Robin Weiss, Cora Lloyd, Cole Nelson, Atticus Persinger, Molly Davis. Olivia Tapia Ko Photos.
Sunlight filtered through plant leaves in the window as teenage voices filled the air. Each careful note responded to those around it, harmony slowly building as smiles beamed from singing faces. It seemed that each member of the group was marveling at their collective sound.
This was the scene on a recent Friday, as members of the Audubon Arts cast of Legally Blonde The Musical sat down in Room 301 of Neighborhood Music School (NMS) in New Haven. Cast members had just received their roles the day before, and as they warmed up to learn the opening number of the show, their excitement was contagious. The obvious signs of elation on their faces showed more and more with each scale they sang.
Audubon Arts is a summer theater camp located at NMS, at 100 Audubon St. in the eponymously named Audubon Arts Corridor. It is divided into multiple age-based “color groups,” from kindergarten purple-groupers to members of the theater group, which contains rising ninth through twelfth grade students.
Each year, the group performs the wildly impressive feat of putting up a full length musical in five and a half weeks. This year, as Legally Blonde starts to take shape, actors and creative team members alike are excited by the idea of the production, as they dive into the rehearsal process with an infectious love for acting, singing, and dance.
The cast warms up with music director Greg Bell.
“Everyone here, whether they've never done theater before or they’ve done it their whole life, is really committed to making something good,” said Cole Nelson, a rising junior at Buxton School who plays Emmett Forrest, a teacher’s assistant at Harvard Law School and the eventual love interest of the story. This is Nelson’s tenth summer in the camp, and he observed that everyone brings their own thing to each show, making the performance truly authentic.
Leading lady Cora Lloyd, a rising sophomore at Choate Rosemary Hall who plays Elle Woods, agreed with Nelson, sharing his sentiment that enthusiasm for the arts runs deep in the program. Lloyd’s love for performance sparked at around the age of four, when her parents took her to see a production of The Magic Flute. Having always loved dressing up and playing pretend, Lloyd was drawn to the world of performance at a young age.
This experience of falling for the arts is not uncommon in the cast. Robin Weiss, a senior at Hamden Hall Country Day School who plays the character of Warner Huntington III (Elle’s ex boyfriend who Weiss discribes as “not a good guy”), said that they felt a similar love for the arts, although not at first.
“I first did theater when I was little, and I did not like it,” Weiss said. In fact, they didn’t especially enjoy theatre until the seventh grade. “And then I did A Midsummer Night’s Dream and I was like ‘Wow, this is the best thing ever!’”
However, a passion for the arts is not the only passion these young performers have, and perhaps an even more apparent love is the one they have for each other.
“They always want to make sure you feel safe and happy here,” remarked Atticus Persinger, a freshman at Easton Country Day School. He has been cast as Kyle B. O’Boyle, a magnetically handsome UPS driver who caught the lustful eye of Elle’s friend, Paulette.
Persinger is not the only one to feel this way. The cast and creative team never fail to make each other feel at home, which this year was apparent as early on as audition day.
“As with any audition, you have to remember that everyone wants you to do well… But it is a little bit weird to go from watching someone perform to performing with them,” said Molly Davis, a rising freshman at New Haven Academy who is set to play the role of Enid Hoopes (a Harvard law student who dislikes Elle at first, but grows fond of her as the play goes on), illustrating the strange, sometimes scary experience of being a freshman entering a group of high schoolers.
“Even though we’re not the closest, we're still good friends, or good acquaintances at least.” said Persinger, causing the castmates around him to laugh compassionately, as if to reassure him that they do consider him a good friend. As a rising freshman, this is Persinger’s first summer in the theater group, and he noted that because he has been going to Audubon Arts for seven years, he has seen many of the returning members of the theater group walking the halls of NMS long before he reached the high school level.
It is clear that even among members of the group who have only just met, everyone feels the companionship that the show will soon bring. Director Stephen “Phen” Dest said that “Many of these cast members I've known for a long time … and just getting to know some of the new people, I’m already bonding with them.”
Dest has directed Legally Blonde in the past, and when asked why he and colleagues picked the show for this year, he said that it has a sense of empowerment and truth that the creative team felt was an important theme this year.
Stage manager and offstage track counselor Abigail Grauer. "It gives you space to think," she said of tech theater.
Legally Blonde is a 2001 movie turned musical about Elle Woods, a stylish sorority girl who gets dumped by her boyfriend Warner for being “not serious enough.” In an effort to win him back, she follows him to Harvard Law School and ends up unlocking a part of herself that no one knew existed: an extremely talented lawyer. Elle is an iconic character because she manages to change the way everyone views her, and makes her audience question the assumptions they make about the world and the people in it.
“On the surface people think she’s just a dumb blonde, but I think she truly cares about people, and has the best intentions towards everybody,” Lloyd said. “Her character development is that she learns how to really study and put her heart into something.”
The themes of the show seem to resonate deeply with the entire cast, and watching them discuss the plot and characters, it is clear that the production is bringing them closer.
What is a cast, meanwhile, without its crew? Stage manager and offstage track counselor Abigail Grauer has been part of the NMS community for many years, having taken vocal lessons there for a decade. This is her first year as an Audubon Arts counselor, and she delights in her role as stage manager. When she’s not part of tech crew, she attends Wesleyan University, where she double majors in neuroscience and religion, with a minor in chemistry.
“I really love the tech side of things because it gives you space to think,” Grauer said. “It's an environment where you really get to work with people one on one, and it also gives you the opportunity to be creative in ways you might not get to otherwise.”
Grauer is no exception to the force of community that the camp initiates, and has said that she adores the cast, and the show, and that Audubon Arts is a great place for students to discover who they are. It is clear that the cast is very lucky to have such a dedicated stage manager. After all, they'll need Grauer’s help to assemble Elle’s world in what little time they have.
“We don't have a lot of time to put up these shows,” said Dest. “We don't cut anything, we do a full scale musical in five weeks.” The group has limited time to get its show up and running, and this means all session time is dedicated to the production.
The theater group schedule is broken up into four blocks; drama and dance before lunch, music and art after. So while five weeks may seem like a short time- and is- these actors are working extremely hard, nine to four for five days a week, putting their all into what they do.
“‘You go we go’ I believe is their motto — that’s a Lin Manuel quote.” Dest said when asked about the way the students interact with each other. “You know- ‘It's not about me, It's about us’ and they really shine with that.”
Legally Blonde is set to run July 29 through 31 at the Little Theatre on Lincoln Street.
This article comes from the 2025 cohort of the Youth Arts Journalism Initiative (YAJI). YAJI is a program in which New Haven, Hamden and West Haven Public Schools high school students pitch, write, edit and publish articles through the Arts Paper. This year, YAJI advisors include Arts Paper Editor Lucy Gellman and reporter and YAJI alum Abiba Biao. Olivia Tapia Ko is a rising sophomore at New Haven Academy.