Urinetown Draws Big Crowd

From spiders, to twins, to a surly police officer that protects a city from getting soaked in piss, Willy Jonas has played them all.

A BFA acting major about to enter his senior year of college, Jonas has been in plays almost every year since kindergarten. Even after never having been in a musical past 8^th grade, Willy was able to nab the lead role of Officer Lockstock in University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s production of Urinetown. This show tells of a world terrorized by a 20-year water shortage, thus resulting in private restrooms being outlawed.

Citizens must now pay a fee to use public restrooms, and Officer Lockstock and his partner Officer Barrel’s purpose is to ensure that everyone pays and no one goes where they aren’t supposed to.

Aside from Jonas and Officer Barrel, played by David Stein, the rest of the cast was students actually going to school for musical theatre. Because of this, Jonas was nervous about how he, after never having sung before, would be received by the cast.

“I was surprised by how welcoming everyone was. No one was ever like, ‘that guy can’t even sing and he’s one of the leads! That’s ridiculous!’ Everyone was just really cool about it; I don’t really have any complaints. Rehearsing for two and a half months is always tough, but after the rehearsing process and finally once we opened the show it was a great time. I’m glad I did it.”  

In addition to a friendly cast, Jonas was also pleased by the amount of improv in the show. According to him, it’s an extremely valuable skill to have on stage in case something goes wrong, but it’s also just downright fun. Improv is where his future lies post-graduation, “I’d like to move to Chicago for maybe a couple years and try out doing comedy and stuff like that down there. I know some TV shows film in Chicago so hopefully I can do that.” His skills appear at various points during the show do to some directorial leniency.

“Tony, the director, really let us try out things, like a lot of stuff. Like when Dave jumped up onto my shoulders in that one scene, and a bunch of the other gags we threw in there were things that we just made up sometimes. And he was just like, ‘alright I like that, keep that in there.’ Granted a lot of the jokes were cut, because I mean they did drag on or they just weren’t necessary. But for the most part Tony was really like, ‘alright try whatever you want and we’ll see what works.’”

This was a winning strategy because by the end of the weekend the show was sold out and additional sections had to be opened.

No matter what, this is what Willy sees himself doing. “Why be an accountant when I can do this? Or why be say, a journalist,” he laughs. A part of it is his love for entertaining people, but he thinks it goes much deeper than that.

“Honestly it’s just that I never grew up. I’ve always loved, just as a kid, being someone else and like dressing up and playing pretend. And that just didn’t go away; all through high school and through college, and hopefully what I decide to do with my life. I dunno…I think it’s fun. I love doing it and I think I’m good at it, and so I figure if I can make money doing it, why not. It’s like the one thing that really makes me happy.”