Most high schoolers worry about homework and making it to class on time. But one student at Highland is currently busy running a corrupt megacorporation and controlling all of the toilets in town.
Junior Thomas Lambert is making his theater debut as Caldwell B. Cladwell in Highland’s annual fall production – “Urinetown.”
Lambert began his acting career when he was casted in a junior Shakespeare play in 5th grade.
This experience was only the beginning of Lambert’s love for acting and theater, as he then took acting classes in middle school and participated in all his school plays.
With older siblings who were also actors in school, Lambert grew up going to plays and watching as his older brother starred in various productions throughout high school.
“He was a big inspiration for me. In my head, I was always going to do theater in high school. That was always kind of the goal and the plan,” Lambert said.
This is Lambert’s first time starring in a play, and while he’s very excited and grateful for the opportunity, he felt intense stress and pressure to make the play successful.
If someone in the ensemble is dragging the whole production down, they are allowed to be removed from the play. But as a lead, Lambert has no room for error and must work harder than ever to make the show a success for everyone going to watch.
“There’s a lot of pressure to be good,” Lambert said. “Acting is a very hard skill because it’s so maddening.”
Despite the high expectations, Lambert enjoys finding the deeper themes and meanings in theater but thinks separating yourself from the character can be challenging.
Needing to simultaneously be natural while also focusing on every little detail that needs to be fixed can be exhausting. It’s finding the balance between not obsessing but also thinking about and applying the notes and advice that you receive that makes Lambert a better actor.
“You have to obviously memorize your lines, and then there’s this weird ephemeral thing on top of that which is acting,” Lambert said. “And that acting is so hard to find and I know whenever I don’t have it, it’s hard to grasp it.”
Every good story has at least one villain who benefits from other people’s suffering. In Urinetown, that person is Caldwell B. Cladwell – Lambert’s character.
Cladwell is a rich businessman and owner of the Urine Good Company that holds a monopoly on public toilets after a 20-year drought has made water scarce.
Cladwell is evil, hated, and selfish — all qualities that Lambert doesn’t possess but is required to show on stage.
Like most roles, there are some aspects of a character that an actor can relate too, and other aspects that make it harder to look natural. Cladwell and Lambert are no different.
Cladwell believes forcing people to do anything for him is the best way to stay in power, while Lambert doesn’t find that tactic necessary or helpful in his life.
But Cladwell loves being in control and ordering people around; a trait that feels more natural for Lambert to show on stage.
While Lambert thinks he has some qualities that are similar to Cladwell, his mom and Highland math teacher, Elizabeth Lambert, thinks of them as completely different people.
“Sometimes you get a part that is similar to your personality, but the most fun is to put on a mask so to speak,” Elizabeth said. “And just embody something that is a totally different thing than you.”
Other than trying to look natural on stage, Lambert also has to think about singing and sounding good while doing it.
Because he’s a lead with a solo, Lambert has been taking vocal lessons to try and improve his singing before the show begins.
Although having the ability to sing is very important in musical theater, there were other qualities and talents that theater teacher, Sara Ragey, was looking for during the casting process.
“I think he’s a really good singer. He has really beautiful tone and good skill. He also carries himself in a way that makes him come across as a little bit older on stage, which is needed to play Caldwell,” Ragey said. “I also think he’s very intelligent and a strong reader. He’s good at analyzing scripts and approaching a role from a very intellectual standpoint.”
It takes a lot of hard work to be an actor. Lambert didn’t just wake up one morning and get casted as one of the leads in Urinetown. He’s been practicing and honing is skills for seven years.
After taking acting classes in high school and participating in multiple shows in the past three years, Lambert and the people around him have all noticed how he’s improved.
Along with becoming more confident, Lambert’s also worked on his diction and pronunciation on stage.
He’s also gotten better at staying grounded and “using gestures to communicate the language of the script and the character,” Ragey said.
Like anything that’s been constantly worked on and improved, acting has been such a big part of Lambert, and he feels that it’s changed his life for the better.
After being on stage for seven years, Lambert has become a more confident person and is now at the point where he feels fairly comfortable in front of large groups of people.
This decreased sense of panic isn’t only necessary in theater. It’s also a very useful skill to have in the real world. Lambert believes that his knack of feeling calm around large amounts of people has helped him, especially in high school when you’re constantly around adults and teenagers.
Other than dealing with stage-fright, there are many skill actors need to learn and master that can translate to their day-to-day lives.
“Acting takes a lot of discipline and analysis and thought to think about your character. It can be a pretty academic exercise for actors, and it’s good to watch kids have to work hard at their craft,” Elizabeth said. “Anytime kids preform, I think it’s great for their overall development as a human and their confidence and learning to be well spoken.”
While Lambert finds acting exhausting, challenging, complicated, and nerve-wracking, he’s also found success and a large community that support him every step of the way.
Ragey makes sure to have one-on-one training sessions with Lambert while also giving him more direction during group scenes of the best way to play a character. She also makes it a habit of meeting with all her actors privately to check in and make sure their confidence and overall mental health isn’t struggling.
During the final weeks of rehearsals before a production is put on for the audience, all the actors have already gone through hours of singing, memorizing lines, and remembering choreography.
Because it gets exhausting, Elizabeth tries to help Lambert stay happy and healthy at home by always cooking dinner and making sure he has a good sleep schedule.
“It’s very helpful to have a community of people that understand what you’re going through if you’re struggling with a part,” Lambert said.
Through all the ups and downs of rehearsals, Lambert also developed a new skill: he has found a talent for being a corrupt CEO in a dystopian capitalist society. And that may come in handy one day.
