The movement was extraordinary in the recent production of Ride the Cyclone at Webster University’s Sargent Conservatory of Theatre Arts. The program credited the staging and choreography to “The Viewpoints Method and the Entire Cast.”

Wikipedia describes Viewpoints as “a movement-based pedagogical and artistic practice that provides a framework for creating and analyzing performance by exploring spatial relationships, shape, time, emotion, movement mechanics, and the materiality of the actor’s body.”

Following the Viewpoints methodology produced striking results in the musical by Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell. A key early scene re-enacted the catastrophic failure of a roller coaster called the Cyclone. The accident killed six high school students in the Saint Cassian Chamber Choir of Uranium City, Saskatchewan. The chaotic forces buffeting the choir were palpable in the riveting execution of the richly expressive choreography.

The presenter in the musical is the Amazing Karnak. It looks like an ordinary mechanical fortune-teller from a penny arcade, but this precognition machine has real powers. It was designed to predict the exact cause, time, and place of someone’s death.

To prevent this information from destroying the fun at a fair, Karnak was set to a novelty mode that withheld its morbid predictions. When the members of the chamber choir encountered Karnak, it could not warn them they were about to die in the impending roller coaster accident. Instead, the machine followed its programming and suggested that the children ride the Cyclone.

The action takes place in a room housing Karnak and other remains from a defunct amusement park. In its first address to the audience, Karnak predicts that its own demise will occur in a little over an hour, when a rat finishes chewing through the machine’s power cable.

Karnak’s plan for its swan song is to have the choir members tell their stories in a contest with an irresistible grand prize. One and only one of the children will be brought back to life to live beyond the accident.

The contestants, in order of their presentations, are:

• Ocean O’Connell (Addison Foote), a domineering overachiever.
• Noel Gruber (Chase Ohren), the only gay boy in his small Saskatchewan mining town. He fantasizes about being Parisian sex worker.
• Ricky Potts (Alex Daspit), who suffered from a degenerative disease in life but is free from it during the contest. He believes visitors from space have chosen him to save an alien race.
• Mischa Bachinski (Wylie Godleski), an angry rapper who was adopted from Ukraine and brought to Canada under false pretenses.
• Jane Doe (Cali Noack), the one unidentified victim of the accident, who has no memory of her former life.
• Constance Blackwood (Reilly Jane Grace), who submits to Grace’s abuse in hopes of winning her approval.

The conservatory cast members vividly portrayed each contestant and formed the most cohesive of ensembles in the musical numbers. Two amusement park workers were also part of the ensemble: Balloon Girl (Dylan Rhodes) and Ticket Taker (Cajani Hurd). Rhodes and Hurd were also covers for the female and male roles respectively.

Karnak could easily be portrayed by an onstage prop and an offstage voice. The conservatory’s Tristan Wallach was fully visible while playing Karnak from within a carnival booth. In Wallach’s splendid performance, Karnak spoke and moved with just the right suggestion of the mechanical and was amazingly still while observing the action.

Claudia Emig’s scenic design provided a large central area for the choreography in the Emerson Studio Theatre. A small stage was at one end of the theater; Karnak’s booth and the band were at the other end. A piece of the roller coaster track was hanging from the ceiling.

The choir initially appeared in school uniforms, but members were given imaginative costumes for the musical numbers by Micah Baumgartner, who designed the wigs, hair, and makeup as well as the costumes. The carnival atmosphere was enhanced by Chuck Immer’s lighting and Charlie Hartley’s sound. The realistic fights were choreographed by Wylie Godleski. Music director Charlie Mueller conducted the excellent band.

All the elements of the show were brought together by director Lara Teeter. The generosity of his leadership provided the room for everyone else’s creativity under Viewpoints.

—Gerry Kowarsky

Photo © Phillip Hamer Photography