Actresses find inspiration in Music Theatre Wichita’s ‘Waitress’

“Waitress,” the first course of the Music Theatre Wichita 2025 season playing later this week, includes a menu of inspiring stories both on stage and among the three actresses in the lead roles of the musical.

One is making an MTW transition from princess last year to waitress this year.

Another is a Wichita native who was inspired as a performer and mother after seeing the show on Broadway.

A third is on stage in Wichita while a version of the same show she’s directing is in Salina.

PRINCESS TO ‘WAITRESS’

MTW artistic director Brian J. Marcum knew what kind of performer he had in mind to play Jenna, a waitress and expert piemaker who’s struggling through an unstable marriage and an unexpected pregnancy, but didn’t quite find what he was looking for in auditions.

Although he prefers to audition performers in person, he did agree to see a recording by Kennedy Caughell, who played Elsa in last year’s “Frozen,” where MTW was the second company in the nation to take on the Disney musical.

“You turn on Kennedy’s video and it was, ‘Aw, come on.’ It was spectacular,” said Marcum, who is director and choreographer for “Waitress.”

“She was so fantastic in that role, and she’s so easy to work with, which is icing on the cake,” he added. “She’s fearless and open to all the ideas and comes with so much knowledge and so much backstory already imbued into the character.”

The Bartlesville, Okla., native said coming back to Wichita is “kind of like returning home.”

“It’s a really friendly space to feel safe to play and discover who she is,” Caughell said of her character. “It’s so much fun to get to play all the many colors that Jenna is. For some people it would be scary, but I absolutely love a challenge and I love a role that I really get to sink my teeth into and practice all my chops.”

Caughell was already a fan of singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles (“Love Song,” “Brave”), who composed the music and lyrics for “Waitress,” based on the 2007 movie of the same name. Bareilles also played Jenna during the 2021 revival, which itself was recorded for a movie.

“Her music just informs so much of what’s going on underneath the characters. As so as I heard she was doing a show, I thought, ‘God, I wanna do it,’” Caughell said. “This has been a dream role and it’s a dream to get to tackle it.”

INJOY’S INSPIRATION

For Wichita native Injoy Fountain, watching “Waitress” on Broadway was an inspiration personally and professionally.

“When I saw it on Broadway, I was pregnant, and I had no idea what the show was about,” recalled Fountain, best known nationally for her 2019 run on “The Voice.”

“They gave us little pies and I was eating it, and when Jenna is singing ‘She Used to Be Mine,’ I’m just crying,” she said. “I wrote (daughter) Odessa a ‘Dear Baby’ letter, because that inspired me and I used to listen to it every day with her. It’s been a long time and I’m so excited to do it now.”

Fountain is now a Wichita theater veteran, including roles in MTW’s “9 to 5” last year, as well as “The Color Purple” at Roxy’s Downtown.

Playing the flirtatious, cantankerous waitress Becky is “a little scary, but it’s a great environment that keeps us safe and helps us explore what we can do.

“It’s not as scary after we’ve done it,” she added.

DIRECTING AND ACTING

Maggie Spicer-Brown is getting a double serving of “Waitress” this summer.

She’s not only playing nerdy, innocent waitress Dawn for MTW, she’s directing the same musical for Theatre Salina, where it runs June 13-29.

Rehearsals for the Salina version began in April, Spicer-Brown said, and she handed the reins to her mother when MTW began practices June 2.

“We got to do a lot of the heavy lifting before we even started here,” said Spicer-Brown, who is also education director of Theatre Salina. “She’s helping drive them to the finish line.”

Spicer-Brown said there were contrasts and comparisons between the two productions.

“The version that’s accessible to our fabulous volunteer talent in Salina is very different than what’s accessible to these marvelous professionals at Music Theatre Wichita,” said Spicer-Brown, in her first MTW show. “They’re telling a similar story in a way that’s accessible to the communities that they’re both speaking to. We designed and made choices that are specific to what our audience and patronages for Salina, and we get to make different choices that still speak to the Kansas audiences but to a little bit broader community, because Music Theatre Wichita has such a strong reach beyond the city of Wichita.”

Spicer-Brown, who was a musical theater student of Marcum’s at Oklahoma City University, said she’s siloing the productions at Wichita and Salina.

“I don’t want to bleed the colors or have that cast do anything based on what we’re doing here,” she said. “It’s the same text but a different story of what it means to this cast and this creative team.”

Theatre Salina and MTW have a longstanding work relationship, said Spicer-Brown, whose father, Michael Spicer, has been executive director of the central Kansas company for 24 years.

“Waitress” is a hot title among community and professional theaters this year, Marcum said, because its rightsholder made it available for companies in a small window.

“We got right in before they closed the window again,” he said.

Marcum said he’s proud of getting the people he wanted on stage and behind the scenes for the 2025 opener.

“It’s kind of like the recipe that is the story,” he said. “The feeling of this story is that Jenna’s journey is difficult, she comes along hard times, but she finds along the way solace with her recipes and her successes and failures there.

“It says, ‘You may have made a mess of it, just like life, but the final product of it is beautiful and it might not have been as beautiful if you had not gone through it without your friends,” Marcum added. “The journey is not always what we had planned, but the destination is based on all the trials and tribulations you go through.”

‘WAITRESS’ BY MUSIC THEATRE WICHITA

When: June 18-22; performances at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday

Where: Century II concert hall, 225 W. Douglas

Tickets: $25-$94, from mtwichita.org, 316-265-3107 or at the Century II box office