BWW Blog: Meet College Student, Amanda Bohlmann - Small Town Theatre

Hi there! Welcome to my first BroadwayWorld blog! My name is Amanda & I am currently an ensemble member in my college's production of Sweeney Todd. I'm here to tell you a little bit about my experience being part of an incredible cast in a production in a tiny little town called Sparkill, NY.

I go to a tiny school in the middle of New York. So luckily for me, the theatre program here is extremely small and I am still able to do theatre as a Childhood/ Special Education major. I knew that teaching was the career path that I wanted to take but I knew that I did not want to give up performing because it was something I have enjoyed doing since I was young. I feel the most confident when I am onstage and did not want to give it up just yet.

When I was younger, I performed in a production of Oliver Twist as well as many cabarets at my performing arts camp. I stopped performing once I got to middle school because I found myself struggling to find the confidence to get onstage. My freshman year of college, after seeing Kara Lindsay's performance in Newsies, I was so inspired to want to get back onstage. A few weeks later, I auditioned for my school's production of Zombie Prom, got the role of Candy, and have been doing shows with them ever since.

My theatre group is a club at my school. Everyone is welcome to join, no matter what your major is. That's one of the things I love most about it because it gives people the chance to still do what they love aside from their major. Our cast comes from all different majors ranging from communications, to education, to criminal justice.

Right now, we are currently working on our production of Sweeney Todd which opens tonight (April 21st).

During the past two and a half months we have been faced with the challenges of learning the intense harmonies (thanks, Sondheim!), juggling school work on top of rehearsals, and trying to stage such a complex show on a very small stage. We've had rehearsals for 4 hours every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We had to spend as much time as possible on the music since the harmonies of this show get crazy, especially in the large ensemble numbers. We often had to mix music rehearsals with staging rehearsals as it got later in the rehearsal process. We have an incredible music director who has devoted so much time to working with us.

Since the musical is the biggest representation of our performing arts program, we feel the pressure to always make the shows the best we could possibly make them. Yes, sometimes that requires a lot of stress (especially during tech week), but in the end, we pull through and have such a blast putting our shows together.

Join me as I share my experiences about the craziness that goes into putting a show together!