Masquers to welcome guests to ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ its postponed musical of 2020

“People come to see the Beast and they come to see Belle, but we couldn’t do the show with just those character roles. Having all of these little ones in this ensemble really makes a production huge,” said Sara Brabec, the Masquers Theatre board president.

Masquers made its initial return to the stage with “Steel Magnolias” earlier this spring to ease back into performances after the pandemic. But in order to return with a 45-member cast for “Beauty and the Beast,” it required them to rebuild the necessary volunteer base to put on a large production. 

“[It requires] all the parent volunteers, the backstage hands, the tech booth kids who are up there rocking the lights. … All of those background people really make a community theater production a community,” said Brabec, who plays the role of Mrs. Potts in the show. 

Not only was there a focus on rebuilding the team that supports local theater companies, but also on rebuilding the cast, as almost half of this cast are new members, according to Brabec. 

“It was definitely a big draw for theater communities,” she said. 

Reworking character analysis

The impact of a two-year delay on a production could have created an issue for the role of director, but director Shawn McWhorter took the two-year delay to dive deep into the history of the story and analyze each character’s core personalities to offer the Forest Lake area audience a new perspective on the classic show. 

“If I had a thesis to write on, I now know the show that I would want to write about. The characters are so fascinating, and it’s been a really big focus for us,” McWhorter said. 

Though the extra two years gave McWhorter more time for figuring out how he wants to see the characters represented, he believes he could have reached the nuanced character representations eventually just due to gaining familiarity with the script. 

“It always surprises me to take a Disney show and [see] how much of the script we tend to miss on our first [time] watching it,” McWhorter said.

As he revisited the script and story over and over again, he said he began to see what this production could be before the light at the end of the pandemic restriction tunnel was visible. 

“This is all you’re thinking about. You just start to get these images in your head of not just the characters, but the scene, and things that you can do on the set,”  McWhorter said. 

Through his research into the origin of “Beauty and the Beast” and its characters the Disney movie is based on, he said he got a bird’s eye view of why and how the characters operate the quirky ways they do.

Brabec has taken notice. 

“I’ve noticed a lot with Gaston, in particular; he’s not so man-handley as he’s normally portrayed. He’s very narcissistic and very insecure in his security. … But there’s just those little things that you’ll see a little more storytelling interpretation in the character work,” Brabec — whose husband, Dan, plays Gaston — said of the subtle changes. 

In Masquers’ production, Brabec tries to embody Mrs. Potts through her unbreaking motherly bond, not only to Chip but the Beast.

“We call her Mama Potts on stage because she’s very nurturing of Beast. … She hasn’t given up hope that he will change, that he will realize that he does have love and empathy and warmth in him,” Brabec said. 

McWhorter emphasized a key point of focus in the Masquers’ production is Mrs. Potts’ strength to watch her only child turn into a tea cup, while simultaneously caring for and emotionally supporting the Beast as his motherly figure.

“Mrs. Potts is more motherly in this performance than she has been in the movies,” Brabec said. 

In the early rehearsals after characters were casted, McWhorter explained his analysis of each of the characters’ back stories to their respective actors and allowed them the agency to bring character stories to life.

Ostercamp, who plays the Beast, said that background helped him understand how his being cursed by a witch at the age of 11 made him unruly and despise the world. 

“He’s portrayed as this very conceited person who needs to learn a lesson, but he was a kid who said no to a strange woman coming and sleeping inside of his house, and then he got cursed for it for all of eternity,” Ostercamp said. 

He is able to sympathize and accurately portray the character arc of the Beast from grumpy animal to empathetic human because he is equipped with the Beast’s backstory, which is not highlighted in the Disney ‘90s classic movie.  

“I feel like I would be grumpy, too, if I were cursed at 11, and now looked like a boar/bear/wildebeest type-man,” he said.  

Beyond how Ostercamp acts as the character, McWhorter further interpreted the downward mental spiral that becoming a beast had on his mental state, which he said the audience can more easily relate to today. 

“There’s also a lesson that the Beast is going through about self-loathing and how that can harm us and how that kind of self-hate can drag us down and it can make us things that we are not,” McWhorter said. 

The Beast embodies the contrasting character to Belle, whose job it is to bring light into each of the characters’ lives through her own identity. 

“The main point of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is not this typical Disney journey of somebody trying to find out who they are or how they fit in. It really is somebody who knows exactly who they are and they’re trying to prove that’s good enough,” he explained. 

The different perspective of looking at these beloved and well-known characters is how he hopes to leave his mark on the audience. 

“I think if you look deeper, look under the surface, you will find there is a lot more going on with most of Disney’s shows than what we see on the surface. It just takes being able to watch them with an open heart,” McWhorter said. 

More information on show times and tickets can be found here.