Vestavia Hills High School Theatre will be presenting their fall production of The Little Prince this week. Their performances will be held in the VHHS Auditorium at the following times:
Thursday, November 17th at 7:30 PM
Friday, November 18th at 7PM
Saturday, November 19th at 7PM
Natalie Turnage will be playing the Little Prince in The Little Prince which is based on the novella of the same name by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The show tells the story of an aviator who crashes in the middle of the desert, where “a strange child,” who Natalie calls the titular protagonist, takes him on adventures and leads him to discoveries.
Natalie, a senior this year, has been involved in theatre for 8 to 9 years now. At VHHS, she has been a part of choir, show choir, theatre tech, and theatre, of course. Natalie is the president of an auditioned ensemble choir and the vice president of VHHS Thespians. She also participated in the International Thespian Festival this past summer.
Recently, VHHS Theatre competed at the District Trumbauer Theatre Festival, bringing home numerous honors for individual events and for The Little Prince as well.
Natalie received not only Best Performance from an Actor for her acting in The Little Prince, but she also received superior ratings in an individual event for her choreographed pantomime. What is a pantomime, you may ask? I asked Natalie the same thing.
“A pantomime is a story told through movement. It’s a lot like dance, except instead of interpreting situations through dance moves, you interpret situations by miming them out. Take going to the store, for example. With a dance, you could probably leap and bound around, and people could get the overall idea that you’re at the store. However, with pantomime, you would mime out shelves, groceries, etc. It’s a lot more literal,” she answered.
I also asked Natalie about her initial reaction, feelings, and thoughts when she got the role of the Little Prince. Natalie recalls that it was the day before the August SAT, and she was in the parking lot of Johnny Brusco’s after school, meeting with Ensemble Choir to get some food.
“[The results] were posted outside the theatre room door. I actually didn’t know they posted the results because I made a mistake and thought they were going to be posted in Google Classroom. So, my friend Katherine [De Buys], also in the show, comes up to me and congratulates me and tells me I got the role,” Natalie recounts.
She describes her initial feelings: “It’s like when you open a present; it's exactly what you wanted, but you weren’t expecting it in the slightest. It's that feeling of disbelief, and there was a lot of disbelief at first.”
“Afterwards, I was over the moon ecstatic about it, and I texted my mom, my grandma, the whole family. It was so exciting because it was a role that involved a lot of stuff that I’m passionate about, and it is overall a beautiful show. Looking back on it now, I’m so happy I initially auditioned because it really has been an awesome experience with the cast and all,” she says.
“It has been a lot sometimes,” Natalie acknowledges. She explains, “There are two versions of the show: the mainstage production and the studio version. The mainstage production is the full hour and 20 minute show, and the studio version is our 30 minute cut show for competitions like Trumbauer.”
“We had to learn how to do blocking for both our full show and our competition show and switch between those. That has been kind of tricky. This past week, especially, we came back from Trumbauer, Saturday [November 5th], where we performed the studio version. We have to work on our full show now for the performances November 17th through 19th. But then after that, we go back to working on our studio version for [Trumbauer] state in December. It’s an adjustment because we have to relearn different cues and things like that, but it’s really fun and stressful at times.”
Natalie ends with some wise words: “Anything that's worth doing will be stressful at times.”
Tickets for The Little Prince will be sold for $10 on GoFan and for $15 at the door. Be sure to come out and see Natalie and the amazing cast of The Little Prince this week!
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