NOTE: Other Hempfield Les Mis Interviews can be found here:

Wilder Long and David Becker: https://hempfieldflash.com/3226/features/hempfield-les-mis-interviews-david-becker-and-wilder-long/

Jonny O’Maille and Derek Harris: https://hempfieldflash.com/3237/features/hempfields-les-mis-lead-interviews-jonny-o-maille-and-derek-harris/

Addie Aument and Reese Szulborski: https://hempfieldflash.com/3254/features/hempfields-les-mis-lead-interviews-addie-aument-and-reese-szulborski/

And now, the last in my series of interviews with the Les Mis leads. Interviewing everyone was an incredible experience, and they were all a pleasure to talk to. I hope for all you readers you enjoyed getting a closer look at the people you’ll be seeing on stage this weekend. Up last but certainly not least, Izzy and Liam Conicella, who play Monsieur and Madame Thénardier, and Sonia Shih, who plays Éponine.

C: Alright, let’s start off by going around the table and saying our names and roles.

L: I’m Liam Conicella and I play Thénardier.

S: My name is Sonia Shih and I play Epanine.

I: I’m Izzy Conicella and I play Madame Thénardier.

C: Do any of you have previous experience in the theater at Hempfield or otherwise?

S: I have previous experience in theater but not at Hempfield bc this is my first full year at Hempfield.

C: This is my 2nd year in a HHS musical and I’ve done one other musical outside of it, and that’s it.

I: I did both middle school musicals, and then this my first time doing a high school musical.

C: So how does a Hempfield production differ from a production in other places?

S: I think one of the big differences, and this may just because we’re doing Les Mis and Les Mis is different from other shows, is that we leaned all the music in about the first month and we had it all memorized and we had a concert where we sang those songs, and then after that we just did blocking and we reviewed music sometimes but rarely which is different.

L: It is very similar to that, we do learn the music beforehand and then we block. Basically everything other than the concert was normal this year.

I: Also the stage size compared to other places. We are so fortunate to have a huge stage. And then our stage crew, the things they do, the sets they are building now, my goodness!

C: Prior to Les Mis being announced, did any of you have personal meaningful interactions with the show at all?

S: Well, I saw it when I was very young and it’s definitely in my top 3. I obviously love musical theater and want to go into it and it’s like my number two favorite show ever.

L: So, me and Izzy’s dad—our dad is very, very, into Les Mis. It’s like the one show—he knows the entire show by memory, he used to watch the 10th Anniversary Concert over and over and over again, he used to recite the show to us when we were young.

I: I feel like every dad likes Les Mis.

L: It is a very dad show, but yeah that’s basically our run-in with it. Very much when he heard that it was Les Mis he knew we would want a spot in it.

C: So you mentioned your dad knew exactly what he was thinking when the show was first announced, did you have any opinion or thoughts when the show was announced to be Les Mis?

L: I think my first thought was “wow I don’t know how they’re going to do this,” because it is a very ambitious show. Now as we’ve gotten later and later into the season of musical they’ve definitely surprised me a little bit with how well we’re doing, but yeah, a lot of my thoughts were like wow this is pretty ambitious, because this is basically one of the big three musicals.

S: And I remember thinking “wow, I’m glad I switched schools!”

I: I don’t know what else we’ve done.

L: I mean we could’ve always done Spongebob the Musical.

C: What did the audition process look like?

S: Ooh, so first we had two excerpts from two songs, and it was different for girls and guys, and we came into the room in little groups and we just sang one by one those two excerpts. After that we were called back for a series of characters, and there were two days of callbacks. The first day we were given excerpts from songs for each character, so however many characters you got called back for you would sing those songs for the judges again, and then you were chosen for the second day or you were cut.

L: Now, if you were cut for callbacks you usually got a spot in the show anyways. That day, if you waited the entire time, they’d message you and tell you you got this this and this and they’d give you a packet for the excerpt and then you’d look at it the next day and come back the next two days to sing it for them. The second day, they’d cut it even shorter, so it’d usually only be one or two people.

S: Yeah, I know the second day of callbacks, only Reese got called as Cosette, so people pretty much knew.

C: Did you expect to be cast in the roles you got?

S: No.

I: Not at all.

L: I’d like to say no, but like, at the same time yes. It was the one role where I put a lot of my heart into it and as soon as I went up and saw everyone’s faces when I was doing it, I was like, “okay I think I got the role.”

S: For me, I thought maybe Cosette because I am a soprano, but I had no expectations at all. I just really wanted to get into the show because I think even being in the ensemble is like the best thing for the show, it has an amazing ensemble no matter what role you’re in, you’re going to have an amazing experience so I just knew I wanted to be in the show. I didn’t actually have a dream role, this was just a dream show so I was fine with anyone, but I honestly was not expecting Éponine at all.

I: I was alright with just getting ensemble. It’s my first time being in a high school musical so I didn’t plan to get any big roles, like this is huge, being a first time lead. It blows my mind.

C: Now, I have more personalized questions, first for Izzy and for Liam. What have you two found to be the right balance between comedic acting and just being evil as the Thénardiers?

I: He is the evil part. He is all the evil—sort of.

L: So it’s much easier for me to balance the goofiness and the evil, because when I’m evil she’s not on stage. She kinda steals my evil and all my seriousness when we’re on stage together, and she kinda takes that and she’s the big serious character out of the two of us, and I’m usually the one who’s having the fun

I: He’s the goofy one.

C: Now just for Liam. I personally think that the three most important characters and woven in characters to the plot of Les Mis are Valjean, Javert, and Thénardier, because they are the characters where in every step of the musical there’s something revolving around them. How do you think Thénardier ties into the themes of Les Mis?

L: I think—that’s a really good question—personally, I think the way he interacts with the rest of the cast is very—well, everyone always sees Javert as the villain. He’s the one directly standing up to Valjean, but as you see that, Thénardier is kinda always weaving in the background. He’s always stealing, always being a rat in the background. I think Thénardier is the bigger evil that you’re not always focused on.

C: He’s sort of lurking in the shadows

L: Yeah, he’s always lurking in the shadows and waiting for the correct time to strike. I think that especially plays in the end a lot with the wedding where the Thénardiers are two of the four or so characters left alive—spoiler. I guess it shows that not every time does the hero come out on top, and sometimes evil wins. Not every story has a happy ending. And going back to what you said about him always lurking in the shadows, you see that while he’s always getting away with these evil things, you never really see him pay for it. There are scenes where he gets close but he never really pays for those actions.

C: And now for Sonia, Éponine is a character I’m sure many people, especially at our age, can somewhat relate to, so how do you relate to the character?

S: I think Éponine is the whole unfairness aspect of the musical where she didn’t do anything inherently wrong, but it’s just because of who she is and the family she was born in and things out of her control that caused her to have an unhappy life. And obviously my life isn’t as extreme. I think our minds share some sort of bond over numbness to deep pain, but other than that we’re pretty much completely different. She’s practically given up on her life and lives a life involving crime and unloving parents. I do relate to her romantic struggles though, and I really admire that she’s never jealous of Cosette and instead accepts some things are meant to be and others aren’t.

C: Alright now moving away from the more reflective questions. How long has rehearsal been going on, what does it look like and how rigorous is it?

I: Every single day of the week.

L: So, it started in December, I’d like to say? Early December? Somewhere around that time. I don’t know

I: We started practicing the music in December and then in January and February we’ve just been doing all the staging and blocking.

L: It’s every day, 3 hours. When you’re there it is very rigorous. It’s very rigorous in the fact that you’re constantly doing it.

S: I mean for Éponine she’s not really stage that much.

L: I mean we’re not on stage either, but then you gotta think of people like Jonny, poor Jonny, where he doesn’t get to leave the stage at all, he gets a break in act two maybe. It’s pretty rigorous, but especially for roles like us, it gives you time to put 100% into the roles and scenes that you’re in.

C: What’s the community like in the Hempfield theater department?

I: This is my first time really interacting with everyone in the theater department. Everyone is so welcoming there—to me at least—everyone is very nice and so welcoming  and made me feel like I belonged somewhere.

S: I think there’s always an awesome community found in theater. Everyone just really bonds over the show that they’re doing and everyone is very nice to each other.

L: Yeah, I would go along with them. It’s very welcoming, everyone’s very nice. I haven’t had any drama personally, but yeah everyone’s just super nice and super welcoming. I haven’t had any problems and I think it’s just that bond of creating one big project that everyone can bond over.

C: Are there any stresses, anxieties, or worries that come with the musical season?

S: So, I wanna say I think that one of—well there a lot of stresses and anxieties especially for me—but I think for Éponine, or just this whole musical, it’s very heavy material. It’s very sad, everything about it can be stressful, especially because as actors we have to take these emotions and feel them every night and it can be very emotionally draining. Like for Éponine, I have to have all this pain and then bury it down and I have to remind myself to kind of just unpack it all again because those acting things cannot become real, that would not be good for my mental health. So I think that can be a little stressful, figuring out how do I create this character and take this character off so it’s not real. And I think in addition to that it’s stressful to balance everything I have going on in my life right now. I know before I was doing three musicals, then two, and now I’m just doing one and that’s Les Mis and that’s good, but now I really have to go full force in this musical, and I also have to balance my school work and the other things going on in my schedule and that can just be really stressful because I really want to put my all into this. When you care about something so deeply there’s just more stress and levels added to it because you want to give it your everything, and you just don’t know, “okay, do I have the time, do I have the energy,” all that stuff.

I: I wanna say, this is my first time on this huge stage—performing, singing, it’s very nerve wracking if you mess up once. If you sing a wrong note, if you all of a sudden lose your voice, all of that stuff is very anxiety causing to me. If it happens at one of the performances, I don’t know what I’m going to do, but you gotta push through it.

L: A big thing for me, especially in Les Mis with such a depressing show, I am the one—or me and Izzy are like the two funny characters in the show, so we carry a lot of, at least I always think about this is, “what if I’m not funny, what if everything that we think is hilarious and doing on the stage is just completely like, miss after miss. Being that one comedic role and being kinda that big role that carries a lot of personality in the show, that’s kind of never wracking for me.

C: Like it’s such a heavy show and you’re really the only roles to lighten it.

L: And especially because that’s what people remember about the show a lot is Thénardier and the Thénardiers. We’re very memorable because everything is sad and depressing and here we come and we do all the funny stuff and then we leave and then we come back and we do all the funny stuff.

C: What is your favorite song from the musical, both to sing and to listen to?

I: I gotta say this, “Bring Him Home” makes me cry every time, “I Dreamed a Dream,” that makes me cry… My favorite song to sing is “Master of the House,” obviously.

S: My favorite song to sing is not really a song, more like a scene, it’s “Attack on Rue Plumet” because it’s just high energy and I get to scream and get to threaten my father with a knife.

L: That would be me!

S: I’ve always wanted to get hit on stage…I have to tell you I was recently in EPACs Hunchback and I was doing fightcall and I was so nervous because I’ve never done fightcall before.

I: You were in that? Are you kidding me?

L: The really funny thing is I think out of the 4 or 5 fightscenes, I’m in like 3 of them.

S: And then my favorite song in general is probably “Do You Hear the People Sing” or “One Day More.” they’re just you know, the famous big ones. They’re so good, they make me cry, because they’re about hope and I think that that’s the one thing that lightens the show, is the hope and I love the songs that are the students singing about hope.

L: My favorite song in the show to listen to is definitely Javert’s suicide. It’s just—There’s so much great character writing intermingled with the motifs and all that, it’s so amazing if you know the story of the show. Plus Wilder does such a great job to bring out such emotion and such an amazing quality in that song. It doesn’t make me cry, but it gets me in my feels and I have to sit there like this.

I & S: Well, they can’t see you.

L: Well they can’t see, but everyone imagine me in pure awe and me contemplating my existence.

I: I’d say it’s really hard to decide sometimes because all these songs, they’re all so different and they’re so good together and so beautiful in their own way, it’s just amazing.

L: And if it wasn’t obvious my favorite to sing is “Master of the House.” In a close 2nd is “The Robbery”—“Robbery” is great because me and Wilder have so much fun with that scene, plus I get to improvise. “Attack on Rue Plumet” is also a close second—all of my songs are great, that’s all I can say. I have a lot of trouble distinguishing which one I have the most fun with, it will always be “Master of the House”, but all the other ones I still have a lot of fun with, there’s not one I hate the most.

C: Any closing thoughts, thanks to give, and words for aspiring actors and actresses?

I: Buy your tickets!

L: Buy your tickets everybody, come see me!

S: Of course buy your tickets, but I also have some inspiring words for aspiring actors. I want to say when you’re auditioning for a musical, you should never expect a role, and you should also know that no matter what you’re gonna learn something from this, and whatever you get is what you need to learn. You don’t need to worry about it because it’s out of your hands. You do your best, but then what comes back to you is the best thing to help you grow, and there’s nothing to be mad about. I think people can get so stressed over auditions because they really want a part, but in the end it’s not about the part, it’s about what that part does to you and your journey in life, and if it’s not going to help you in your journey, then it’s not meant for you, and you can be happy that it’s more meant for someone else. I just wish that in musical theater—as great as our community is—there definitely is some jealousy and resentment because there’s a lot of competition, but I think that competition aspect should be pushed down a little bit because at end of the day, we’re just making a story, and if that part of the story is not good for your story, then you should be able to just accept that and just be happy. Everything is meant to be, I promise.

L: I also have some words for aspiring actors. Just do it! If you’re on the fence, just do it. I remember for the first two years of high school, freshman and sophomore year, I was like “I don’t know if I want to do it, oh I don’t know, I’m not gonna do it,” and then I did it my junior year and everyone was like, “oh wow, you’re a natural, you’re great! You’re amazing!” And now I’m a lead in the musical, and it’s like man, I wish I had done this longer so I could have enjoyed it,

I: Yeah, I regret not doing it at all. I had to give up one sport for this, but then like this is the best thing ever.

L: And then I’d like to give a shoutout to my bestest buddy Will, William Peter Cassidy. He plays the Bishop and Grantier in our show. He’s always the bestest buddy I could ever want, and I could never want anyone else at my side because we have each other’s backs—I love you Will!

C: Alright if there’s nothing more I think that’s gonna conclude this interview, thank you all for your time!

I: Buy your tickets!