“It's always fun to see stage magic happening in front of you,” Arts Bonita Producing Artistic Director Joseph Brauer declared.
It’s hard not to have fun when the show is Disney’s “Frozen” and your leads are Mia Zottolo as Elsa and Shennan Nelson in the role of Anna.
“So with this show, we wanted to have an opportunity for young kids and people that maybe haven't gone to the theater before to come and experience what a live production can be, and hopefully get bit by the theater bug and come see other shows or be in shows themselves,” said Brauer.
In a musical such as “Frozen,” tech plays an important role in creating a fantastical realm of ice, snow, bitter cold and foggy white-out conditions.
“So we use a low-lying fog machine which cools and uses … a nebulization or ionization process with water to keep fog really low on the ground so it reads more cold,” Brauer divulged.
And if that’s not enough atmospherics, Brauer added, “we also use fog geysers that blast straight up into the air.”
But that’s just the start of the process of recreating Elsa’s ice castle and the frozen tundra of Arendelle following Elsa’s rather emphatic refusal to bless her sister’s marriage to Prince Hans of the Southern Isle.
“We have two different snow machines that [take] tiny soap suds and spit them through a little sock and they turn into snow,” Brauer continued. “And then we have five different confetti blowers - confetti cannons people call them - that at different parts of the show lift snow up into the air.”
Brrrrr.
But to create that frozen landscape, it’s critically important for all these devices to work in tandem and the coordination of these apparatuses requires split-second timing.
“We are using automation with a system called Q Lab that basically lines up all of the effects and some of the lighting cues and the music and the projections and makes sure that it happens the same time,” said Brauer.
As when Elsa transforms from coronation gown into her ice queen garb.
“It’s a complete costume change that happens right in front of our eyes,” Brauer teased. “It has to happen like instantaneously.”
Brauer is concerned that patrons might be underwhelmed by the set when they first come inside the Hinman Auditorium. The set is a drab gray minimalist affair. But that’s intentional. Brauer and his design team have chosen to use projection mapping to amplify the atmospherics.
“I don't want people to feel like they're at the movie theater when they come see a live show,” said Brauer. “I think it needs to be more interactive. So, anytime I use projections it's really important to have different levels and different textures and different shapes that the projections can be mapped to, to enhance those areas rather than just having a big wall that basically is a movie screen behind the actors.”
So, rather than projecting images onto a flat screen or wall, the imagery is projected onto an arch and side panels. To achieve this, Arts Bonita invested in a four-channel, computerized projector that adjusts the images to the depth and contours of each panel.
“It is a lot of work to stretch everything and make it look right, but it feels a lot more interactive and the audience sees a lot more dimension,” Brauer noted. “Plus, the actors feel like they're in a world instead of being in front of a movie screen.”
The production also uses sound to maximize the show’s frigid feel.
“It is such an atmospheric kind of show, so we use a lot of tools like reverb and different effects to give it that atmosphere of being in Elsa's ice castle or out in a snowstorm,” sound engineer Hannah Suarez remarked.
Suarez also used sound to show Elsa’s power to create ice and snow.
“We actually added some sound effects for every single time I blast somebody,” noted Zottolo. “It helps me a lot and I also think it helps Shennan a lot, who’s our Anna, kind of feel like there’s actually ice hitting her in the heart, because … obviously there isn’t true ice coming out of my hands…. That ice blast sound is what really helps with that feeling of magic.”
But there’s more involved than a mere sound effect.
We actually have subwoofers under the stage,” Suarez explained. “[They produce this] big bassy sound that you feel in your chest. That makes the effect so much more realistic, almost like you're just a couple feet away from Elsa.”
Special effects and sound cues are actually a minor part of the Suarez’s responsibilities in a show such as “Frozen.”
“Yeah, so ‘Frozen’ is definitely a monster of a show,” Suarez quipped. “It is, we have a huge cast on mics.”
To be precise, Suarez has to monitor 24 miked actors through songs, high-energy dance numbers and stretches of dialogue. She has to turn on the mics for those actors who are singing and speaking, and turn off the mics for those actors who aren’t or who may be backstage.
For that, Suarez uses a software program called Theatre Mix.
With so much tech, including lighting, there’s always the chance that something will go awry. But Zottolo isn’t worried at all.
“We have just an amazing team back there working so hard that I am never worried when I step on stage about any issues,” Zottolo said. “I know that we are in good hands and the sound is great and the lights, the projections. And we have amazing, amazing stage managers [who can handle any issues that do arise]. So, once I step on the stage, really, I don't even think about the technical aspects [of the show] and that allows me to become so fully immerged in the world of Elsa and Arendelle that I just like forget all of my worries.”
This week’s performances are Thursday, July 23 at 7 p.m.; Friday, July 24 at 7 p.m.; Saturday, July 25 at 7 p.m.; and Sunday, July 26 at 2 p.m.
For tickets, telephone 239-495-8989 or visit https://artsbonita.vbotickets.com/event/frozen_%7C_arts_bonita_actors_theatre_%7C_717_-_726/193351.
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“Frozen the Musical” is an adaptation of the 2013 film of the same name with music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez and a book by playwright Jennifer Lee.
The show held its pre-Broadway engagement at the Buell Theatre at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts from August 17 to October 1, 2017. It began previews on Broadway at the St. James Theatre on February 22, 2018 and officially opened on March 22, 2018. The show closed on Broadway after 26 previews, and 825 performances due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Recognizing that the story and characters are important to the people who’ve grown up with the Disney film and Broadway show, Brauer and his creative team took great pains to make their production of the musical as realistic as possible.
“We wanted to make it not a carbon copy of the Disney movie or the Broadway show, but enough of a representation of the characters and the story that it fulfills the expectations of what kids might hope for coming to see a live show and older people as well,” Brauer said.
In aid of that objective, Brauer and his team relied heavily on lighting, sound and special effects.
“For me, lighting really sets the tone of the world for us,” said Zottolo. “I think that [every actor] can attest to this, that once we get on stage with lights, we really feel the show coming together and the world within the show is coming together.”
There are two numbers in which lighting really makes a statement.
“Towards the end of the show in the finale, when Elsa realizes she can thaw the world that she just froze, we have this really beautiful warm lighting that pretty much covers the entire stage and melts away the ice and snow,” Zottolo observed. “It actually feels like the sun is shining again.”
The other is “Monster.”
“’Monster is a very serious song,” Zottolo explained. “At the beginning of the number, she's watching all the troops, this group of people that is hunting her to capture her because she's a monster. And the lights reflect that dynamic. The light is shining on them while at the same time dimming on me and my character because she feels like the world would be better off without her. Then at the very end of the song, where she, spoiler alert, she blasts the soldiers and they fall on the ground, we have a really cool lighting design set for that where you can see Elsa’s powers forcing them to the ground.”
Set also helps Zottolo and her castmates get and stay in character.
“Our set is pretty much like a standalone set,” Zottolo added. “We don't have a lot of big set pieces, which was a challenge for us. But instead, we have amazing projections and we have a good amount of things that we can just utilize, which I think is very clever.”
Such as mammoth foam rocks.
“We carved them to look like stones in a castle wall, while at the same time trying to make them look like shattered ice a little bit and making them look like more earthy stones at some parts,” said Brauer.
Projection Mapping
As Brauer mentioned, Arts Bonita employs projection mapping in its production of “Frozen.” The term has significance for more than just theater. It is also a growing trend in the field of public art.
In the latter discipline, projection mapping involves projecting videos onto unconventional surfaces such as buildings, interior spaces, natural landscapes, and sculptures. It is a compelling way of telling stories and bringing vibrant visual effects into dark environments and nighttime settings. This projection technique offers productive new approaches to storytelling, community building, and even urban planning with cultural exchange at its roots.
It is a relatively new field of artistic expression. Projection mapping has gone from interesting gimmick to gaining more and more traction in the art community at large. Also known as video mapping, pixel mapping and spatial augmented reality, projection mapping is quickly becoming one of the most vibrant and interesting ways to display a public exhibition.
Today, it is recognized as a highly imaginative, immersive storytelling technique that combines light, color, movement, sound and even interactive components. By mapping moving, projected imagery onto buildings, sculptures and even nature itself, artists are able to transform an entire landscape into something wholly alien and original. Or as journalist and art consultant Louis M. Brill put it, “Whether its canvas is a 13th century castle, an iconic museum, or even a half-kilometer-long string of grain silos, projection mapping has effectively released high-definition video from the rectangular prison of the display screen.”
Projection mapping involves four steps.
The first involves finding a venue with an interesting projection surface: one that has a façade that contains numerous protrusions, columns, railings and sculptured surfaces — like the façade of the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center or Langford Kingston Home in the downtown Fort Myers River District.
Steps 2 & 3: The projection artist employs a range of software to generate a 3D model of the building or other structure and animation or graphic content that conforms to the 3D model. Stated differently, the image conforms to the topography of the building so that it appears to wrap itself around the façade’s contours.
Step 4: Once that is completed, the content is then projected onto the actual facade or space using high-lumen video projectors, powerful sound systems and media servers.
“Many large cities such as New York and Chicago have been using this medium to lead the way in art and technology, but the ultimate projection mapping event is “Blink Cincinnati,” a two-week festival featuring over 80 installations that encompasses more than 30 blocks in Findlay Market, Over-the-Rhine, downtown Cincinnati and Newport and Covington. In 2022, Blink attracted over 2 million people during the two-weekend event and produced more than $126 million of economic impact for the city.
A number of artists worldwide have appropriated landmark spaces as digital canvases. For instance, in 2015 the Sidney Opera House enlisted the aid of Universal Everything, a UK-based animation studio, to create a projection mapping show that utilized 22 different artists, each showcasing 30 seconds of individual animated material. The show was so well received that it’s become an annual event.
Other famous displays have included the Romanian Parliament Palace (in a project that combined elements of architecture, physics, chemistry and geometry to provide the audience with a unique and gorgeous five-minute display), the Royal Pavilion Garden in Brighton, England (where projection mapping was used to tell the tale of how the Brighton Pavilion was used as a military hospital in World War I), the imposing Senate House in London’s Russell Square (which was not only frozen, but induced audience members to break off chunks of ice using laser cannons as a virtual climber attempted to scale the 3D ice wall), the Hala Stulecia Museum of Architecture in Wroclaw, Poland (one of the few permanent Projection Mapping installations in the world), the Customs House in Brisbane, Australia (a virtual mine) and, predictably, Universal Studios Orlando.
As an art form, projection mapping is still in its embryonic stage, but it gives every indication of growing into a significant force in the world of art. The results have created blockbuster enthusiasm from the flash audiences attending these visual spectacles.
As in the realm of public art, cost considerations often limit the scope of what a theater company is able to do with projection mapping.
“There's a lot of theaters I know that have done this show using five or six different projectors, but those can cost $50,000 each,” observed Brauer. “So unless you do that a lot, investing in it for one show is maybe not always wise. So, yeah, we tried to do some of that but it's always challenging trying to juggle lighting design and projection.”
Sound design
Sound design includes more than merely ensuring that the actors’ voices and the music sound clean and intelligible no matter where someone is sitting in the audience. It also extends to sound cues and special effects.
In this production, the sound effects are used in combination with special effects every time Elsa blasts Anna or someone else with snow and ice.
Sound also plays an important role in the “Monster” musical number.
“With ‘Monster,’ it's a little bit of a balancing act because there's, it's kind of, if you know the song, there are two different parts to the song,” Suarez explained. “In one part, Hans and the angry mob he’s leading are hunting Elsa … fighting to find and like capture her. And then you have Elsa, who's trying to power through this storm and figure out who she is. So there’s that balance of Hans' chorus and her. Yeah, it's definitely one of my favorite numbers in the show. That's for sure.”
The show also presents Suarez with her fair share of mic management challenges. First, some of the musical numbers are pretty active, and it’s always possible for an actor to dislodge their mic or microphone battery pack.
“It's theater; something can always go wrong,” said Suarez. “A mic can be pulled out of a kid, right? Or if somebody gets caught on something, a mic has fallen out or actors can actually sweat out their packs. If sweat gets into the pack itself, it can cause a crackling sound and it needs to be replaced. So, we're typically on comms, like a little headset that we're able to communicate with people backstage if there's ever a problem. And we have tools here to monitor before problems even happen. So, a lot of times the audience doesn't even catch that there was a problem about to happen because we caught it right before they got onstage. Thank goodness for that.”
Suarez said that she got started in sound engineering as a church kid and then perfected her skills during an internship at Gulf Coast Symphony when she was 16 years old. She now works with musical groups and traveling shows and has done work with "Wild Kratts" on PBS.
Cast
The cast for “Frozen” consists of 42 actors:
Elsa: Mia Zottolo (Vocal Captain)
Anna: Shennan Nelson
Kristoff: Lantz Hemmert
Hans: Landon Maas
Olaf: Carter Gurule
Sven: Louis Fuelling & Maecy Lias
Duke of Weselton: Arian Won
Pabbie: Connor Devall
Bulda: Kamila Sanchez
Oaken: Eric Ortiz
Young Elsa: Avery Acosta
Young Anna: Gia Anderson
Bishop: Jaelynn Lias
King Agnarr: Owen Atkins
Queen Iduna: Hannah Hansen
Hidden Fox Soloist 3: Elsee Cribbs
Hidden Fox Soloist 1: Tavi Hunt
Hidden Fox Soloist 2: Samantha Calero
Hidden Fox Soloist 4: Mia Pimentel
Hidden Folk Child: Payton Hume
Ensemble (alphabetically)
Amelia Guzman
Avery Acosta
Bennett Reistad
Bennett Wilcoxson
Ella Maas
Elsee Cribbs
Grace Lowery
Jaelynn Lias
Maddie Snyder
Mia Pimentel
Tavi Hunt
Children’s ensemble (alphabetically)
Aria Anderson
Cassidy Whaba
David Pimentel
Declan McLaughlin
Elena Guerra
Ella Pastir
Elodie Sword
Gia Anderson
Griffin Stryker
Iris Lyon
Julio Sanchez
Lucy Pustizzi
Nicholas Albanis
Peyton Hume
Robert Minger
Taj Oomah
Zoe Pimentel
Music
“Frozen the Musical” features over 20 songs.
Act I
- "Vuelie / Let the Sun Shine On" – Company
- "A Little Bit of You" – Young Elsa & Young Anna
- "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" – Young Anna, Young Elsa & Anna
- "For the First Time in Forever" – Anna, Elsa & Company
- "Hans of the Southern Isles" – Hans
- "Dangerous to Dream" – Elsa & Company
- "Love Is an Open Door" – Anna & Hans
- "Reindeer(s) Are Better Than People" – Kristoff
- "What Do You Know About Love?" – Anna & Kristoff
- "In Summer" – Olaf
- "Hans of the Southern Isles (Reprise)" – Hans, Weselton & Company
- "Let It Go" – Elsa
Act II
- "Hygge" – Oaken, Kristoff, Anna, Olaf & Company
- "For the First Time in Forever (Reprise)" – Anna & Elsa
- "Dangerous to Dream (Reprise)" – Elsa
- "Fixer Upper" – Pabbie, Olaf & Company
- "Kristoff Lullaby" – Kristoff
- "Monster" – Elsa, Hans & Men
- "Hans of the Southern Isles (Reprise 2)" – Hans & Anna
- "True Love" – Anna
- "Colder by the Minute" – Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, Hans & Company
- "Finale" – Company
Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez composed all songs except for “Vuelie,” which was written by Christophe Beck and Frode Fjellheim.
Synopsis
“Frozen” is the timeless tale of two sisters, pulled apart by a mysterious secret. One is Elsa, who possesses the power to create ice and snow with the flick of her wrists. Regrettably, she wasn’t taught and doesn’t know how to control that power so she isolates herself from everyone to avoid unintended consequences.
The other is Elsa’s devoted sister Anna, who was just about killed as a small child when Elsa accidently froze her. Her memory of that trauma was erased, and as a young woman she’s left to wonder what she did wrong to cause her sister to shun her.
Thirteen years later, Elsa is to be coronated. Elsa struggles to suppress her powers during the ceremony, but when Anna defends her impulsive engagement to Prince Hans, Elsa's fear erupts, freezing Anna's heart and blanketing Arendelle in eternal winter. Elsa flees to the North Mountain, where she builds an ice palace and embraces her freedom in the iconic song "Let It Go," declaring herself liberated from societal constraints.
Determined to end the freeze and mend their bond, Anna sets out with the rugged ice harvester Kristoff and his reindeer Sven, purchasing supplies from the cheerful Oaken at his trading post. Along the way, they encounter Olaf, a cheerful snowman unwittingly created by Elsa's magic, who dreams of experiencing summer and provides comic relief with his naive optimism. The group faces blizzards and reaches Elsa's palace, but a confrontation escalates when Elsa accidentally freezes Anna's heart further, forcing Kristoff to rush her back to the trolls for aid.
Grand Pabbie reveals that only an act of true love can thaw Anna's heart, leading her to believe it must be a kiss from Hans. Back in Arendelle, Hans reveals his villainous plot to seize the throne, abandoning Anna to die and capturing Elsa during a public trial. As marshals close in on the imprisoned Elsa, Anna races back on Sven, arriving just in time to sacrifice herself—blocking Hans's sword meant for Elsa—transforming into ice in an ultimate act of sisterly love.
This selfless gesture thaws Anna's heart, teaching Elsa that love is the key to controlling her powers. Now fully empowered, Elsa ends the winter with an embrace, restoring Arendelle to summer. Hans is exposed and banished, the Duke of Weselton's schemes thwarted, and the sisters reunite fully, with Elsa blessing Anna's budding romance with Kristoff while Olaf enjoys a brief summer under an ice cloud.
Dramaturg note
The inspiration for Elsa’s character and powers traces its origins to Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Snow Queen.” However, the creators of “Frozen” took significant creative liberties with the story and the character to make it fit into their narrative. While Andersen’s Snow Queen is portrayed as a villainous figure, Elsa is a complex and sympathetic character whose powers are a metaphor for her emotional journey.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
