Those who found themselves signing up for the Spring musical on the theater department’s green room door, were anxiously awaiting the cast list to come out, including senior Treyson Rassfeld, who found out he will be playing Horton (from “Horton Hears a Who”) in ‘Seussical the Musical’.

“I love to sing, I love to dance, I love to act, I love the show, and I was really excited to do Seussical,” said Rassfeld.

Rassfeld was also excited about the musical itself, which is based on some of the popular Dr. Seuss books, will feature well-known character like Horton the Elephant, but also Cat in the Hat, The Grinch, and Gertrude Mcfuzz.

“Seeing all those really fun characters that you’ve read about in books since you were a kid, coming up on stage is really cool,” said Rassfeld.

This love and willingness to try out for musicals didn’t happen overnight. Prior to freshman year, Rassfeld was only involved in choir.

“Freshman year, [I discovered] that I really like musicals. When I saw people up there [singing and dancing] on stage in front of huge crowds, I was like, ‘that is what I want to do,’” said Rassfeld.

When jumping into theater, auditioning can be anxiety producing for a lot of people, including himself.

“I always tell myself to be calm and not freak out about it. I always tend to hype things up more than they usually are or think they are a bigger deal than they are,” said Rassfeld. ”I mean even though it is a big deal, if you just stay calm and do what you’ve done for the past however long you’ve practiced and you’ll be fine.”

Rassfeld has now been in three Southeast musicals.  After freshman year, he quickly found that musicals were a bit more wild than he thought.

“It’s so much effort. I love musicals because I think it’s a combination of everything we do in the performing arts department. So there’s acting, there’s technical, there’s set building, there’s singing and dancing, and then there’s orchestra and stuff like that,” said Rassfeld. “You have pretty much everything the performing arts does, which is why we do only one show in the entire second semester, excluding Nite of Knights, because it takes everything that we have to put a show on.”

This hard work can pay off. A lot of lessons can be taught through theater.

“ [I learned] stepping out of your bubble is the most important thing,” said Rassfeld. “If I had never stepped out of my comfort zone and decided to do tech for our freshman musical I would not be the person I am today.”

It has also help Rassfeld transform in different ways.

“It’s built [my] self confidence up higher than I think anything has or ever could,” said Rassfeld. “I’ve made friends that I probably would have never connected with if I had just stuck with choir. I’ve become, I think, a more diverse person, in just the way I think about the world.”

Treyson has a lot of hope for this semester’s musical.

“[I hope]  everybody gets out of it what they want out of it,” said Rassfeld. “This show is so wide and diverse that you can be anything. You can be a jungle creature, you can be a who, you can be whatever you want, so you just make the most of whatever happens.”

Be sure to see all these different characters come to life May 3-6 at the Jennifer L. Dorsey auditorium.

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