Crafton Hills College Transforms into Urinetown

Publish Date: March 12, 2023

Imagine having to pay each time you use the restroom. Now, imagine many such restrooms being owned by one man expecting a big payout to fund a trip to an exotic location with each flush. For those living in “Urinetown,” this is daily life, all thanks to a 20-year drought and the greediness of a massive, corrupt corporation.

Their story is captured in a completely satirical musical called – you guessed it – Urinetown, first developed for the stage in the early 2000s by Mark Hollman and Greg Kotis and selected by Crafton Hills College’s theater department as its 2023 spring musical.

Under the direction of Paul Jacques, more than a dozen actors took on personas of the town’s diverse population of residents, from a humble janitor to his love interest whose view of the world is completely skewed, to the greedy owner of the shady corporation known as “Urine Good Company.”

Urinetown is a bold presentation of realworld hot topics, such as the legal system, capitalism and corporate management. For Crafton’s production, a simple but effective set and a solid cast under the direction of Jacques helped lead audiences through a series of emotions. But Jacques wanted each performance to do one other thing: get audiences talking.

“Urinetown pokes fun at the politics and policies of sustainability,” he said. “While we don’t want to tell people what to think, we certainly want to get the conversation started. ‘Is this how we’re living – and expanding? [Is it] good in the long term?’ ‘Who is it good for?’ Questions like that.”

The musical, Jacques continued, is part of the partnership between Crafton and the Redlands Theatre Festival, which will stage the musical during its upcoming summer season. The musical Urinetown was selected “because of its dark humored nature,” he explained. “We feel that [the musical] is a building block in that it is a step-up skillwise from ‘Avenue Q,’ which itself is a step up from [the] 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. We want to increase the type of musical that we are doing each year as the students in the program continue to build their skill sets.”

Building upon those skills is exactly what Sebastian Hernandez wanted to do when he auditioned for the role as Officer Lockstock, the show’s narrator. Although he had auditioned for musicals in the past, only to come up short, auditioning for this out-of-the-box musical allowed him an opportunity to try something new and develop Lockstock as if he were the first to play the role.

“I’m at the point where I want to take [acting] more seriously,” said the 21-yearold Yucaipa resident. “My singing has never been quite the best and so I’ve been working on it leading up to this so I feel more comfortable in a professional setting being able to actually do this for a living.”

Casting for Urinetown was completed in December. Rehearsals followed every Monday through Thursday since mid- January. Performances were staged March 10, 11 and 12 in the Finkelstein Performing Arts Center and, like its cast, brought in a diverse audience.

Along with Hernandez, rounding out the cast was Chelsea Bishop as Penelope Pennywise, Jacob Brantmeyer as Tiny Tom/Dr. Billeaux, Arthur Buenaventura as Senator Flipp, Juniper Burgess as Robby Stockfish/Mrs. Millennium, Chris Coon as Caldwell B. Cladwell, Kobe Darby as Bobby Strong, Miah Earl as Ms. McQueen, Kat Jacques as Little Becky Two Shoes/ Secretary, Monty Muse as Officer Barrel, Luciana Vignali as Josephine Strong, Sky Sigmund as Soupy Sue, Bailey Spletzer as Little Sally, Joshua Tongpo as Old Man Strong/Hot Blades/Harry, and Stephanie Yglesias as Hope Cladwell.

Missed your chance to see Urinetown at Crafton? A Jacques-led production will be staged on select dates during the Redlands Theatre Festival in mid-June through July. To learn more, go to www.rtfseason.com.