From the moment Mickey Jordan read the script for “Vanities”, he knew it was going to be his senior capstone presentation.
“Vanities,” is a comedy about three high school girls’ friendship over the course of 11 years set in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
“I don’t think we have done anything like this before,” Jordan said. “I picked this show because the message is so good…this will be very relatable to a lot of people.”
For Jordan, picking a script was the easy part.
“The hardest part was narrowing it down to three from 30 [in the casting],” Jordan said. “We cast the show three deep, so we have the actual actresses, then the understudies and the understudies after them because with this being such a small show, if someone gets sick or breaks a leg, you have to put one right after the other.”
Jordan said a show with only three cast members could be more difficult, but that hasn’t been the case for his show.
“My three actresses I picked are so great,” Jordan said. “This is a very fast-paced show; it is very high energy.”
The senior capstone presentation serves as a culmination of all the skills developed while at Northwestern’s theater program. Jordan was responsible for the casting, directing, producing and other aspects of this play.
“The thing about your senior capstone is that you do it like it is going on Broadway,” Jordan said. “In a perfect world, I want all these specific things, but what I have learned is that it is not necessarily what you are going to get.”
Jordan explained how he planned to have a blonde, brunette and red head for the play. He was able to get each of those, but they are not playing the characters he originally expected them to play, so the girls had to adapt to a different character’s personality. This change also caused him to rethink all the costumes he had planned.
While Jordan is in charge of the play, it isn’t a task he can accomplish alone.
Jordan said: “I have had a great team, and we have two seasoned northwestern actresses who have been on stage before. We also have a girl who has never been on stage before, but she has done pageants. She has been great because she takes direction so well and is so willing to take part and learn. It really hasn’t been a struggle.”