How heavy it is to perform in a musical

My schedule for Tuesday, February 6 deserved a screenshot that I sent to my daughters. To ‘interview Anna and Elsa at 2:00 PM’, it was written. For us huge Disney watchers and Frozen fans, interviewing the new Anna and Elsa is definitely the highlight of the week.

Via a Zoom I speak with Nienke Latten and Vajèn van den Bosch who will start full pull with the rehearsals for Frozen the Musical. They are almost clapping their hands with joy, but I can feel the eagerness to start, cutting through the Zoom connection.

Since July last year, the possibility of this role drifted into their lives. For both of them, it was immediately clear that they would audition. Vajèn: “I had already seen the musical in New York and in Hamburg and was both emotional and blown away at the same time. The film is beautiful, but the musical has so much more depth and layers. It is for all ages because of the jokes that children do not understand, but adults do. And the big themes of sisterly love and finding and embracing who you are come forward even more for me in the musical.” In November, the lead actresses received definitive green light and white smoke. Auditioning for a role like this is a substantial process. “You keep progressing through rounds and auditioning for different people each time. In the end, I had to audition for a group of 14 people; the management of Stage Entertainment and the main casting directors from Disney in New York.” Intensely exciting and an undertaking as well, because these audition rounds meant traveling from Stuttgart and Vienna to the Netherlands every Monday, their only day off of the week. Like top athletes, they will be transferred back to the Netherlands in April. “The fun thing about our profession is that it is so varied and you get to work and live in so many beautiful places. But I am really looking forward to moving back into my little apartment in Amsterdam.” Nienke will still perform in Germany in the coming period and does not yet know where she will settle in the Netherlands. “I am still debating between Scheveningen, near the Circustheater, and Amsterdam.”

The comparison to top sports is completely appropriate. Nienke: “In the song ‘Love is an open door’ I sing and dance with Prince Hans. He twirls me around, I do a cartwheel and keep singing in the meantime. I am so looking forward to that.”

The musical will be a spectacle with 300 costumes, 12 new songs, and a lot of special effects. “Sven, the reindeer, is also so lifelike. There is a man in that suit who operates the animal and has to stand in a plank position throughout the entire performance.” For Nienke, Sven is one of the many reasons why she has so much respect for the creators. “And there is a scene where Sven is on stage for 13 minutes, so the man in that suit is in a plank position for 13 minutes while he operates the puppet!”

The same creative team that was responsible for the songs in the films has written the additional 12 songs, some of which, like the duet between Anna and Elsa, cannot be found on Spotify and are therefore truly a gift for the visitor. Erik van Muiswinkel, who previously won an award for the best translation of the script of Aladdin, took care of the Dutch adaptation. Frozen premieres on June 9, a day that Nienke and Vajèn can hardly wait for. “But soon we will receive the script and from April we will really start with the rehearsals, so before you know it, it will be here. And now we can finally tell everyone about it.”

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Photo credits: William Rutten