“Everyone say misery!”

“Misery!”

But the cast of Blue Demon Theatre’s “The Addams Family” is anything but. 

Grinning for the camera, the cast captures a moment of joy that belies the words they just shouted, a reminder that even in a show about the macabre, fun is never far behind.

The house lights flicker. Fingers snap in rhythm. The familiar Addams family theme fills the room. But tonight, there is no audience. After six weeks of rehearsal, the company is on its final run before the March 1 premiere. 

For the past month and a half, Blue Demon Theatre has transformed ordinary DePaul classrooms into rehearsal spaces, pushing desks aside to mark choreography and running lines under the fluorescent lights. Because Blue Demon Theatre operates independently of DePaul’s Theatre School, the group doesn’t have access to dedicated performance spaces or equipment.

“It’s pretty tight space, but we’ve made it work,” said Ella Blanton, a DePaul junior and one of the show’s directors. 

Every prop, lighting cue and set piece is built from scratch, often on a budget that calls for ingenuity.

“We also have to make all of our set pieces and everything in our own spaces,” Blanton said. “Last year, we did it in a couple parking lots near campus. This year, currently, my roommate is in our apartment cutting foam out to make our trees for our set pieces.”

The university covers about half of the production’s core costs, including licensing and renting their performance venue at The Greenhouse Theater Center. Everything else, from sets to costumes and additional design elements, relies on fundraising, sourcing and ticket sales.

Blanton, who has loved The Addams Family since childhood, adapted the 2009 script to fit a small stage, contemporary culture and a cast consisting mostly of majors other than theater. Her goal is to keep the story earnest while leaning into the kookiness of the characters. 

“‘The Addams Family’ characters are all really kooky in themselves,” she said. “That’s just who they are, but a lot of the emotions that they’re experiencing throughout the show and a lot of the conflicts that they’re having throughout the show are very human and very normal.”

Blanton and co-director Aiden Shafiuzzaman work to bring that humanity to the stage, starting each rehearsal by focusing on the cast as a group. Stretches, silly games and the occasional animal noise warm up the room before any lines are run.

“It allows people to start figuring out how to goof off and be energetic and funny without getting embarrassed in the room, which is really important in theater,” Blanton said. “Making people laugh at the start of rehearsal usually helps the entire process.”

The sense of connection carries into every aspect of the show, including the choreography. 

For Chrisanthi Burch, a DePaul sophomore and the show’s choreographer, creating movement for “The Addams Family” meant balancing the quirks of the characters with the personalities and experience levels of the cast. 

“The overall vision, I would say something a little weird, because it is ‘The Addams Family,’ so something a little more rigid, a little more just odd to look at, but also at the same time, very inviting,” Burch said. 

She spent weeks listening to songs, experimenting with steps and adjusting for each performer’s strengths. From the six-minute opening number to the tricky tango, every routine required hours of trial and error, small details and careful spacing.

Burch says the storytelling lies in the details.

“There’s a moment where Pugsley throws TNT into the audience, and we just added this, but Daniel, who plays Fester, ducks down and gets out of the way,” she said. “You haven’t really met the character, but now you know their dynamic, and so I think little details like that are very useful in telling a story.”

Sofia Chavez, a sophomore who is a part of the ancestor ensemble, echoes this sentiment. The group of ghostly Addams family members from different eras guide the story through song and movement. Even without lines, Chavez built a backstory for her character.

“That is one of the first things we did when we were casted in our roles as the ensemble ancestors, is we figured out how each of our characters, moved, what they were thinking,” Chavez said. “I feel like, if audience members really pay attention to a certain ancestor, they can tell what their motives are, what maybe what their backstory is, who they might be friends with.”

Mickey Norton, a junior and the technical director for Blue Demon Theatre, spent hours building a single prop that might seem simple at first glance but had to be strong enough to safely support a castmate. 

“You’re seeing actors on stage, and you’re hearing their beautiful voices. … It’s easy to think that’s it,” Norton said. “Without lights, you wouldn’t be able to see them, without sound you wouldn’t be able to hear them, without a scenic designer they would just be people in a black box, without a costume designer they would just sort of be wearing clothes.”

The care for detail extends across every aspect of the production. Choreography, lighting cues and set pieces are all meticulously adjusted to bring the story to life. 

That same spirit of collaboration is visible offstage as well. The cast helps each other with makeup, practices choreography together and laughs so much during rehearsals that they sometimes have to be reminded to save their voices for the performance. 

Daniel DePhillips, who plays Uncle Fester, described the challenge of staying in character amid so much humor. 

“Staying in character sucks sometimes,” he said. “I tend to laugh a lot.”

Blanton said she hopes audiences come away with a sense of the effort behind the show.

“Theater takes a lot of work, and there’s so much that goes on behind the scenes people don’t know about,” she said. “Most of the people who work on our club and on these shows are not theater majors. This is purely out of us, wanting to make and share art”

Audiences can see “The Addams Family” this weekend, from Feb. 27-March 1 at The Greenhouse Theater Center. 

The students’ work continues next weekend, March 6-8, when Blue Demon Theatre presents “Almost Maine.”

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