A musical debut during COVID-19
Who would have thought attending a senior tap class at the age of four would turn into a musical career for Noah Missell, debuting in West Side Story? The AJN spoke to the young entertainer about his start in the Broadway world.
Noah Missell had a lot of energy as a child. According to his family, he had way too much energy. So, when he started to show an interest in dance, his parents decided to enrol him into some classes.
And he never looked back, going on to attend the Jason Coleman Ministry of Dance and the National Theatre Ballet School in Melbourne, studying under ballet teachers from all around the world and then the Victorian College of the Arts.
During this time, he discovered a love of musical theatre.
Recently, Missell wrapped up his debut musical performance in West Side Story.
But the first couple of years of his career weren’t without their setbacks, as the world dealt with the global pandemic.
For Missell and his friends, “self-tapes became the new normal”. Rather than going out to theatres and auditioning live, the graduates found themselves virtually auditioning for the likes of The Wedding Singer and Moulin Rouge.
Missell was selected for various roles in West Side Story, including Moose, from the Puerto Rican Sharks gang; and the understudy of lead Shark, Bernardo, and a few of the American Jets.
“It was an absolute dream show,” Missell said. “West Side Story is a show that is very dear to me.”
With so many parts to learn, Missell was certainly tested. “I didn’t have any experience with learning my plot, my tracking and my part of the show, and then six others,” he said. “A lot of the time when you’re on stage, they’re on stage too so you don’t have time to stop, watch and take notes.” But Missell relished the challenge.
“I think at one point, we were the only show running in the country, possibly even the world. We were all very aware of that.”
The rehearsals took place in a COVID-safe environment with masks and hand sanitiser when not on stage and twice-weekly testing. But according to Missell, the production was “chased by COVID”.
To avoid Melbourne’s lockdown, they were flown to Sydney early for rehearsals, but then had to leave for Perth earlier than expected to avoid the Greater Sydney breakout. Even in Perth, a show was cancelled.
But as the saying goes, the show must go on.
“We had Zoom ballet classes, Zoom script rehearsals, Zoom vocal rehearsals,” Missell explained, before confirming that again, COVID followed them to Brisbane where they faced yet another lock out from the theatre.
For Missell, the other challenge was handling the backstage chaos.
“West Side Story is a show where you have all of your things to worry about onstage, but offstage you’ve got traffic, quick changes, people running, fight scenes, sprinting off stage and then running around backstage to get to the other side,” Missell said.
“And we had to figure out how to do this in a COVID-safe way.”
Despite all the craziness, Missell said he feels extremely lucky to have even been able to perform.
“I have so many friends who have booked a role, and it has been cancelled or continuously postponed, and it’s very disheartening,” he said.
“I think at one point, we were the only show running in the country, possibly even the world. We were all very aware of that.”
So, what’s next for the musical theatre superstar? Well, he can’t disclose it just yet.
But according to Missell, he has very exciting something lined up.
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