Just when you thought you couldn’t find any songs to let your mind groove and your feet move, Motown is coming to the UC Santa Cruz Theatre Arts MainStage. Opening on February 20 is the Oscar and Tony award-winning musical, Dreamgirls.
Dreamgirls was a 1981 Broadway hit musical, as well as a star-studded 2006 cinematic showcase for Beyoncé and a fresh-faced Jennifer Hudson. This time around it’s directed by teaching professor at UC Santa Cruz’s theater arts program, the jovial Don Williams. It is also produced by UCSC’s African American Theater Arts Troupe (AATAT) and the Department of Performance, Play & Design.
Live musical theatre can transcend the moment and lift an audience up. Behind the scenes, it is guaranteed that in the chaotic two weeks before opening night, the director—the glue that holds everything together, in this case Professor Williams—will be spinning a dozen plates in the air while a small dog rides a unicycle around him. The choreography, the lights, the sound, the actors, the set design, the tempo, and getting the best performances out of the vibrant student cast are all within Williams’ purview.
For Williams the resilience and confidence to ensure that the “show must go on” blossomed at an early age.
“Initially, one of the first things I did, was in junior high,” Williams says, in between running multiple errands for the upcoming production. “I was involved in a talent show. And, I did Michael Jackson.”
“I thought I was going to have a bunch of guys backing me up, but they dropped out a week before the talent show happened. I was being bused to school, and I had four young ladies that stood up and said, we’re going to help you. So that was my team. We choreographed our dance and we learned the song ABC. And, we won first place. And, that’s what I did,” Williams laughs.
While directors can make choices that alter the shape and feel of original material, Williams kept the play in the essence of Motown. Williams believes it was a captivating time where legends were born.
“We had, definitely some major players like, Jackie Wilson, and Diana Ross, we had Marvin Gaye. We had some dynamite people who were putting waves in the water. Like, hey, we exist. And when we sing, we sing with authority and from the heart. And if it goes, if it comes from the heart, it goes to the heart,” Williams says.
Dreamgirls, delighting with song and dance, has a thick through line about Black Americans that were taken advantage of in the entertainment business (cesspool) of the 1960 and ‘70s. With more than a subtle nod to the story of Diana Ross and The Supremes, what makes Dreamgirls soar are the voices.
Williams was being barraged by his students to do a musical.
“My students have been pressing me for the last several years. ‘We want to do a musical, Mr. Williams. We want to do a musical.’ Last year when we were doing Paradise Blue, every time we had breaks or downtime, they would break out the karaoke machine and start singing. And I said, ‘Oh, okay, well, we got some voices here,’” Williams confesses.
Playing the character Deena, the backup singer who gets her time to shine, by stepping on her friends, is UCSC four-year student, Selah Hyson. “ I was the main person with the karaoke machine,” Hyson says.
“I was a stage manager of Paradise Blue, and I would have control over the sound before all of our shows. And so while all the actors were backstage and getting in their costumes, I would set up the stage and place props and I would play songs for musicals, and just do like karaoke.
And then I also have my own karaoke machine that I bring to all of our parties and all of our cookouts and whatnot. So I am the main advocate for that,” Hyson laughs.
Hyson is a savvy, charming, powerhouse onstage and an environmental science major and Black studies minor, in class. Through AATAT, Hyson rekindled the connection, family and belonging that she missed from her early love of theatre and music. When asked if she would ever, like her character Deena, push her friends aside to move into the limelight, Hyson replied, “Honestly, I don’t think I could ever leave my friends behind. I’m nothing without them. I truly am nothing without my community, and without the people I love.”
Dreamgirls runs from Friday, Feb. 20 – Sunday, March 1, 7:30pm, at UC Santa Cruz Theater Arts Mainstage, UC Santa Cruz Campus (Western entrance), 411 Kerr Road, Santa Cruz. Tickets are $10-$20 and more info at events.ucsc.edu/series/dreamgirls
