‘Spelling Bee’ musical comes to IU Auditorium

“The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” is making its way to Bloomington for two performances at the IU Auditorium.

The Tony Award-winning musical centers around six middle school students competing for the top honor of spelling bee champ. Auditorium Director Doug Booher said the show traditionally includes members of the audience who are pulled up on stage to be part of the spelling bee.

The Bloomington performances will also include two guest performers. Tonight’s show features Alex from Alex’s Playhouse on B97, and Mayor Mark Kruzan will make an appearance Wednesday night for the second performance.

“Doug Booher extended the invitation to myself and to Alex at B97,” Kruzan said. “Doug and I have known each other because of our work on different community issues in the past, and that led to him being able to send an e-mail saying, ‘Hey, is this something you’d be interested in?’”

Kruzan has also performed at The Funny Bone Comedy Club and has been involved with other arts events in Bloomington. He said one of the reasons he is involved in the arts community is to lend extra publicity to events.

“I hope that from that people might see that and think he has a sense of humor and is someone we can approach,” Kruzan said.

Booher said the musical’s production people contacted the IU Auditorium and asked him to identify a couple of local individuals who would be great celebrity spellers. The marketing team compiled a list of individuals, each of whom they thought had a great sense of humor, a vibrant personality, and whom would feel comfortable while on stage.

In addition to having a lot of crowd interaction, this is also the first musical of the semester for the auditorium.

“For a musical any time throughout our season, especially the first one after break, everyone is eager to get back to it and have a big show that will be really popular and a lot of fun for the audience,” Booher said.

Because the show is in a middle-school setting, Booher said a lot of people can relate to the characters.

“Those often are formative years for all of us, and not too far off for our college students, but far off enough that we can look back ... and laugh at that time in our life,” Booher said. “The show does a great job of being poignant but also hilarious.”

Sophomore Alysha Balog said she owns the soundtrack for the show and is glad IU brought the musical to Bloomington. She said she wanted to see the show when it came to Chicago, but she was working.

“I’ve been wanting to see it ever since it won the Tony,” Balog said. “I’m very excited to see the show.”