Casting of ‘Spelling Bee’ an artful endeavor

To some theatergoers, “audience participation” is the theatrical equivalent of “stung by bees” + “followed by mime”: It couldn’t be more painful and embarrassing.

Others see it as an opportunity to show off their talent and stage presence. Then there are those who are happy to go onstage if asked but only if they can get drunk on lobby cocktails first.

They’re all exactly the kinds of people who’ve had a hard time getting past the gatekeepers at “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin’s charming and funny musical, which not only has given audience participation a good name (it looks like fun, and you’d think the volunteers were plants) but also turned the art of picking the right volunteers into a soft science, thanks to a system devised by the show’s Tony Award-winning director, James Lapine.

“You get people who want to do it but they’re not necessarily the people you want to do it,” said Lapine, who pointed out, by phone, that an overzealous or hammy audience member (an unemployed actor, for instance, or a former spelling bee champ) can be “deadly,” not to mention disruptive. The slightly shy theatergoer is often ideal, especially a literate one, because he or she will be up to competing against the actors in the bee. But truly reluctant volunteers may not do well, in spite of brave intentions: They can get quite nervous after they get onstage -- or intoxicated before getting there.

It’s a balancing act that seems to be worth the trouble.

“In most audience-participation shows, the participant is so clearly not a part of what’s going on that it’s the fish-out-of-water aspect that makes it’s funny. But here, the people in the audience are rooting for them,” Lapine said.

Of course, it’s hard to say who’d really be good onstage until you meet the person, which is why you need a professional audience wrangler like Joe Petrovich, who was seated under a blackboard in the lobby of the Drury Lane Theatre recently, like a displaced elementary-school principal, wearing a T-shirt that read: “Can You Please Use That in a Sentence?”

It was less than 40 minutes before the 7:30 curtain, and he had just sent his two assistant wranglers -- Laura Molyneaux and Julius Thomas -- into the lobby. They were carrying clipboards with Spelling Bee Report Cards, looking for a pool of volunteers from whom to pick the night’s lucky quartet.

“Their job basically is to meet people, do a brief synopsis, give them their ‘report card,’ which they’ll bring to me,” Petrovich said. “I’ll do a brief interview using the information that’s gathered, and try to get their personalities.”

The Spelling Bee Report Card supplies such information as whether the volunteers keep up with current events, how they rate themselves as spellers, their age, hobbies, and whether or not they do crossword puzzles or play Scrabble.

For every person who looked stricken when asked to volunteer by the assistant wranglers, there were just as many who were alarmingly enthusiastic, including a cute little girl from New York with a stage-motherish mother. “She’ll do anything!” said the mom. “You can give her a script, and she’ll memorize it before she gets on stage, and jump right in.”

Others took a bit of cajoling. One twenty-something woman fit Lapine’s profile of a pretty good prospect (not too eager; an English major) but was like Hamlet: unable to decide.

“Do you win anything?” she asked.

“If you win the spelling bee, you get that trophy over there,” said wrangler Molyneaux, “and a memory to last you a lifetime.”

“How long are you up there?” the English major asked.

“For as long as you spell well.”

“Should I be doing this?” she asked her boyfriend.

This went on for a while.

“We’ll only pick four.”

“OK, but try not to pick me,” she finally said.

Meanwhile, at the principal’s desk, a volunteer marched up to Petrovich with her report card, handing it over for further analysis.

“Is it important that you spell well or is it funnier if you don’t?” she asked.

“Well,” said Petrovich, “are you saying that you’re not a good speller?”

“Well, I haven’t really been put to the test,” she said. “Actually, I was a good speller at school. I aced all my spelling tests; does that qualify me?”

“Well, you’re a teacher,” he said, looking at her report card. “Do you pay attention to current events?”

She sighed. “Yes, I try, but I have a toddler.... Are you going to ask me current events questions?”

“You play any word games -- Boggle, Scrabble -- or do crosswords?” Petrovich asked.

“I used to, a lot, until ...”

Eventually, Petrovich gave her the spiel he gave everyone:

“We pick four people to go on stage, and we make the announcement at 7:20, 10 minutes before the show starts, so come back right here then.”

At exactly 7:16, the wranglers took the stack of report cards into a little room offstage and read over them like Tarot cards: The right people seemed to reveal themselves, with very little discussion.

At 7:20, Petrovich stepped into the lobby and announced to the crowd that they’d selected an 11-year-old named Caitlin Blum (who enjoys swimming and social studies, and plays Scrabble); a 42-year-old bearded English teacher named Steve Morris (hobby: fantasy football); a 27-year-old software developer named Dan Rodney (volleyball, cards, guitar, crossword puzzles); and Sandy Sekulovich, a fifty-something science teacher from Palos Park (quilting, crosswords).

The four were taken back to the same room and briefed: “We liked who you are, and that’s who we want to see onstage. We have actors already. What we’d like you to do is just get up there and spell. We don’t want you to put on a funny voice, or walk funny or anything like that, OK?” They also were shown a map of the auditorium, told how to get onstage and reminded to ask the moderator to do two important things: define the word, and use it in a sentence. Then, they were asked to put their hands in a circle, like a basketball huddle, and shout, “Go, Bee!’ ”

With about four minutes to curtain, Petrovich raced out to the lobby, where he gave the actors a quick shorthand on who’d be sharing the stage with them: “Sandy Sekulovich is wearing the blue dress without sleeves. Caitlin Blum is 11. Dan Rodney is preppy. Steve Morris has a beard, if you want to do a facial hair joke.”

And then it was showtime.

This quartet performed marvelously, and not merely as fodder for improvisational and preplanned jokes. (“Miss Sekulovich won her local spelling bee by spelling her own name,” said the moderator, when introducing her) but also as good hoppers (during a musical number) and admirable spellers.

For their efforts, they each received a juice box and a hug from the onstage “comfort counselor” on their way offstage, while the cast sang a baleful then upbeat song, whose lyrics are almost exclusively, “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.”

“I had no idea what I was in for,” Dan Rodney said afterward. “I’d never seen actors up that close.... It was fun.”

“I’m a teacher, a science teacher,” Sekulovich said. “I always considered myself a good speller until I got up there.”

“I was terrified,” said Steve Morris, who added: “I had a wonderful time.”

The next night, Petrovich and his team would wrangle four new audience members. That’s part of the show’s charm: It changes every night.

“Someone suggested we get rid of the audience participation years ago,” when he directed the production in New York, Lapine said. “And I said: ‘You’re crazy. It wouldn’t have that energy. It wouldn’t be the same show.’ ”