Musicals can be magical. Entire stages of people singing and dancing effortlessly. Stories that transport you to a world that parallels your own or somewhere so different you’d think it was a dream. The theater is thousands of years old and thus has changed a lot, but one thing that will never change is all the work that goes on before the public sees it. So enters Echo Sunyata Sibley.

Sibley is an assistant professor of theater at West Texas A&M University and in this position, along with three others, directs plays for WT Theater. Sibley has a Masters in Vocal Performance and an MFA in acting, as well as experience in Opera, and her own Theater Company Woman from Mars, among many other acquired skills and knowledge. Her latest project is A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, currently at the Branding Iron Theater.

Sibley said she was not originally familiar with this show but got excited after she started implementing her experience with commedia dell’arte. Commedia dell’arte is an Italian theater art form using dramatic masks that lays out specific archetype roles, and their actions are often loosely scripted and more improvised based on their archetype. It is typically about lovers being kept apart or other common themes and explores the relationships between servants and masters.

“I actually didn’t even know the show, like I wasn’t particularly excited,” Sibley said. “And when I first read it, I had the same, [oh my gosh this show is so antiquated] feeling you know. And then I started going, wait a minute, I could approach this from commedia dell’arte, and then I actually got really, really excited about it because it felt like it was actually completely like my style when I thought about it from a commedia lens, and so now I love it.”

Sibley said the show is visually beautiful, fun and recommends it to anyone who wants a good laugh.

“I wouldn’t recommend it for children, but I think college students absolutely,” Sibley said. “It’s just a body romp. It’s funny, it’s silly, it’s ridiculous, it’s very cartoonish. There’s lots of sexual agenda, which, you know, a lot of college students don’t have a problem with that. There’s also girls and boys and very pretty outfits. We’ve got courtesans of both genders, which is fun. And it’s been super, super fun doing kind of a bawdy, naughty, but silly and funny show with the students.”

Sibley directed Forum with Bradley Beirmann and said she was super excited to work on this with him because of their different skill sets.

“Bradley’s got an incredible background in choreography and music director and all these different things,” Sibley said. “And I’m really good at abstract movement and the weird stuff, like how Alice [Alice By Heart] got lifted up so weight sharing and simple acrobatics and stuff, so our skill set mixed very nicely. So that was really fun.”

Sibley said she is collaborative and tries to let her students be creative and bring their own ideas and personalities to their characters.

“I really looked at my job as ‘I’m going to guide and inspire, but I’m the editor,’ so if you bring in lots of ideas, I can be like, ‘Yes, that’s it, or nope, that’s not working,” Sibley said. “So what’s been really fun about this process is the actors were just really excited to bring in all their bits and their funny antics and to the point where I would have to be like, ‘no more bits.”

Not only did Sibley mention her collaborativeness as a trait of her directing but musical lead Ray Barber had the same comment. Barber said some directors will give you too much instruction and be too strict while others will do the opposite.

“I think Echo has a perfect middle ground of that; she’s able to let actors like myself, who enjoy adding my own spins on things and implementing my own ideas, I think she does a great job with allowing us the freedoms to do that, while also giving us a structure and a process to see where everything is going,” Barber said. “This is point A and point B, and within the journey from point A to point B, I want these things to happen, and I think being able to tie those together, it’s my kind of acting style, and I really jell with it.”

Sibley expressed that what she was most excited for about opening weekend was seeing the actors getting to perform in front of a live audience to laugh at the musical.

“I’m really excited to hear an audience laugh, and I just hope they find it as funny as we all find it. So I’m ready for that energy for the cast,” Sibley said.

Talking to Barber after opening night, he expressed how hearing the audience laughing did help the actors and their performance.

“Hearing people laugh, it’s that catharsis, but it’s also like, ‘wow, I’m doing a really good job. This is going extremely well; I’m getting excited,” Barber said. “Then you’re much bigger, and then you’re louder, and then you’re coming up with new things on the spot, and these little details that maybe weren’t clicking are suddenly clicking now because you’re giving it that extra juice, and I think that’s only possible because of the crowd adding that extra laughter.”

WT musicals are open to all WT students, and Sibley said she would encourage any student interested to try them out.

“They would need to know how to prepare a monologue and a song, but I feel like anyone in this department would be so helpful to any WT student.” Sibley said, “And I certainly could say that if a nontheater, art student, or dance student came to me and said, ‘Can you help me prepare?’ I would be like, yes, let’s talk about it.”

Sibley’s parents were both artists and she said she remembered her mom sewing costumes as an assistant for a woman who had a “magical, amazing” house and they would have costumes all over their home.

“It just felt like a fairyland for kids, you know, so I would go to the theater, and I’d be running around backstage, and I’d get to meet all the actors,” Sibley said. “So I just immediately fell in love with not only the on-stage part of it, but the backstage part of it. And my mom always jokes that she would have to watch me because I would start talking to the people on stage like I thought they were real.”

She implements not only her education but what she learned from the challenges she faced on the journey that led her here to teaching. Sibley said she had lots of teachers and mentors tell her she couldn’t be multiple things and needed to pick one thing, she needed to “stay in her lane” but she had other plans.

“I sort of ignored all that advice and have had a really weird, varied career, but I feel like it sort of culminated in me now working and doing what I do now because it informs my directing and informs my teaching,” Sibley said. “I believe I have my own unique skill set, as everyone does, you know, but I just enjoy doing it so much, and I also enjoy continuing to learn and push myself as an artist and as a performer and as a teacher and all that. But I also really, really love teaching.”

Get your tickets to Forum now!

May 1, 2, 3 – 7:30pm, Branding Iron Theater

May 4 – 2:30pm, Branding Iron Theater

Email [email protected] or visit https://cur8.com/17516/project/131213 to request your tickets. You can also call, 806-651-2810 or visit the box office, Monday-Friday: 2:30 – 5:00 p.m.; and 1 hour prior to performance. The box office is located in the Grand Lobby on the North end of the Sybil B. Harrington Fine Arts Complex. There is assigned seating so get your tickets now!