Beetlejuice Jr. will open the Springfield Theatre Centre season at the Hoogland Center for the Arts. The show will run October 3-5, 10-12. Friday and Saturday performances will be at 7pm. Sunday matinees will be at 2pm.
Craig is joined by stars of the show Jackson Thornton (Beetlejuice) and Olivia Garrett (Lydia) about their experience performing the show based off the iconic 1980’s film. We also chat with Nicole and John Sivak (directors) about their creative vision for the production, and how the script has been adapted to be suitable for all ages.
(Transcript produced with AI and human editing for readability)
Craig McFarland: Welcome back to Community Voices on NPR Illinois. I'm contributor Craig McFarland. I get the opportunity to talk to some of the cast members and also the directors of Beetlejuice Jr., which will be happening at the Hoogland Center for the Arts October 3-5, and Oct. 10-12. First, I'm going to mention that because I'm superstitious, I've said the name once so far in this interview and I'm going to try my hardest to only say it one additional time. Jackson Thornton, you are the lead of this show, which might be sort of an iconic character that people might know from a 1980s movie. But talk to me all about this show.
Jackson Thornton: It's been amazing. It's a great experience. I've had so much fun playing Beetlejuice and I love it so much. It is a different show and it's such a different, contrasting role than I've ever played before. It's so much fun to just go on stage have fun, and goof around the whole entire time while doing a funny voice. It's amazing.
Craig McFarland: Olivia Guerin, you're playing Lydia in this show. Iin addition to being in this production, you're also a member of the Hoogland Education Program. What is it about theater that inspires you to get onto the stage?
Olivia Garrett: I first started theater when I was six years old in our town's production of The Sound of Music, and after that, I've always enjoyed performing on stage. It gives me the chance to step into a different world and tell a story that isn't our own. I also love how live theater brings together the cast and the audience members in the same moment. It gives off a feeling of love and happiness and joy that can't be changed. I also love the way I get to express myself through different characters, feel those different emotions, and get to tell the different stories throughout the musicals.
Craig McFarland: Lydia's kind of a fun role, right?
Olivia Garrett: Oh yeah, she's very fun.
Craig McFarland: What do you enjoy the most about playing this role for the STC onthe Hoogland stage?
Olivia Garrett: What I enjoy the most about the Lydia role is that she's completely different from who I am. I'm really, really, really a happy person, laughing all the time. She is gloomy, straight face, she's sad, and I get to play something that I am not. What I love most of all during the musical is the way her and Beetlejuice work together as a team. They create this comedic duo, and it makes the whole musical live and full of fun.
Craig McFarland: To the directors, John and Nicole Sivak. John, talk to me about this show and how this is based off of a film that's received cult status in the 1980s when Michael Keaton starred in it. This is the junior version of this production. What is it about this show that people are going to be able to recognize from the movie? What changed a bit in the junior version?
John Sivak: What people are going to recognize from the movie is pretty much everything. The great thing about this show is they took the movie and essentially put it on stage. You're going to see all of your favorite characters, not only Beetlejuice and Lydia, there's also Miss Argentina, Delia, and Adam; all the characters that you remember from the movie are included in the show. The biggest thing they took out of the junior production that you don't have in the movie is a lot of the vulgarity, because Beetlejuice is a very vulgar character in the movie, and this is a kids' show, and we can't do that. But they found a way to really get rid of that and replace it with really clever things. They wrote this in a clever way. People aren't gonna miss any of that because you're gonna fall in love with the story. People who are fans of the movie, will react, "Oh my god, this is so cool," because they took the movie and put it into this funny, charming little musical that is really, really good.
Craig McFarland: Nicole, we know that theater takes a lot to put a production onto stage, not just the folks that are on stage, but also backstage. This happens to be a junior production, so you're working with kids here. Talk about bringing them onto the stage and getting them involved in this production?
Nicole Sivak: We lucked out. We had over 100 kids audition for Beetlejuice Jr. We cast 36 of those kids. When you see it, you don't feel like it's a junior production because they're amazing — Jackson, Olivia, great talent, all of the actors. We work to get the kids into it, because this is outside of their era. They might have seen the movie, but I remember the movie. It's kids, but it still feels like Beetlejuice. The kids have worked really hard. They've tapped, they've tangoed, they do it all. We have a great team that's really prepped them, and I can't wait for them to get an audience.
Craig McFarland: Speaking of your great team, are there people that you wanted to call out that have been helping you kind of stage this production between you and John?
Nicole Sivak: John and I are the directors, but we have Jess Kent as our assistant/artistic director. The cool thing about Jess is she is a Beetlejuice fanatic, loves it. She has pictures of her kids dressed as Beetlejuice at various ages. Sshe wanted to pay tribute to the film. Like the costumes, she'd looked at Barbara and Adam, for example, and made them have similar costumes as the movie, as opposed to the stage version that you would see on Broadway. She leaned into the movie in that regard. That was really cool. We have Becky Gowin is our choreographer. Christy Lazaridis is our vocal director. Andrew Maynerich to teach tap for one of our numbers, it's a high energy number that's really great. In addition to that, we have great producers with STC, Sam and Bess that help us with all the children. It's been a great experience. We have a wonderful, wonderful team.
Craig McFarland: Jackson, tell me about a favorite moment you have in this show and being this zany, not so vulgar character that is suitable for children of all ages to go and see. Tell me about it.
Jackson Thornton: My favorite part of this show has to be the opening. We start off with this sad, melancholy song. It's called Invisible. It's where Lydia's talking about her dead mom. It's so sad. Then you jump into this crazy song and it's all about being dead and it's all about how great and like crazy it is. It's a gigantic switch, and it brings the show to life.
Craig McFarland: Is there a comedic moment in this show that you really enjoy?
Jackson Thornton: Some of the Beetlejuice lines, they're really funny. He brings this crazy little bit of fun to it. He's jumpy. My favorite part is with Lydia. He's always just joking around with her and messing around with her.
Craig McFarland: Olivia, have you seen the film? What was your relationship to this property before you auditioned?
Olivia Garrett: I've seen clips of the film and mainly focused on Lydia's character. Winona Ryder played her in the original movie. One of my favorite things about the way she did Lydia was how she reacted with Adam and how she reacted with Barbara — seeing they were her new parental figures, especially at the end of the movie. They seem all in for it, that she loves them and she's finally happy. With Beetlejuice, she's gloomy, she's obsessing over death, and she is just having the greatest time with him because she finally feels free. She's a character that can have so many emotions in one person but focuses on gloom. I thought that putting gloom and anger together while playing her, like yelling quite a bit, brings a lot of emotion to her most emotional songs. It brings out the character, and I just love playing her.
Craig McFarland: Do you like going to that place now because you are such an optimistic, happy person? Is it nice to be able to go to this dark side a little bit for a couple of hours a night?
Olivia Garrett: It is a lot. I'm always laughing. It's not like I'm not laughing off stage or during practices when I'm not playing the character. But to get to play her and feel what it's like, during practices changes my voice. She has a different type of voice. I'll be walking around practice, and I'll realize, "Oh, I haven't switched back to how I talk." I'm switched to how she's talking. To feel comfortable within her, makes the role so much fun to play.
Craig McFarland: Talk to me about some of your other co-stars and other characters that are in this show.
Olivia Garrett: We have Jackson who plays Beetlejuice. We couldn't have the musical Beetlejuice without him. It's been an amazing time to get to work with him. It's been so much fun. We also have Kaylee, who plays Delia, Grace, and Henry who play Adam and Barbara, and Jack who plays Charles Dietz, who is my father in the show. This show also has a large ensemble who put their time and effort into creating their characters and making sure that the musical has so much fun to it and music to it. It has been amazing to work with the cast and I'm going to miss it once it's over.
Craig McFarland: John, I want to know about your creative vision when it comes to directing this show. How do you go about putting your own stamp onto something that is an established property like this?
John Sivak: We tried to just make this a love letter to the movie. We didn't want to put too much of our own stamp on it because this movie is so iconic. Nicole said Jess is a super fan of the movie — I love the movie. I have watched it so many times over the years, have a reverence for it. I wanted this to just simply be, and that's what the show really is in general, a love letter to the movie. Let's take this cool movie and all these great characters, and put them in a musical. That was our approach to this, "Let's do this as much as true to Beetlejuice as we possibly can." People are going to see a lot of cool things. People are going to see some things that you don't see in every Beetlejuice Jr. production because of that, because we try to add in some additional elements from the movie that people would recognize.
Craig McFarland: Nicole, when you're talking about the being inclusive for kids and families, what is it that you've taken from this experience of taking this property that people already know and making it suitable for kids, making it open and accessible for families to come to?
Nicole Sivak: What's really cool is right now these production houses that you buy the rights from, these musicals, like Beetlejuice, are still touring. Beetlejuice is about to go back on Broadway, but they allow community theaters to buy the rights for like junior or teen versions so we can see it locally in a different format. Beetlejuice Jr. is a lot different. Alex Brightman — when he did it, he did a lot of improv and ad lib, and you never knew what he was going to say. Jackson does a little bit of that, but does it appropriately. It is very clean, and the kids do a really good job of bringing these characters to life in a youthful and fun way. Kids that come to the show will love it because we have a giant sandworm. We have all of these special effects and cool props. It's catching to the eye, but you might not show your seven-year-old Beetlejuice the movie, but you can definitely bring them to this show because it is very family friendly.
Craig McFarland: Jackson, I got a chance to talk to Olivia about what inspires her to be involved in theater. What about you? What's your story and how did you come to this production?
Jackson Thornton: I came to theater from a teacher at my school, Iles. Then blossomed and grew. My mother helped me. She's always loved singing. From that, I've been auditioning for shows ever since I was a youngin'. I've come to Beetlejuice, and I've loved it, and it's been an amazing experience.
Craig McFarland: John, you also happen to be a board member of STC. There are nine shows on the slate for this season at the Springfield Theater Center this year. Give me the next couple of shows since this is the opening of the STC season.
John Sivak: The next one up is The Hello Girls directed by Emily Noel and Meg Hickman. That runs November 14-16, 21-23. After that is Bye Bye Birdie directed by Kevin Hart, it runs December 5-7, 12-14. The first show of next year will be Something's Afoot directed by Laurie McCoy. It runs January 16-18, 23-25.
Craig McFarland: It's nice that there is a diversity of theater that happens through Springfield Theatre Centre. It's great that they're kicking off a new season with so many young, talented actors like Jackson and Olivia and strong directors like John and Nicole. See Beetlejuice Jr. as it opens up on October 3. It's exciting.
John Sivak: Can't wait for people to see it. This cast is phenomenal. These kids are working hard and are great. We're excited for audiences to see this.
Craig McFarland: Thank you for your time today and break a leg.
