker, who stars as Donna in “Mamma Mia” and also played Maria in last year’s production of “The Sound of Music.”
“There's a lot of shows — “Sound of Music,” for example — where a lot of the time, the main purpose of some women in these shows is just to like, get married at the end and kind of fulfill a plot device,” Becker said. “And it's really, really awesome to see how this story is based on the fact that these women are people, they make mistakes, they have relationships, and they love each other, but they're human.”
There’s a message in there that Becker says will resonate with audiences, too.
“No matter how much they mess up, no matter how much things go wrong, they still love each other,” Becker said. “And it's still that fact that you never hate them. … You know that from your own life, it's not perfect, and that's OK.”
The production this week features students from Basalt High School, Basalt Middle School, Roaring Fork High School, Carbondale Middle School, Bridges High School and Glenwood Springs High School. Tickets are $10 for students and $15 for general admission on Eventbrite and at the door of the shows.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct a caption in one of the photos. Donna and the Dynamos are pictured singing "Super Trouper" in the last photo.
