The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
By: Faith Patterson
Trine University presented the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee Musical which brought lots of laughter and applause. The musical was 2 hours long and consisted of two acts with a brief 15-minute intermission. The musical was not only about children preparing and participating in a competitive spelling bee contest, but about the children’s individual life challenges.
The audience was entertained by the students’ unique methods for remembering how to spell a word. William Barfee played by Blake Willams had the magic foot where he would spell out each word with his foot, Logainne Schwary played by Lydia Tremaine spelled out the word on her arm to figure out how to spell the word that was given to her, and Leaf Coneybear played by Matthew Ketner would ask for the word once or twice and then would cut off the vice the vice principle and would yell to spell out the word.
The most memorable scene in Act 2 was “The I Love You Song” sung by Alexis Koshenina, Kaitlyn Lee, and Matthew Ketner. This scene had a very touching song that led the audience to feel connected to Alexis’s character through relatable emotions because of her mother being far from home and her dad not always being there for her on time. However, this musical had expressed more than one emotion. This performance prefaced with the warning of mature content which led to the crowd's favorite song sung by Chip aka Darius Surgenavic. On another note, one of Logainne’s dads, played by Jayden Hyre, did a wonderful job on always making sure that Logainne’s other father Carl did not push her too far and checking that her blood sugar was not too low. Logainne had a challenging time trying to be the best of the best due to her father, Carl who would push her too far sometimes which put a lot of stress on her for the spelling bee competition.
Everyone who was involved in putting on the show, all their arduous work was paid off! The cast and crew of the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee Musical did a wonderful job providing entertainment to Trine’s campus on April 8, 9, and 10.