Less than a week away from the opening of The Banana Festival, we asked a few questions of the cast from BillyJoelTookMetotheProm.com, Hannah Barnett-Kemper and Merritt Crews:
The first word that comes to mind when you hear the name “Billy Joel”:
M: Awesome with lots of exclamation marks.
H: Pop-legend/sensation.
What’s it like to work on playing a fifteen-year-old girl?
H: Playing a fifteen-year-old girl is essentially tapping into all of that stuff that you keep suppressed on a daily basis anyway. I don’t think there’s a twenty-something chick out there who isn’t a fifteen-year-old girl who’s working really hard to curb those impulses.
M: I think one thing, for me, is trying not to play it too young. Remembering that fifteen isn’t nine.
H: But there’s something in that too. When you are a fifteen-year-old girl, you’re constantly working to not seem nine and working to try and seem eighteen. It’s a balancing act, where you want to have frappuccinos…
M: But you hate coffee.
Describe the play in five words.
M: Awesome. Excitement. Devastation. Betrayal…
H: Sparkles.
What’s the best thing about working with Hannah?
M: We have a lot of fun together. I’ve worked with people that I just want to throttle in rehearsal. And I don’t want to throttle Hannah, which is nice.
What’s the best thing about working with Merritt?
H: The fact that she doesn’t throttle me, apparently… When we can use our natural connection to benefit the characters… There’s not many people you can do that with on a stage. And there’s not that many people you have that with in real life, anyway.
