Theater director and actress Missy Maramara revealed the reason they chose young actors for The Sandbox Collective’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee musical during a press conference on Tuesday, January 30.

Held at Privato Hotel in Quezon City, the cast and production team for the upcoming interactive musical comedy play discussed how the storyline is very relevant to today’s generation.

“The spelling bee is very intense competition where young kids are under scrutiny for their decisions about spelling out words, literally. In a metaphorical level, these young people, as embodied by our actors, are going to be under intense scrutiny as it happens in everyday life because of social media, because of technology that is increasing and developing at a speed, you know, its surpassing how humans grow organically and that is affecting society as we know it,” Missy explained.

She also added, “We wanted to show that by incorporating it to our design, incorporating it to how they relate to each other while it is still very much a theatrical production.”

“There are elements that we’ll be zooming in to their thought process, kind like of coming in to reveal certain ideas and certain words, kind of like pop out, to really underscore the profundity of our texts, which are otherwise thought to be fun and light-hearted. So there’s a lot to unpack in this musical,” she happily said.

The director also revealed that they wanted to reach out to the younger generation even more by letting young actors portray the roles in the play.

“It’s different flavor when adults play children and when young adults play children (characters), there's a different feel to it  as well. The reason why we decided it is because, yes, we wanted to reach out to the younger generation who may feel very much the same pressure of the characters,” Missy shared.

She also noted how social media nowadays affect people in their life decisions.

“Kasi nga the scrutiny of social media, of the constant barrage of images that’s like make them second guess ‘how do I handle all the knowledge that I have that I get from the internet and deal with my limited world experience?’ and I think that's what childhood for them is what about and adults are supposed to help us kind like of filter that,” she said.

“Our youth deal with a lot of that pressure and that's why we want to offer that with a cast of the same age range,” she expressed.

The Stage Kiss actress also shared how they picked the official cast of the play, from veterans to newbies, as well as the criteria they looked for during their auditions.

“They all auditioned... It was a whole lot of very talented, incredible young people and some of them go to the theater, some of them are mainstays of theater, some of them are artistas. It was difficult to choose from the best of the best because all of them are really incredible, but we had to choose,” she recalled.

“Number 1, kailangan sobrang lupit kumanta tapos kailangan (may) moves, tapos kailangan yung acting nila yung kayang mag-adjust. We will give them prompts, and we would see where they would take it, and then they had to gel,” she told the press.

She added: “They has to have that energy of a community that, while on the one hand on stage, it will be electric kailangan together as a team there's a camaraderie and that joy that comes with putting up a musical.”

“Each and every one of their personalities are so distinct and joyful but also very pilyo and pilya. Every time we asked them to go on a break, they've been working and playing at the same time and it’s incredible,” she expressed.

“We were so very blessed to have arrived at this cast,” she remarked.

Together with Missy, the founding musical director of Hong Kong Disneyland, Rony Fortich will serve as the show’s musical director, while Franco Ramos will be the choreographer.

The cast for the musical consists of theater veterans Audie Gemora, Becca Coates, Robbie Guevara, Liesl Batucan, Diego Aranda, Joshua Ramirez, Elian Dominguez, Ron Balgos, Justine Narciso, Luis Marcelo, and Shaun Ocrisma, as well as Star Magic artists Krystal Brimner, Nyoy Volante, Jordan Andrews, AC Bonifacio, Shanaia Gomez, and Angela Ken.

The play follows the story of the six spellers vying for the championship of a lifetime, while also navigating puberty, friendship, family and love.  

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a partnership between The Sandbox Collective and ABS-CBN's Star Magic and is the theater company's first production for its 2024 season.