The Sound of Music
Kelly, Mary Pat
Mary Pat Kelly VESPERS ON BROADWAY 'The Sound of Music' ~ hen it comes to popular culture, nuns and kids have been taking it on the chin. But they shine in the current Broadway revival of...
...She died...
...We attended Vespers and High Mass, and listened to a wonderful explanation of the origin of chant and what it means to them...
...The role was a real departure for her, she said, and at first, seemed too much of a stretch...
...How could contemporary young Americans imagine Austria in 1937 or even the sensibility of Broadway in the 1950s when the show was written...
...For my first audition," she explained to me in her dressing room at the Martin Beck Theater on Broadway, "I remember driving down the freeway...
...9 Matthew L. Lamb, S.T.L., Ph.D...
...She was determined that the portrayal of the nuns of Nurnberg Abbey be authentic and respectful of the Benedictine way of life, so she visited the abbey near Salzburg...
...SACRED HEART UNIVERSITY PRESS Continuity and Plurality in Catholic Theology Essays In Honor of Gerald A. McCool, S.J...
...She was a beautiful singer who had studied opera and had been chosen for a training program at the Metropolitan Opera...
...And I sang the song and the rafters were ringing...
...I had gone to Catholic school...
...He only shows up when he has to hire another one...
...I thought, 'My morn would be good in this part...
...We begin the show with a chant, and I love that we start with spirituality...
...Cernera Cmnwl 6.98 Publication Date: June 1998 Clothbound, viii + 246pp...
...9 Andrew Tallon, Ph.D...
...We nuns had become a unit and we'd stand in a circle at rehearsal and try to keep the pitch...
...If she were on this earth it would be so great.' And then it came to me, 'I'll play my mother.' When I went into this audition, I was so calm, I was so focused, and I just felt it...
...So do the ensemble of young actors who bring to the Von Trapp children's longing for family and childhood the experience of today's kids that these birthrights are not guaranteed...
...They always want to think about her...
...My character's gift was her ability to stay calm in the storm," said Cohenour...
...And how sad to see the lives of abused children turned into special reports with long spaces for advertising...
...When I finished, there was total silence...
...Gelpi, S.J., Ph.D...
...Yes," Tracy agreed, "our father really doesn't want to be with us because we remind him of his wife...
...You can feel the audience respond...
...At the performance, the theater was full of families with children the same ages as the young actors on the stage...
...Well, the show's really about wanting to be a family," said ten-year-old Tracy Alison Walsh, who plays Birgitta, as Andrea Bowen, eight, who plays Marta, settled onto the lap of Sara Zelle, sixteen, who plays Liesel, the oldest...
...I was thinking, 'I'm out of my mind to try and do this because I don't know what she's about.' And, of course, I had the movie version in my head and Peggy Hall's great performance as the mother abbess...
...Celebrating the 80 th birthday of this preeminent scholar, teacher and author of numerous books, including Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century, are essays by: _9 John P. Boyle, Ph.D...
...In the same way, today's children are portrayed as citizens of an undiscovered country inaccessible to those of us who've left it...
...I sang, 'Climb Every Mountain.' Now I'm noted for singing lyric in the upper register...
...Account# Cardholder's Signature Ship To: Name Phone# Address city, State, Zip Code Sacred Heart University Press 5151 Park Avenue Fairfield, GT 06432-1000 Voice: 203.371.7971 Fax: 203.365.4889 Email: mirona@sacredheart-edu Commonweal | 9 June 19, 1998...
...Great care was taken to make sure that convent rituals were authentic...
...There were two groups among the Von Trapp children, the young performers explained: The bad kids--the three oldest--who drove away the governesses with tricks and bad behavior...
...She was elected to the office of abbess because of her discernment, a term that became the center of my performance...
...9 William V. Dych, S.J., D.Theo...
...As the others crowded around, they seemed to have created a kind of off-stage family...
...The young actors playing the Von Trapp children had no equivalent of Regina Laudis to visit to find their characters...
...We worked so hard on the Gregorian chant...
...Payment enclosed Charge to my [~ VISA O MasterCard Exp...
...9 Frans Jozefvan Beeck, S.J., Ph.D...
...I think Frau Schmidt, the woman who wants to marry our father, is right when she says that we want to get rid of the governesses because we want our father to come home...
...When there were many nuns in our lives, it was more obvious that while some were petty, mean, or silly, most were kind and inspiring...
...She was really devout in her Catholicism...
...That common experience seems gone now...
...I'm not known for the big stuff...
...All orders must be prepaid...
...These '90s kids had an explanation for the division: "The reason we want to get rid of all the governesses, including Maria," said Walsh, "is that we don't want to get attached, because the last person we got attached to was our mother, and she's gone...
...The photo had been cropped to use as a joke for a "humorous" greeting card...
...I looked over at the table, and everyone was crying...
...Continuity and Plurality in Catholic Theology...
...But they shine in the current Broadway revival of The Sound of Music...
...Mary Pat Kelly's new novel, Special Intentions, was recently published (Dublin: New Island, 1997...
...The standing ovation they gave the show confirmed my own conclusions: Kids today get The Sound of Music, and Benedictine spirituality can still speak to us...
...But in the end, he's a kind man and he really loves us...
...They don't want to get hurt again and they don't want anyone to replace their mother," continued Ryan Hopkins, thirteen, who plays Frederic...
...This influenced their portrayal...
...But, then I thought of my mother...
...9 Thomas F. O'Meara, O.P., Ph.D...
...Observing life in the abbey reinforced for the actresses that "these women did not leave their personalities at the convent door...
...I recently saw a snapshot taken unawares of a sister who had taught me in college...
...9 DonaldL...
...and the younger ones, who were willing to accept almost anyone who would pay attention to them...
...9 Joseph A. Komonochak, Ph.D...
...9 John O'Donndl, S.J., D.Phil...
...We were not to be automatons, but individual souls Commonweal | 8 June 19,1998 encouraged to grow and contribute...
...That Cohenour's initial insight into the character of the abbess was not found in some kind of boilerplate "nunness" resonated with director Susan Schulman, award-winning director of Secret Garden, Violet, and Sweeney Todd...
...Patti Cohenour, as the mother abbess, whose wisdom seems acquired rather than infused, gives a spirited and nuanced performance...
...currency only), VISA or MasterCard are accepted...
...As someone who was both a nun and a child, I have come to resent the reduction of both to negative or silly caricatures...
...We asked, 'Will we ever get this?' I remember when we 'zenned' into it...
...ISBN1-888112-01-8 Quantity _ _ @ $23.00 CT Residents add 6% CT sales tax Canadian residents add 7% GST Shipping & Handling: (Add $3.00 for one book and $1.00 for each additional book* Outside the U.S...
...At a backstage interview, I asked them how they got in touch with these children from another era...
...I know that the religious habits have been changed, and many orders are much more involved with jobs and careers in the world, but I found that the Benedictine houses like Nurnberg Abbey and Regina Laudis maintain a cloistered life, wear the traditional habit, and chant the hours in Latin...
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...So for us, Regina Laudis was very important...
...Had this dignified woman seen it, she would have been mortified...
...It felt like individual prayers coming together in unity, and it was just mesmerizing...
...I found that the sisters were really remarkable teachers and I'm very grateful for my education, but it was my mother's faith that was especially strong...
...Personal check, money order (U.S...
...There she discovered that there was a sister house, Regina Laudis, in Bethlehem, Connecticut, and she brought the actors there...
...Edited by Anthony J. Cernera, Ph.D., President, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, Conn...
...I asked Cohenour, who starred in the original Phantom of the Opera, Edwin Drood, and Big River, how she had created the character of the mother abbess...
...We'd go flat, then sharp...
...They had had weeks of rehearsal, attended school in the room beyond the make-up tables, and were now performing eight shows a week...
...The familiar joys of the show are given a new grounding, and sold-out houses indicate that contemporary audiences do want to see a story based on principle, self-sacrifice, love and plenty of saccharine...
...The actors in The Sound of Music were able to go beyond such stereotypes and create human characters...
Vol. 125 • June 1998 • No. 12
