The Middlebury Campus

Issue date: 10/18/07 Section: Arts

Audio produced by Radio Arts Middlebury.

Students who were smart enough to reserve a ticket ahead of time or lucky enough to get in off of the waiting list for "Certified Organic Musical" this weekend were treated to a sharp and hilarious satire about the intersection between love and environmental activism at Linden College, an imaginary liberal arts college much like Middlebury. Mallory Falk '09 and Adam Levine '09.5 did a lot more than co-direct the show - they wrote it.



During a road trip this summer Falk and Levine - schoolmates since the sixth grade - decided to work together. They wrote the script and score for "Certified Organic Musical" this summer with Levine composing the music before sending it to Falk so she could write the lyrics. They wrote the dialogue together before holding auditions the first week of the semester, later rehearsing five times a week to get the show polished in just three weeks. Both were new to directing and producing, which put them in the same boat as many members of the cast, who had either never before been in a show at Middlebury or in a show at all.

"Certified Organic Musical" follows the budding relationship between Ted (Jimmy Wong '09.5) and Daffodil June (Casey Donahue '10), two down-to-earth Linden students that fall for one another during the opening number, "Ode to a Panini Machine." Ted is an International Studies major who plays the straight man to his two hilarious best friends - Gabe the New Yorker (Casey Mahoney '11) and Brandon the Bostonian (Jeremy Martin '09.5) - as they spend a significant amount of time berating one another with crass geographically-based one-liners that never failed to make the audience laugh. June's life revolves around trying to save the planet, a goal shared by the other residents of Blenheim House, a warped and surreal environmental house with overt references to Middlebury's own Weybridge House. Rounding out the main cast is June's rival for Ted's affections, a well-dressed conniver named Mercedes (Elizabeth Goffe '10) whose entourage includes Topaz (Christine Chung '10) and Milan (Jessica Spar '11), two amusingly ditsy girls who help Mercedes out with her dirty work.

Continued...

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