Courtesy photo
Citrus Music returns with a tumble into Wonderland by way of the London Blitz in WWII
I’ve been eagerly awaiting the company’s next offering ever since, and after a year of radio silence, they’re returning this weekend with an intimate, imaginative tumble into Wonderland by way of the London Blitz. I recently spoke with director Nicholas Wainwright and music director Maura Sitzmann about Alice by Heart, the latest in their long line of collaborations, which runs Aug. 2-3 at ME Theatre.
“I’ve been a musical theater kid all my life,” says Wainwright, who grew up in Point Pleasant, New Jersey.“I was so lucky to have an abundance of community theater in my area, and it was only in high school that I realized how much I loved being behind the table as well.”
Similarly, Sitzmann grew up on Long Island playing piano and singing in choirs from a young age, saying, “My entire upbringing, I was the kid that would ask for a piccolo for Christmas.”
Both ended up attending the recently-defunct University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where they met when Sitzmann performed in Wainwright’s senior thesis production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and music-directed Parade.
But the pair’s partnership almost ended prematurely when Sitzmann left Philly for Orlando as a participant in Walt Disney World’s College Program. “After a couple months, [I] realized how much happier I was in Florida, and made the huge leap of faith and decided to re-audition and reapplied to the BFA musical theater program at the University of Central Florida.”
Unbeknownst to her, Wainwright also decided to relocate to Orlando around the same time. “I came down to get closer onto the creative elements of the theme parks, and it’s been a kind of sideways journey in getting there,” says Wainwright. They reconnected through social media, and ended up working together at Universal Orlando, where they both landed roles with the Grinchmas musical.
When COVID shutdowns began, “we had to kind of reevaluate what [that] meant for the arts and reevaluate what that meant for our jobs,” recalls Wainwright, who returned to teaching and opened Horizon High School in 2021 as its theater director. He eventually left Horizon for a full-time position with Disney entertainment at Hollywood Studios, after part-time stage managing Epcot’s lagoon spectaculars.“I was going to Epcot on the weekends, and I was working probably about 90 hours a week at the high school.”
Meanwhile, Sitzmann performed at all three major resorts, while also working at the Dr. Phillips Center as a teaching artist, and freelancing as a music director and accompanist. She says she and Wainwright created Citrus Music “to continue collaborating,” adding that “it’s been really nice to take a break from our very busy schedules and have a moment to create work and create art that is really important to us, just for the love of the art.”
Wainwright says when they founded Citrus Music five years ago, “we wanted so badly to get back into the creation phase that we were missing, and we noticed that a lot of the industry down here has their group of folks that have been doing it for years and years and years, and it was a little difficult at times to kind of break in without making it yourself.” It was originally envisioned mainly as a music lesson voice studio, and became a theatrical company almost by accident. “When we started, we figured that a great way to showcase what we could do and what we could offer to students was to produce a show.”
Those student showcases spawned productions of Pippin, Fun Home, as well as the award-winning Old Man and the Old Moon, and now Alice by Heart, which was created in 2012 by Spring Awakening composer Duncan Sheik and lyricist Steven Sater (with co-writer Jessie Nelson). “If you enjoy the music in Spring Awakening, you are sure to enjoy the music in the show,” promises Sitzmann.
The one-act musical reimagines Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland within the context of WWII, as teenager Alice Spencer (Emily Fiedler) comforts her ailing friend Alfred (Bennet Preuss) with the tale while they take shelter in a tube station. “Slowly but surely, the cast of people that are trapped in this bunker start to become Wonderland counterparts through her imaginative storytelling,”explains Wainwright, “and they all kind of join her along on the journey.”
Citrus Music’s latest show shares the “empty space” aesthetic I adored about The Old Man, with primitive props and onstage musicians doubling as actors, which Wainwright calls his “bread and butter ... to have storytelling come to the foreground, not hidden behind production elements.”
Even so, he says keeping all 16 cast members onstage and active throughout the entire show took the efforts of the entire creative team, which also includes choreographer Malik Van Hoozer-Elliot. “It’s truly been a collaboration between the three of us, as well as the ensemble that has been devising work as they go as well.”
Alice by Heart is Citrus Music’s first collaboration with Horizon West Theater Company (which Wainwright developed a relationship with while managing the high school’s venue), and after a year’s absence it sounds like it won’t be the last we hear from Sitzmann and Wainwright.
“I had been out of theater since The Old Man and the Old Moon back in 2023, whereas I used to — when I was at the school — churn out three or four shows a year,” says Wainwright. “All of a sudden I went from that to a very dry spell, because I had been focusing all of my efforts full time at Disney. So this is our comeback card that we got to play, and it’s been a lot of fun to be back in the rehearsal room together and make art again.”
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