This is their quest
Stage stars sing, dance in virtual gala to raise funds for Goodspeed
“If I’m being honest, I got emotional the first time I sang (‘The Impossible Dream’) because I was just overwhelmed by the feeling of getting to sing again ... I had multiple moments when I was out there singing on the balcony that I got a little teary-eyed.”
— ACTOR NICHOLAS WARD ON HIS PERFORMANCE FOR GOODSPEED MUSICAL’S VIRTUAL GALA
Actor Nicholas Ward strides across the outdoor balcony at the back of the Goodspeed Opera House and gazes out toward the river and the landscape beyond as he sings, with deep emotion, “This is my quest, to follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far.”
His expression morphs into one of fierce determination as he delivers lyrics about being willing “to fight for the right of this heavenly cause.” He spreads his arms wide and intones, “And I know if I’ll only be true to this glorious quest.”
Cameras capture every second of his bravura performance for Goodspeed Musicals’ virtual gala, which the public can see online on Oct. 29. The song, of course, is “The Impossible Dream,” one of the most iconic numbers in musical theater, and it is from a show, “Man of La Mancha,” which began at the Goodspeed Opera House.
Ward is among the luminous array of actor/singers who have recorded their segments at the Opera House in East Haddam for the gala — including James Snyder, who was Harry Potter on Broadway in “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” and Billy Bigelow in Goodspeed’s “Carousel”; and Klea Blackhurst, who was Dolly Levi in Goodspeed’s “Hello, Dolly!”
When Ward sang “The Impossible Dream,” it was the first time since March that he has performed.
Back then, he was understudying the role of Mufasa on Broadway in “The Lion King,” having joined the company in November after a run in Broadway’s “Frozen.” He was scheduled to do several performances on that fateful week, but everyone in the show got a call March 12 to say not to come into the theater because Broadway was shutting down.
Ward says that getting to perform again now was a moving experience.
“If I’m being honest, I got emotional the first time I sang (‘The Impossible Dream’) because I was just overwhelmed by the feeling of getting to sing again ... I had multiple moments when I was out there singing on the balcony that I got a little teary-eyed.”
He says artists work so hard to get to a certain place in their lives and careers. Now Ward, like so many actors during the pandemic, is trying to develop other opportunities, but shifting his life is daunting. He’s trying to find the positive.
What has certainly been a positive for Ward: this return to Goodspeed, where he understudied the role of Joe in “Show Boat” in 2011.
Helping out
Goodspeed has held an annual fundraising gala for years, but this one is arguably the most important, since the organization’s stages have been closed since mid-March because of the pandemic. The money raised through this gala will help support Goodspeed until it can reopen.
With the shutdown, Goodspeed Producer Donna Lynn Cooper Hilton says, “Our revenue for the year was dramatically impacted — at last count, I think it’s $6.5 million in revenue we’ve lost.”
Even though Goodspeed is down to a skeleton staff, it still has to maintain its two theaters and its massive campus, with 40 buildings. Goodspeed presents its productions at the Opera House and the Terris Theatre in Chester, but it also does a good deal of new work development at its Festival of New Musicals and Johnny Mercer Writers Grove.
“We do a lot, and we earn our way normally by selling tickets. We do fundraising, but ticket sales is the biggest piece of our economy, and that was taken away from us,” Hilton says. She adds that the gala fundraising is “important in terms of just sustaining us until we can get back to anything that feels like normal.”
All tickets purchased for “Shakin’ the Blues Away: A Virtual Gala Concert for Goodspeed” and all donations made during the gala will be matched, dollar for dollar, by the Scripps Family Fund for Education and the Arts.
The performances for the gala take place throughout Goodspeed’s iconic Opera House.
“We visit some places the audience knows really well and some places the audience never gets to go,” Hilton says.
She adds, “If people are missing Goodspeed, ( the virtual gala) is really a good opportunity to have a Goodspeed experience. We took that building, our beautiful home, and created really great musical theater performances in unexpected locations.
“I think that people will really feel that they have had a Goodspeed evening. I think it’s as close as we can possibly come to actually welcoming them to a show in the building.”
The gala was filmed over the course of four weeks from mid-September to early October, with 24 hours between filming different performances in the building, to allow time for cleaning.
Most of the filming work was done by a group of six people: Goodspeed Artistic Associate Michael Fling, who directed, along with Hilton, two camera people, a sound person and a lighting person.
Goodspeed resident music director Adam Souza did the arrangements and some of the orchestrations for the numbers. Some songs feature piano accompaniment, while others also include cello, violin and viola.
Kelli Barclay provided the choreography.
Living the ‘Dream’
Ward recorded his “Impossible Dream” vocals inside the Goodspeed Opera House first, to a prerecorded piano track, and then filmed outdoors the following day.
“I stood out there, and we did the song maybe 30 times. I was lip syncing for my life,” he says with a laugh.
Ward had to lip sync because his segment was filmed outside where noises would interfere with getting a clean vocal recording. Other performances for the virtual gala were sung live.
Ward rarely lip syncs and found himself singing out loud a few times but tried not to — in part because he had a concert later that same week.
He was debuting his solo concert at the Sharon Playhouse in Sharon, Conn. He did that show in front of a socially distanced audience of about 60 people.
“It was so much fun, so exciting,” he said of the Sharon show. “The audience could not have been more loving and supportive and appreciative. You can tell they are, just like us as artists, they are starving for live entertainment.”
Hilton had suggested that Ward sing “The Impossible Dream” for the Goodspeed gala, and it happens to be a special song for him.
He recalls that watching a bootleg tape of “Man of La Mancha” as a child was one of the things that inspired his performing-arts path.
“All those lyrics are so valuable right now about ‘To dream the impossible dream’ — the impossible dream could mean so many things. … It’s like an anthem to me right now,” he says.
He adds, “Right now, I feel like music is therapy for the soul … It’s a really, really beautiful thing that they’re doing (at Goodspeed).”