By Michelle Kinsey—
MUNCIE, IN—After more than two decades in theater, Kyle Thomas has landed his dream role.
“In most of the musicals that I participated in, I usually played smaller roles or was part of the ensemble,” he wrote in an email exchange. “I think every actor has a dream role where they believe their talents can really shine. For me, that role was Quasimodo.”
Thomas, a Deaf actor, will take on the classic character who becomes deaf due to the ringing of the cathedral bells.
But his connection to the character goes much deeper.
“As a Deaf man mostly educated in ‘mainstream’ schools, I can relate to much of Quasimodo’s social isolation, his longing to fit in, to be liked/loved, his active ‘inner life’/imagination, as well as having been bullied and treated differently due to his disability,” he wrote. “I feel that I can draw upon my experiences and hopefully portray the character with an added layer of authenticity.”
Muncie Civic Theatre will present “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” through Oct. 23 at the historic downtown theater. Performances on Thursday, Friday and Saturday will begin at 7:30 p.m. and the Sunday matinees will begin at 2:30 p.m. A Closed-Caption Performance will be Oct. 16. The show is rated PG.
“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” is based on the Victor Hugo novel with songs from the Disney film.
“There are loads of retellings of Victor Hugo’s ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame,’ so I think everyone’s vaguely familiar with the plot of a young boy who is disfigured and abandoned to be raised by an official of the church of Notre Dame,” said director Brittany Covert. “This production uses all the Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz music from the Disney film while staying truer to the plot of the original text.”
Covert, who is Civic’s Marketing Director, said she wanted to lead this production because she has “loved this music from the very first listening.”
“It is big, sweeping, and emotional,” she said. “To support this, there is a full choir on stage singing throughout the entire show in addition to the 11 live musicians in the orchestra pit.”
This will be the first show Civic has staged that includes American Sign Language, according to Thomas. He will be using a combination of ASL and spoken English.
“I love the fact that [Civic is] willing to be inclusive and I think it’s beneficial for all involved to work toward building a community where diverse voices can be represented, seen, and heard,” Thomas added. “Although there have been challenges, it has been an exciting process and everyone I’ve worked with has been wonderful.”
Covert said she wants audience members to walk away from this production with hope.
“This is a complicated and sad story, but for me a story of hope,” she said in the show’s Director’s Note. “Hope isn’t always cheery or optimistic. Esmeralda is the embodiment of hope in this story. She hopes for a better, kinder, more just world and when faced with certain death, is even more certain in the hope that ‘change will come someday.’ Hope, however, does not mean patience or passivity. Esmeralda is not content to wait and hope for a better life for her people. She lives boldly and bravely seeking justice when the world would rather her be silent. “
She added, “Hopefully watching the tragedy that befalls Esmeralda and Quasimodo, we can leave the theater hopeful to make the world a little kinder and just.”
For tickets and more information, go to www.munciecivic.org or call 288-PLAY.
Show made possible through support by
Boyce Systems
MITS Bus
Salyer-Taylor Mechanical Contractors
Stallings Wealth Management
Starocket Media
