Life in pandemic, hunker-down mode leaves many craving entertainment. The internet is certainly here to help but doesn’t usually offer much of a sense of community. Enter the Kenai Performers, who figured out a way to present local theater where the only risk of contagion is smiles.
The organization streamed a Throwback Concert on Facebook Live on Sunday evening, featuring musical performances from shows going back two decades.
The Throwback show was an hour of performances from original cast members of Kenai Performers musicals. That one was “When Words Fail” from Shrek in 2018, sung by Ian McEwen.
Board member Rebecca Gilman, sister, Brittany Gilman, and friend, Joe Spady, have been working on the project since March, contacting actors and getting them to reprise their songs.
“At least one of us have been in most of the musicals and stuff that we’ve done for the past 20 years. So we were like, ‘OK, this would be a good song from this show.’ And then everyone, really, that we reached out to, they just made it their own,” Rebecca Gilman said.
Aaron Gordon, with Final Spark film production, volunteered to edit and mix both the audio and visuals of the show, so each song shifts between seeing the singer today and photos and video clips from their show.
“I was just really happy that we could celebrate some of our history and bring back people and, yeah, let everyone connect and feel a little bit of happiness for a while,” Gilman said.
Song
That’s “If I Were A Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof, which was one of the Kenai Performers’ first big community musical, in 2000. It was sung by Marc Berezin, who now lives in Oregon. The Throwback show included Kenai Performers alumni from near and pretty dang far.
“That is the great thing about social media and being so connected these days is that a lot of people have moved out of the peninsula area but we were able to connect with them. We actually wouldn’t be able to do that if we had just wanted to do this as a live performance,” Gilman said.
The Kenai Performers have presented just about every major Broadway musical you can think of over the last 20 years and most are represented in the Throwback show — “Brigadoon,” “Guys and Dolls,” “Annie,” “Sound of Music,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Peter Pan,” “Music Man” and many more.
While there are numerous songs by the heroes and heroines of the shows, the villains are represented, as well. Here’s Chris Pepper singing “My Name” as Bill Sikes in the 2009 musical “Oliver.”
Song
The show wasn’t all throwbacks. There was a glimpse of a non-pandemic future, delivered by Brittany Gilman.
“Today I’m going to be singing for you ‘I have a dream’ from ‘Mama Mia,’ which has not been produced by the Kenai Performers — yet. It is slated to be our music for the 2021 season,” Brittany Gilman said.
Song
You can watch the Throwback Concert by visiting the Kenai Performers page on Facebook.
