On this edition of SNAPSHOTS, the classic tale of the March sisters is coming to a theatre near us. “Little Women: The Broadway Musical” is coming to Capital One Hall Main Theater for three shows next week – May 17 – 19th.
Our guest today has described herself as a “professional redhead”. A Ney York based actor, singer, “strong mover”. She enjoys marathons, loves Star Wars & Harry Potter and is passionate about gigantic silly children’s theatre characters.
Let’s welcome to SNAPSHOTS – Moriel Behar!
Moriel, it’s nice to meet you. Well, I can tell you from my personal experience that “Little Women” was a classic book I had to read back in middle school, and I enjoyed it. And I’m glad to see that the show is coming to the DC metropolitan area. What can our Washington theater goers look forward to seeing this weekend?
There’s all kinds of things you can look forward to. I know that “Little Women” being such a classic story. A lot of our audience has either you know, read the book or grew up grown up watching all the different iterations of the movies. So something that I like to look forward to when I go see an adaptation of a book that you love or a movie that you love is just to see how the music sort of brings it to life and what kind of things are a little bit different or exactly the same about our show. I think that the musical adaptation does a beautiful job of making the characters that everybody knows and love. So well really come to life on stage and in a musical way.
It absolutely does. Tell us about your role of Aunt March and what attracted you to the production.
Well, the production itself is I think, all women of a certain age range living in the New York City area & also all around the country, were attracted to being part of it. It’s about sisterhood. It’s about feminism. I think that if you are growing up, especially like me with a mother who sort of raised me on that on that story and love the book so much, “Little Women” is kind of a dream show for many people. The role itself is sort of something that I that I tend to do, where I play, perhaps the more rich snotty, by-the-book kind of person. I didn’t go for that role, specifically but that’s where casting sort of saw me in the role, and I’m having the best time playing her.
Well, this iteration is coming to Capitol One Hall. Is this your first time performing in our nation’s capitol?
I want to say yes. I can’t remember. I did a bit of a children’s theater tour in 2017. And at this point, it feels like that was a lifetime ago. So I believe that this was going to be the first time performing in the area.
That’s excellent. Your bio mentioned that you’re passionate about gigantic, silly children, theater characters. So I got to ask what is the passion about?
I’ve done in my in my professional theatre career, a lot of children’s theater and children are sort of a very interesting fun audience because they don’t lie to you at all. If they if they don’t like something, they’ll just call it out or, if they love something, they’ll be chatting the whole show.
I’ve done a lot of of roles where that relate to children or I’ve played a lot of villains to the children are scared of as well. And the more that you can make them big and silly and fun, the more that they’re interested in into it. They’ll give you those vocal reactions. I love playing characters that are sort of larger than life like that.
Yes, I couldn’t agree with you. I also found out that you are a fellow Aquarian. Your birthday is just a week before mine and you joined a milestone birthday. Do you have any big plans besides touring?
Well, I did celebrate by taking all of my friends to an escape room, that was a super fun. I like to do hands on activities. It was my 30th birthday. I’m actually getting married in a few months. So that’s going to be a whole whirlwind, trying to plan a wedding and being on tour at the same time is very challenging, but we’re getting through it.
Now, did you escape on your birthday?
Yes, we did escape actually. And then a lot of our cast and band ended up being interested in escape rooms as well. So in the process of of the tour, a big group of us from the cast and band have also gotten to multiple different escape rooms in different cities.
So do we see an escape room adventure here in in DC?
Possibly. If anybody has any good recommendations, let me know
So you are a Potterhead just like me and I have the Universal Studios for the Wizarding World, which was amazing. So I got to ask, what’s your Hogwarts house?
Thank you so much for asking. I’m a Gryffindor but I will say that I’m a bit like Harry Potter myself where I would be the sorting hat would go on me and I would be whispering “not Slytherin, not Slytherin. Because I do have some Slytherin in me but yes, I would end up in Gryffindor What about you?
I tested three times every time comes out as Hufflepuff and the best part about the colors of Hufflepuff they are my alma mater colors. So what is your favorite book when it comes to Harry Potter?
You know, that’s a tough question. I am going to say I love Goblet of Fire for the book from a book perspective and favorite movies is obviously Prisoner of Azkaban.
And you’re also a Star Wars fan. If you had to play a character in Star Wars which would play an existing character, or would you create one of your own?
That’s a such a funny question. I’ve actually thought about this before, because you know, when they were making the newer ones, all of my friends were saying, “How can we get in to the Star Wars Land?” And we decided that the best idea was to show up for an audition and just paint ourselves blue and then just see what happens from there.
I think I would like to play a non-existing character. Since we recently passed Star Wars Day on May the fourth, we had a travel day on our tour bus and we watched “A New Hope” on the bus.
When you’re not performing, you run marathons. How many marathons do you run in a year and which are your favorites?
Okay, for 2023, I ran three marathons in a year and that was a lot because I would say normally two is already a lot for people because you’ll do a fall marathon and a spring marathon. I did two back to back in the span of a month. I took one pretty easy and the other one that I was racing, so I wasn’t doing anything silly. On December 1st, I broke my foot. So I’ve been in recovery for that. But fully back now back to running. We’ll see when the next marathon is on the on the books.
Which one of your marathons has been your favorite?
I think there’s nothing that can compare to the New York City Marathon. It’s the best one in my opinion. I’m a bit biased because I live in New York City. I work for the organization that puts on the the the marathon. So I got to shout out to New York City, it’s beautiful. The course itself is not an easy course. There are a lot of hills & bridges. And the bridges tend to be shaped like a triangle. So you have to go up them and then down them again.
What is your dream role?
I think this is sort of constantly a shifting target because we age and your dream roles start becoming older people than they were before. But currently, my dream role is to play the Baker’s Wife in “Into the Woods” by Stephen Sondheim. She’s a character that I really relate to. And she’s very silly like I am and also has a really intense arc and realization at the end of her role of the show.
You can find on Moriel on her social media
Thank you so much, Moriel. You can see Moriel and the amazing cast of Little Women on stage at Capital One Hall in Tysons VA starting next Friday for five shows next week – May 17 – 19th. Tickets can be purchased through Ticketmaster or go to CapitalOneHall.com for more information
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