Student-led ‘Head Over Heels’ musical is a celebration of identity

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A standing ovation roared from the audience at Syracuse Stage Sunday after a performance of the Syracuse Department of Drama’s new “Head Over Heels” student comedy musical.

“Head Over Heels” opened to the public on March 2 and will continue until March 9. The musical, adapted from the original Broadway version written by Jeff Whitty, tells the tale of a royal family’s trials and tribulations trying to save their kingdom from extinction and the subsequent unraveling complex romantic relationships.

The musical features iconic songs from all-female rock band The Go-Go’s, pivoting from typically dramatic musical classics while including heightened, Shakespearean dialogue, said Kathleen Wrinn, an assistant professor of musical theater at Syracuse University.

Wrinn and the faculty staff chose the performance to be “Head Over Heels” for its relevance in today’s society, specifically pointing to its message of unapologetically embracing one’s identity, Wrinn said.

“(Head Over Heels is) a really joyous, exuberant piece, and I think there’s a lot about it that’s really charming,” Wrinn said.

One of the musical’s central characters, Princess Pamela, struggles to portray her true identity against familial and societal pressures. Throughout the musical, she falls in love with another woman, Mopsa. Playing Pamela, SU junior acting and singing major Olivia Busche said her own identity as a queer woman drew her to the show.

“I was like, ‘That’d be really exciting to play on stage, and not a queer woman who’s sad because her parents wouldn’t accept her, but she gets to be funny, she gets to be mean and gets to be the character,’” Busche said.

“Head Over Heels” portrays twelve different vocally demanding and over-the-top, witty characters. Lindsay Thurber, a junior musical theater major, played the role of Philoclea, a shy princess who behaves according to the expectations of others.

Thurber said her character was a huge undertaking to commit to as she had to transition the musical’s light, funny mood to its more serious moments. To do this, she tried to understand Philoclea’s challenging nature.

“For each lyric, I wrote (from Philoclea’s perspective) what it actually means and how it relates to the situation. I came up with specific fake memories that caused (the situation),” Thurber said.

The musical’s cast and crew have been working on “Head Over Heels” since August 2023. Wrinn and her co-director Kiira Schmidt Carper, an assistant professor of musical theater, held weekly meetings with the musical’s student departments to coordinate production before rehearsals began in January. Rehearsals ran until opening night on March 2.

“Head Over Heels” was almost entirely student-run, except for the co-director, choreographer and music director positions. Many students were able to immerse themselves in leadership roles, like student assistants, who work side-by-side with the faculty staff of the musical.

Being a student assistant was not only an exciting opportunity for aspiring musical theater students to take up, but in the end, the assistants were pivotal in shaping the end product of “Head Over Heels,” Wrinn said.

To resolve some of what Wrinn called “uncomfortable content” in the original musical, such as some of its jokes, the student assistants, cast and crew members all discussed ways to overcome the obstacle.

“We wanted to find new sorts of ways to put them in a new light or through staging to kind of subvert the trope of the scene,” Wrinn said. “And we found so many of those new interpretations through discussions as a company until we could all find a story that we felt really proud of.”

While “Head Over Heels” was a learning opportunity for the cast and crew, it was also filled with joyous ventures that resonated with not just the audience but the production team as well, Thurber said.

“I had a lot of fun tonight and I want to make sure that I continue to have fun. We (the cast) were all dancing backstage because the songs are fun,” Thurber said after Sunday’s performance. “It would be a shame to not have as much fun as you can because it (Head Over Heels) doesn’t last that long.”