For young actress Sabrina Reed, being a Belle of color in Beauty and the Beast for the Akron All-City Musical allows her to inspire other young performers.
“Traditionally, Belle isn’t black or a person of color, so it’s really nice, because my thing is that I really want to inspire people of color to go for what they want, especially little girls,’’ said Reed, who is black.
Reed, who just finished her sophomore year at Akron School for the Arts at Firestone High School, noted that she and her family have long been Disney movie lovers. But Tiana of The Princess and the Frog was the only black Disney princess she saw as a youngster.
“Why didn’t I look like them?’’ she asked herself of the other princesses.
The Akron teen began singing at a young age at church but didn’t become involved with musical theater until seventh grade, when she performed in The Music Man at Weathervane Playhouse. That was followed by her role as Eponine in Les Misérables at Miller South School for the Visual and Performing Arts.
Now her goal is to become a music professor and one day start an arts/musical theater camp in Akron, to help young inner-city kids pursue their performance goals and dreams.
“I think they need to be exposed to it,” she said. “I think they have true passion for it but they don’t think they have the talent to do it,’’ she said, stressing that youngsters just need the opportunity for musical theater classes and performances.
Reed said that when she was called back as a finalist for the role of Belle, one of her peers was a naysayer: “They told me that I couldn’t be Belle because I was black. I just kind of shook it off. ‘I’ll be fine. It’s fine,’ ” she told herself.
“I proved them wrong,’’ Reed said in a recent phone interview. “I just want them [children of color] to know it is possible, no matter what people say.”
Reed loves how Belle isn’t as shallow as other Disney princesses. “She’s a beauty but she’s also smart and knowledgeable. … She’s very strong-willed and she knows what she wants to do and she’s not afraid to go get it.”
The actress said the role of Belle is difficult: “You have to live up to the expectations and also put a little bit of yourself into her.”
She’s pumped to wear both Belle’s iconic yellow ball gown and her blue and white dress. And rather than wear a wig, Reed will have her own hair styled in long box braids by her mother.
The actress said she has enjoyed working with an “amazing mix of people” from her own school and others. That includes co-star Charlie Gruhler, a rising junior at Firestone High School, as the Beast, and recent Norton High graduate Nick Wagner as Belle’s father, Maurice.
“I have so much fun acting with him,’’ Reed said of Wagner. “He’s a nice mentor to me as an actor.”
This is Reed’s second All-City Musical, having performed in Shrek last year.
Rights secured
Getting the rights to Beauty and the Beast this year was special for the fifth season of All-City productions, said Howard Parr, executive director of the Akron Civic Theatre. The theater — which produces the shows featuring high school students from the Greater Akron area — had been trying every year to secure the musical.
After Hairspray, Ragtime, Bye Bye Birdie and Shrek, Beauty and the Beast is All-City’s biggest, most aggressive show yet, he said.
“This one, I think, is by far the most challenging in that it’s so iconic and people have already in their mind what it is,’’ he said, speaking at a May 26 rehearsal at the University of Akron.
He said a theater can’t get away with doing such a well-known show unless its cast is stellar. “They’re so strong vocally and the costuming is gonna look great,’’ including rented costumes for the leads, he said.
Shrek set attendance records of about 3,000 and Parr expects Beauty to follow in its footsteps.
“The message of all of these shows has to do with acceptance of people that are different from you,’’ he said.
Parr said the All-City Musicals give teens the opportunity to perform in a professionally produced show on the Civic stage with stagehands, lighting by Dennis Dugan and costuming by Irene Mack-Shafer of the University of Akron. The show is directed for the fifth year by Mark Zimmerman of Firestone High School and choreographed by Marissa Leenaarts.
Rising sophomore Gerard Berroteran of St. Vincent-St. Mary, who calls his Gaston “the most beloved Disney villain,’’ enjoys his cartoonish persona and chuckles at the oversized faux muscles the meathead wears. Annie Unk, a rising senior at St. V-M, loves her Babette’s long black-and-gold, feather-duster dress, which is “very can-can like.”
She’s also happy putting her many years of ballet training to use as the flirty Babette.
“Marissa [Leenaarts] really knew what I was capable of and she worked with what I could do and she pushes me to be able to do my own thing. She told me I can add my own spin on things after she choreographed it if I wanted to. So she really trusts me with what I’m capable of,’’ Unk said.
All-City shows bring together not only audience members, but also teens from different schools as well as their families. This year’s 37 performers come from 10 schools, including Akron Public Schools, St. Vincent-St. Mary, Hoban, Revere, Barberton, Norton, Roosevelt and Stow.
“For the period of time that your kids are involved in this thing, you are part of a community around it,’’ Parr said.
Arts writer Kerry Clawson may be reached at 330-996-3527 or kclawson@thebeaconjournal.com. Like her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kclawsonabj or follow her on Twitter @KerryClawsonABJ.