My take on Sondheim's Cinderella in "Into the Woods"

Blogger is being annoying and won't let me put this in the previous post. So you'll have to read the previous post on character development to fully appreciate this.

Let’s take, for example, my favorite musical in the whole world, "Into the Woods" by Stephen Sondheim. I have always vocally wanted to sing Cinderella but before I was like “she’s a princess” and I am just not. But now that I've done this discovery I've realized she is not really that at all. Sondheim’s Cinderella is complete solitary and has no family who loves her or knows her and she just wishes and wishes to be someone different. Plus she is kind of abrasive and quirky…hello, she talks to birds. So she meets the prince and suddenly she's this beautiful princess and she's not really sure that that is what she wanted. She is a big pile of worry and confusion, but she’s sharp and takes a risk and lets it happen. She becomes the princess even if she isn’t sure she is on the inside. And she has the prince.  But life, as it always is, is not perfect. 

In the Act II, her prince cheats on her and her friends start getting killed via Giantess and she becomes the nurturer for many of the surviving characters. And I just GOT it. I realized that I can, in fact, EMBODY her. This system really does work. And I love this musical so much, not because I can sing the hell out of this character, but because I understand HER. I can BE her. It's very fulfilling as an actor to make this kind of discovery. And I'm so excited to find and discover more characters just like this. Let's just hope I get to play them someday. :)

Sondheim is a genius and Patrick is a bit of genius too. Not to be hyperbolic, but he has yet opened another door for me. And I’m so thrilled to walk through it and discover what’s inside.