New musical theatre company debuts with classic spelling bee comedy

A brand new community theatre company is launching its very first production.

Off Bookish is bringing The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee to Doherty Hall this month, a musical comedy where audience members become part of the show and anything can happen.

The company’s founders, Susana Becerra and Jess Goc-ong, say the choice of show was intentional because of the small cast, but it has been a challenge.

“The music is really the hard part,” Becerra says. “There are a lot of really complex harmonies. Though it is fun, spunky music, the technicality of it skews choral so there is a lot of really crunchy harmonies within there. It is not just two people singing parts. Everybody kind of has their own singing part.”

Comedy adds its own challenge, especially because the show shifts based on who ends up on stage.

“It is a comedy so I find comedic timing is so important and can be tricky to navigate. And not just a comedy but an improv comedy,” Becerra says. “Bits and pieces might change depending on which audience members are on stage.”

Goc-ong explains how the improv element works once the show starts.

“We have some audience spellers so they come up,” she says. “We have two judges so they will have to improv descriptions of who has come up on stage based on appearance or just a random fact. Because they are calling for definitions of words or sentences of words there is a little bit of improv towards that as well.”

Despite the unpredictability, audiences have shown early enthusiasm.

“We are pretty excited,” Becerra says. “We have had some people who have bought tickets already ask us to come up to be audience member volunteers. People seem really engaged and really thrilled to be part of the show too.”

Spelling Bee marks the official debut of Off Bookish, founded by Becerra and Goc-ong after what began as a night of friends dreaming up a musical.

“Off Bookish is just a group of people who want to put on shows in a really low stress and highly collaborative environment,” Becerra says. “The reason why Jess and I started Off Bookish is honestly — it was just a night of us having fun and being like, let’s create something.”

When they realised they needed to become a legitimate company, they leaned on experience from an entirely different world.

“My partner Ben also likes theatre and he and I have created a speech therapy business together. We are both speech pathologists. Jess actually works with us as well and she was a speech pathologist in Australia,” Becerra says. “We took those skills and transferred it into this creative outlet instead. It was registering a business name, applying for licensing to put on a show and contacting different venues.”

She adds that they built Off Bookish by simply trying everything.

“It was a lot of trial and error and just kind of throwing things up the wall and hoping it would stick,” she says. “We have made it this far so things have stuck I guess.”

Both are relatively new to Calgary and say the city’s theatre community played a huge role in helping them get off the ground.

“Everybody has been really welcoming and lovely,” Susanna says. “We got lucky that Calgary is such a friendly place where people want to help and want to see us succeed.”

Casting became its own adventure. The team held open auditions for an entire month to give people time to find them.

“We extended auditions a lot longer than I think people normally do,” Becerra says. “As we met people they then spread the word. They told us about other resources to get our name out there. People came which was something we thought we might hit a wall at, but it seems like there is a huge need for more and more theatre in Calgary.”

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee runs Nov. 21-19 at Doherty Hall on Stampede Campus.

Tickets are available through Eventbrite.

More details about Off Bookish can be found here.