BWW Blog: Jessica Grove of Paper Mill's THE LITTLE MERMAID - Under the Sea

Hello! This is my first entry as a guest blogger for Broadway World. I am excited to be here and to give you a little glimpse into the beautiful production of Disney's The Little Mermaid in which I currently have the pleasure of playing Ariel! As a child, growing up in Columbus, Ohio, I constantly sang music from the animated film around the house and in the summer pretended to be Ariel in my family's pool, so you can imagine that this is a very big deal for the kid in me! And as for the adult Jessica, it's pretty awesome too.

So, to set the scene for you, it is 8 AM and I will be going back to bed for a couple of hours as soon as I complete this entry. That's right, my little guy Gavin was up at 5:30 this morning! Thank goodness I didn't stay at Nick Adam's birthday party too late last night (which was super-fun, with a great photo booth and many of our fabulously amazing Mermaid cast mates there to celebrate this lovely man's birth).

Tomorrow we are back at it, with just 3 weeks left at The Paper Mill. Even though the shiny newness and excitement of opening the show has worn off a bit, we are still having a blast and the show is settling in and continues to grow.

I have never enjoyed performing in a show more than this one. I believe it starts from the top, with Glenn Casale and John MacInnis being the most positive, delightful leaders, and the fact that Paper Mill Playhouse is just about the best place in the country to work. They have assembled not only a fiercely talented group of people, but probably the funniest, most salt of the earth human beings I have had the pleasure of sharing the stage with. To be honest, I was kind of dreading the idea of riding in a van to and from the theatre every day, imagining the commute would be tedious, but even on the days when traffic is the worst it feels like a 10 minute ride because we are laughing the whole way. It is almost a hazard because laughing can tend to make my voice tired!

So, needless to say, it is great to have the 2 days off to spend time with Dan (my husband) and Gavin and let my body recover from the physical strain of flying (swimming) and falling (when Ariel gets her legs and is learning to walk), but I am definitely looking forward to jumping back in tomorrow with my new friends who I adore.