Wednesday Addams finds her game face, eventually
CSEE in Yonkers stages 'The Addams Family'
Saramia Caimares, a tiny sophomore at Charter School for Educational Excellence in Yonkers, smiles all the time.
Ask her a question, she smiles.
Ask her another and she giggles and smiles.
Ask her about JoJo, the tiny Who she played in “Seussical” last year and, you guessed it: She erupts in a megawatt grin.
When I ask her about what it takes to play Wednesday Addams, the humorless girl she portrays in “The Addams Family” this week (performances are May 15 and 16), she does it again.
“I just really need to have that Wednesday personality,” Caimares says. “Usually my other roles are happier, stuff like that. Wednesday, she has to have that very like serious, sad, evil kind of looking face.”
I decided to test her a bit.
“Show me your Wednesday game face,” I say.
With that, she smiles. And laughs out loud. This won’t be easy.
“I always laugh all the time,” she says with another giggle. “It’s very hard. I have to focus. I can’t be thinking about anything else. I have to pretend I’m really Wednesday, you know, have that Wednesday personality.”
Here are just a few of the photos I took while Saramia became Wednesday. Enjoy.
See Wednesday find her game face…
Learn the tango, teach the tango
Yasira Rios speaks softly, her sentences tailing off. She’s uncomfortable, it seems, taking credit for the dances she has choreographed, repeatedly praising the cast for their hard work.
But since director Keith Swingle recruited her to be chief choreographer (read more on that, below) at least four songs have Rios’ choreographic stamp on them: “Just Around the Corner, “Secrets,” “When You’re an Addams” and “Tango de Amor.”
Rios also choreographs for the school’s Latin Dance Club, but she had never staged a tango before.
“This was my first time and, honestly, I did not know how to tango,” she says. “So I grabbed my friend and I was like, ‘You know what? We’re gonna learn how to tango.’”
Because it takes two to tango.
“We learned it and we just added our own flavor to it,” Rios says. “We did whatever we felt was needed for the dance.”
They learned it well enough to teach it.
Rios plays one of the Addams ancestors and is always on hand to refresh a castmate’s memory when it comes to a dance step. She says doing theater at CSEE has taught her something.
“It taught me just to be very expressive, to not care to be too loud or too quiet. In theater, you get to be loud or you get to be quiet or whatever. And that’s what I like. And dancing and singing is my favorite thing.”
She’s found her place.
In love with the moon (but not dating)
Sydney Robertson, a junior, had fun playing General Genghis Kahn Schmitz in last year’s “Seussical,” so naturally she came back for “The Addams Family.”
“I came back because I like being able to musically express myself,” she says. “I had never sung before this, so coming into this new experience and being able sing and act and just have fun with other castmates, it was really good.”
She plays Fester, the charming character who falls in love with the moon. One of the musical’s most raucous scenes, “Full Disclosure,” leads to Robertson’s favorite Fester line.
“Malcolm gets mad at the Addamses and he says, ‘and a man who’s dating the moon!’ And I say, ‘… I wouldn’t say we’re dating.’”
Fester has a sweet song, “The Moon and Me,” which tests Robertson’s abilities in a different way.
“I have to do a lot more emotion singing because I’m not really dancing,” she says. “It’s not really a dancing song.”
For Robertson, theater at CSEE has been a door to a better outlook.
“I was kind of depressed and in a really tough mental state, so when I joined ‘Seussical,’ I was like, ‘Wait guys, why is this fire? Why am I actually not being depressed anymore?’ I guess it gives me that escape of not being so sad and just moping around.”
Yonkers CSEE presents “The Addams Family” at 7 p.m., May 15, and at 2 and 7 p.m., May 16. $10 for adults, $5 for students, at the door
