Meet the Cast - Becca Petersen as Clara Johnson

By Kristen Leinbach, Dramaturg

When asked about writing The Light in the Piazza and about the relationships of the characters, Craig Lucas said the following

“Clara apprehends the world differently than her mother. [Margaret] goes through Italy with a guidebook. But the girl sees experiences, she sees the light in the piazza. She literally experiences the light as representative of her deepest feelings…That’s why the score has moments where words no longer suffice or are no longer important. It’s the feeling and light. Those things carry us. Human beings are just a conduit for love. I think Clara sees that. Love comes before her and after her.”

I asked Becca Petersen, portraying Clara Johnson, to share a little about her life as well as her experience getting to really know Clara.

“I am Becca Petersen from Carmel, Indiana. I am a senior studying Music Dance Theatre. I will be graduating in April with plans of moving to New York City! At BYU I have performed in PETER PAN as well as two years in the Young Ambassadors traveling to Southern Africa and China. These past two summers I have performed professionally at The Muny and Music Theatre of Wichita. Aside from musical theatre I love to go thrift shopping, take naps, eat out, and spend time with my friends and family.

Clara Johnson has always been one of my dream roles and I could not be more excited and grateful to have the opportunity to play her.

The Light in the Piazza follows Clara and her mother, Margaret, as they travel through Italy. Clara is a very youthful girl who lives life exactly in the moment. She is bright-eyed as she sees and experiences this new place for the first time. The plot is centered around relationships: Clara’s relationship with her mother and her new budding relationship with a Florentine boy, Fabrizio. I feel that I connect with Clara on many levels. I love to travel, explore, and see new places. Because of previous travel opportunities I have had I understand what it is like experiencing different cultures and having to figure out how you fit in. In the show many of the characters, including Clara, go through big life transitions. Currently I can relate as I am getting ready to graduate, preparing to move to NY, having family members and close friends get married, and trying to understand love and relationships of my own. All of these experiences can be scary but can also be incredible if we let ourselves learn, grow, and live in them. We must allow ourselves to find the happiness and joy in all things we experience. In essence, that is what Clara does. Clara finds what makes her happy.”

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By Rick Curtiss, Dramaturg To sell a show like Travesties, you have have some big names, but what is a name anyway? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet— is a popular phrase muttered by one of Shakespeare’s star crossed lover’s. It is oft quoted but perhaps not perfected until The Simpsons added, Lisa: A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Bart: Not if you called 'em Stenchblossoms. Homer: Or Crapweeds. Marge: I'd sure hate to get a dozen Crapweeds for Valentine's Day. I'd rather have candy. Homer: Not if they were called Scumdrops. Names are arbitrary—Names are essential. Names aren’t my strong point. Mindy Khalin rejects the idea of someone being bad at names in her memoir Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? She posits that being bad at names is just an excuse for laziness. While I don’t doubt that personal laziness is a factor in my inability to successfully recall names; I wonder if might there be some poorly understood, underlying, biological, and/or social factors that at least play some role in name recognition? Take Cats for instance. The T.S. Elliot penned Andrew Lloyd Webber musical has a song called “The Naming of Cats.” This song illustrates that cats have three names, one everyday name, one special unique name and one name that only the cat herself knows. All the cats in Cats use their second name—the one that is wholly unique to them; and I must say, that in this one aspect of social progress; I think cats have us beat. I can always associate one unique name with the one unique cat and no other. Ask me the name of my roommates, and I have about a fifty-fifty shot of naming all three within ten seconds. Ask me the name of the railway cat and I will answer Skimbleshanks, instantly, every time. There is a power in uniqueness, and power in creating a unique name. It is both a clean slate and an endless opportunity. When I tell people, my name is Rick, I am instantly compared, consciously or not, to all the other Ricks that person has known. If you name your child Adolf, it automatically comes with (hopefully unwarranted) baggage, but an original name is only defined by the originator. Which is part of the reason I think Madonna was so successful. Sure, she wasn’t the original, but it was original enough to set her distinctly apart. See also, Lenin— [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="418"] Lenin[/caption] Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, isn’t well known. The name seems exotic and unique, but in its original late nineteenth century Russian context, I’m sure it felt as arbitrary as John Smith. Vladimir had some crazy ideas as he got older, spent some time in exile, and eventually adopted the name Lenin—which has much wider circulation. Derived from a river he was living near during exile, Ulyanov used Lenin as a pen name to protect himself, but it became something more. Lenin became the voice of a revolution; a name that didn’t have to fight thousands of other arbitrary associations. Lenin became the blank canvas on which the Bolsheviks could build the Communist Party. Lenin became powerful in a way that Ulyanov never could. Lenin unintentionally guaranteed the number one spot in a google search. Similar things could be said about Stalin. Stalin; the name, is derived from steel. Stalin as a given name became popular after the Stalin became popular. Almost one-hundred years later Stalin is still permanently embedded in the minds of many as the one singular sensation Joseph Stalin. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="451"] Played by Chris Hults[/caption] Lenin and Stalin—they were the Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer of communism. It’s no wonder that Lenin was included as a character in Travesties. What one name had as much power in 1917? Joyce—no. You might as well say Keats, or Fitzgerald, or Wilde. Tzara—even less so. Lenin—yes. Even those who don’t know any specifics about Lenin know that there is power in the name. Lenin was vital enough for the show that history itself had to be fudged to include him. Because who wouldn’t want to say I was there? That I was however briefly connected to Lenin. Not the physical man—whose image; however unique, has waned in meaning (I know I couldn’t pick him out of a line up until I started researching Travesties,) but the name on which hangs so many things. Travesties spends a good deal of time talking about Lenin. Lenin himself talks about Lenin, and I can’t help but wonder, in world where millions of unique names are created to say, play World of Warcraft, on which blank slate tomorrow’s revolution might be written.

Meet the Cast - Becca Petersen as Clara Johnson

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