A bitter feud between longtime rivals sparks an intense turf war between two singing groups on a college campus. Think Pitch Perfect splashed with West Side Story.
This is Octets, a student-produced musical on its first tour across Ohio. To kick things off is a stop at Cincinnati's Walnut Hills High School May 30.
At the helm is Austin Lamewona and Nick Witzeman, both graduates of Walnut Hills. Now a rising marketing and arts management senior at Miami University, Lamewona says in an email that he has been working on the project for four years, starting his junior year of high school. But it wasn't until Witzeman got involved — two years his senior — that he began to take the project seriously. (Witzeman graduated from Miami last spring and now lives in Toronto.)
Flash-forward: After writing the musical — with no real end goal — the duo started to realize that it would benefit from "getting up on its feet." In the process of writing, Lamewona says he decided to begin work on self-producing the show. They established a Kickstarter campaign and raised over $2,000 and, eventually, the show came to Miami University to a sold-out audience in April 2018. That summer, they released demo tracks on Soundcloud and developed a website, octetsmusical.com.
The touring production comes with cuts and edits to the original script. It's also largely made up of a new team. Lamewona notes that half of the production team and cast hails from Miami, while the others are from the University of Cincinnati, Wright State University and Howard University.
"I’ve spent almost every day of my life for the past three years doing whatever I can to take the next step toward production with this show," he says, "so I haven’t really had a chance to take a step back and fully appreciate everything that everybody has done in putting this show together."
The rehearsal process for the touring show of Octets has taken place over 10 days at Walnut Hills, where it will have three performances before its next tour stop in Oxford and later in Dayton, Columbus and all the way to Cleveland.
Taking the show to five different venues has proven to be challenge, especially while working in a short window of time. As Lamewona notes, especially in directing the show, there are a lot of variables to consider in the process.
"Things like lighting and sound also differ so much with each space, so it has been essential to have people on the team who have a broad array of technical theatrical experience," he says. "There are some things that will have to be different with each space, so ultimately our company has to constantly be ready to deal with the ambiguity and unpredictability of this project."
The musical itself hits on themes that young adults grapple with as they enter the "real world" and begin to navigate their futures. Those include "feeling a lack of control over the things that happen in life and struggling to get to a point that feels like home," Lamewona says.
Lamewona notes the shrinking monetary support for arts education from the government and the "risky business" lens society has painted over the industry.
"I genuinely believe that the next generation of artists has to be incredibly intense and ambitious in self-production, and doing their own work," he says. "My hope is that young artists who come to see our shows in Cincinnati or Oxford or Dayton or Columbus or Cleveland will not only feel energized and inspired by the show itself, but will also feel compelled to start writing or making music and working to get their stuff out there on their own instead of waiting for an opportunity to arise."
Octets will stop at Walnut Hills High School 7:30 p.m. May 30, May 31 and June 1. For more info or tickets, click here.
