From August 6-10, the Grand Opera House in Dubuque ended their 2024-25 theatre season with showings of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, a classic fairy tale about the title girl and Prince Charming, to sold-out audiences. Among the cast—which included children of all ages—GHS Senior Liliana Asta played the role of Fairy Godmother, starring in songs such as “Fol-De-Rol,” “Impossible,” “It’s Possible,” and the finale, “There’s Music in You.”
According to the play script, the Fairy Godmother is the third most important role in the entire play, only behind the Prince and Cinderella herself. Alongside that, the Rising Star Theatre Company, which produced Cinderella in conjunction with the Grand Opera House, programmed the musical as a Youth Production, allowing for any child aged from eight to eighteen to play a role as long as they audition. That did not help Asta’s odds.
“The audition process was very chaotic because there were so many people of so many ages trying out,” Asta said. Therefore, getting such a major role against the odds of hundreds of applicants was a huge win for her. At Clarke University, the setting for auditions, “They literally assigned us numbers and stickers because there were so many people.”
From there, the finalized cast hit the ground running. Cinderella went like any other play; according to Asta, “We started off rehearsing a couple times a week, and it kept building up so that it was once every day.” Alongside that, the Grand Opera House had to get the show running in about a month, so as tech week came around for the musical, expectations were high and the actors were working harder than ever. “I was very stressed throughout tech week,” Asta explained, “though the Grand Opera House was very organized, which helped.” It was almost time to perform.
The diverse cast showed Cinderella for five nights. Because the number of applicants were so large, the cast was split into two with one doing the matinee performance, the other doing the evenings, and vice versa. For Asta, this was her first-ever Grand Opera performance: “It was kind of stressful,” she said, though she acknowledged that there were also advantages. “Everyone was assigned a task to do during the show for organization, so that calmed me.”
Though the musical is now over, Asta isn’t done yet. As a senior, she plans on expanding her involvement in plays both in and out of Galena. Next Summer, she plans on “auditioning for the Grand’s Spongebob musical, as well as some of their adult productions as I turned eighteen this summer. I would love to keep working with other people as serious about theatre as I am.”
Aside from this, she’s also excited to use her newfound experiences working in such an environment to help the Galena High School Drama Club, where she got reelected to serve a second term as President. “Cinderella gave me lots of momentum to motivate other young people to do drama. I’m really looking forward to playing in It’s a Wonderful Life and Godspell,” the announced play and musical for the department’s ‘25-’26 season, respectively.
