It’s 7:15 p.m. backstage at Richardson Performing Arts Center, inside Southwestern College’s Christy Administration Building. In fifteen minutes, a cast of twenty will step before an audience to perform Camelot, the Lerner and Loewe musical that won four Tony Awards in 1961. There is a director, a music director, a cast, a crew, and one live dog. Somewhere in the middle of all this, a production is supposed to come together.
Onstage, the story follows King Arthur as he attempts to build Camelot into an ideal kingdom, only to discover that the people responsible for making his vision a reality are as flawed as the world he hopes to create. Backstage, a similar experience is happening. A group of people with different schedules, skill sets, and interpretations must work together to make something bigger than themselves. The lights will dim. The overture will begin. For the audience, the results look effortless, but getting there is another story.
To understand how Southwestern College brought Camelot to the stage, I sat down with Adam Lange, Director of Choral Activities, Voice, and Band, and Terry McGonigle, Director of Theatre. Between them, they have spent months working through the music, characters, choreography, and the surprises of putting on live theatre. But their reasons for choosing Camelot go beyond that. For both directors, the story’s central question remains relevant. What does it take to build a better world, and what happens when the people trying to build it fall short?
Kaydee Riggs Johnson
THE HISTORY OF HISTORY
Before Camelot became synonymous with an idealized kingdom, it had a somewhat less glamorous beginning. In 1959, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe began developing a musical adaptation of T. H. White’s The Once and Future King. The project followed the enormous success of their Broadway hit, My Fair Lady, and expectations were high. The production, however, proved difficult from the beginning. Creative disagreements, personal setbacks, and extensive revisions complicated the journey to Broadway.
The musical premiered in Toronto in October 1960, where its first performance reportedly ran for four and a half hours. Considerable cutting and revision followed before it opened on Broadway later that year. Despite the troubled production process, Camelot went on to win four Tony Awards.
Its legacy grew further after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, when Jacqueline Kennedy connected his presidency to the musical’s vision of a brief, shining era. The association helped cement Camelot as a symbol of hope, idealism, and the possibility of a better future. More than six decades later, Southwestern College’s production returns to the story itself. An ideal worth pursuing, even when reality makes it difficult to achieve.
THERE’S MUSIC IN THE CASTLE
For Adam Lange, the music is not simply a backdrop to the action. It is one of the ways the audience understands what the characters cannot always say aloud. “The music of Camelot follows a more traditional music schema, where a lot of the orchestral music dictates a lot of the music in the scenes,” Lange explains. “You can see roots of that back in Mozart’s operas, so it’s really cool to see that showing up in a musical theatre production. The students have really brought intention behind their songs and have brought the story to life.”
That musical structure creates opportunities for performers to communicate emotion through more than lyrics alone. Changes in orchestration, dynamics, and musical phrasing help establish tension, reveal character, and carry the story forward.
One of the most challenging numbers has been “The Lusty Month of May,” which requires the cast to navigate several overlapping musical lines. “It incorporates a lot of polyphonic ideas with some call and response sections between the Soprano and Tenors, Alto and Basses, alongside Guenevere and the other choristers singing,” Lange says. “It’s been challenging. You can see our progress, and we’re excited to present that.”
The work is demanding, but Lange finds the process rewarding. The cast members regularly come to his office to practice their music, putting in additional hours to prepare their individual parts and bring them together. Two musical moments particularly stand out for him. The first is the climax of “If Ever I Would Leave You,” performed by Pierce Mitchell as Lancelot. “It’s this man exclaiming his love to this woman. It’s just an impactful moment in the orchestration.” The second is “I Loved You Once in Silence,” performed by Kayden Tarver as Guenevere, which Lange describes as “a poignant song talking about the freedom of love.”
Together, these moments reveal the emotional complications at the heart of the musical. Lancelot and Guenevere love one another, but their relationship threatens the very kingdom King Arthur is trying to protect. The music allows the audience to experience that conflict rather than simply hear it explained. Lange hopes audiences will notice how the score brings the physical world of the story to life, too. The orchestration can suggest the thunder of horses, the movement of a crowd, or the changing atmosphere of a scene. For him, the music succeeds when the audience can feel the story unfolding around them.
RETURNING TO CAMELOT
Terry McGonigle’s connection to Camelot began long before this production, playing Lancelot himself in Southwestern College’s 1971 production of Camelot. More than fifty years later, he has returned to the story from the other side of the stage.
“It’s always been one of my favorite stories,” McGonigle says. “Having been in the show in 1971, I fell in love with the story.” What continues to draw him to the musical is its optimism.
“It’s not a sad story, it’s not about deception, but someone with a vision of hope for a better tomorrow.” He sees a similar theme in last year’s musical, Man of La Mancha, which he admires. Both productions ask audiences to consider what might happen if people refused to accept the world exactly as it is.
“A lot of the reason I love Camelot and Man of La Mancha is both those shows have that idea of ‘we can do better; we can be better.’”
The production also offered practical advantages. Camelot can accommodate different cast sizes, making it a flexible choice for a college theatre department. McGonigle remembers the production in 1971 that involved fifty-five performers. The current cast is smaller, but the story still offers plenty of opportunities for students to contribute. The challenge is finding the right balance between the production’s ambitions and the resources available.
One of McGonigle’s biggest challenges has been “The Lusty Month of May.” He had a particular vision for the number, including an extended opening dance, but translating that vision to the stage proved difficult.
“Getting the actors to communicate what’s going on when you’ve got kids with little to no dance background or moving background” required a different approach.
The scene eventually had to be rethought, with new interactions and ideas developed to help the performers communicate the action. It is a reminder that directing involves more than having a vision. It requires figuring out how to make that vision possible with the people in the room.
NO PERFECT PEOPLE
The tension between ambition and reality is central to Camelot. Arthur wants to build a kingdom founded on justice and a better way of living. Yet the people closest to him are complicated, vulnerable, and capable of making choices that undermine his plans. McGonigle believes that imperfection is precisely what makes the story worth telling.
“No one is perfect and no matter how hard you try, you’re never going to be perfect.” He points to Lancelot, who initially believes himself to be the embodiment of perfection, only to recognize that even physical and spiritual excellence require constant effort.
“We all have our demons and our own things we fight,” McGonigle says. “The central core principals of Camelot are aligned with people today.” That understanding also shapes his approach to the relationship between Arthur, Guenevere, and Lancelot. Arthur loves Guenevere as his wife and soulmate. He also loves Lancelot as a brother, despite never having had a brother himself. Accepting that the two people closest to him are in love with each other would mean confronting the possible collapse of the kingdom and the relationships that give his life meaning.
McGonigle has discussed that conflict with Andrew Porter, who plays King Arthur, asking him to consider what it means to fight to preserve something while knowing that it may already be slipping away. “In the beginning of this, Arthur chooses to live with the struggle, and he doesn’t want to lose what he’s already lost.”
For McGonigle, the role is not about portraying a king who simply makes the right decisions. It is about showing a person attempting to reconcile his ideals with the reality of the people he loves. That perspective has changed since McGonigle first played Lancelot in 1971. He describes himself then as “so green as an actor,” still learning how to inhabit a leading role. Directing Pierce Mitchell in the same role has offered an opportunity to revisit the character with decades of experience behind him. “I don’t know if they were in my head then and I didn’t realize it, or, as I’ve matured and become a stronger director and actor, if they were coming to me now,” he says.
BEFORE THE CURTAIN
The process of bringing Camelot together has not followed a straight line. McGonigle describes rehearsals as a constant back-and-forth between moments when something works and moments when it clearly needs more attention. “There are little moments when you think, ‘that worked,’ there’s also times when you think, ‘that needs work.’ It’s a constant see-saw, a back and forth.”
Scheduling has been one of the production’s biggest obstacles. With students balancing classes, jobs, and other commitments, assembling the entire cast for every rehearsal has not always been possible. The full cast did not come together until the final weeks of rehearsals, leaving the team to pull individual pieces into a unified performance under considerable time pressure. “I never know the result until we get to the result because everything is constantly changing,” McGonigle says.
That uncertainty is part of live theatre. A scene can look different once the entire cast is present. A musical number can change as performers grow more comfortable with their parts. A director’s original idea may have to give way to something better suited to the people bringing it to life. For Lange, the same process applies to the music. Students arrive with various levels of experience, and rehearsals are opportunities to develop not only their technique but also their understanding of the characters and the story. The finished production may last only a few hours, but it reflects weeks of collaboration, experimentation, and revision.
WHAT COMES AFTER CAMELOT?
McGonigle’s hope is that audiences leave the theatre thinking differently about the world around them. “My biggest hope for audiences is for them to leave with a new eye on their world. A new perspective on our society and what we’re capable of.” He acknowledges that optimism can be difficult to maintain amid conflict, war, and the constant stream of troubling news. The ideals at the center of Camelot may seem distant from the world audiences encounter every day. But he does not believe that makes them irrelevant.
As Arthur suggests at the end of the musical, stories from the past can help people understand their mistakes and make better choices in the future. Whether people learn those lessons is another matter. “Unfortunately, we’ve proven many times that’s not the case, but we realize we can work on it. So, let’s go to work.”
At Southwestern College, Camelot is more than a familiar musical brought to the stage. It is an example of what happens when students and faculty work together toward a shared goal. Performers develop their voices and acting skills, directors learn to adapt their visions, and a cast of individuals becomes an ensemble. The process is not always tidy, and the result is never guaranteed until the show begins. That may be the most fitting connection between the musical and the college itself. Southwestern College’s mission, like Arthur’s vision for Camelot, asks people to imagine something better and then take responsibility for building it. The work requires patience, cooperation, and a willingness to learn from mistakes. It also requires accepting that no person or institution will ever be perfect.
At 7:15 p.m., backstage is still full of moving parts. Fifteen minutes remain before the audience sees the finished product. There are songs to remember, scenes to settle, and costumes to account for. But when the overture begins, all those separate efforts will become one performance. For one brief, shining moment, Camelot will exist on the Southwestern stage. What matters is not whether the kingdom is perfect. It is whether the people building it are willing to keep trying.
