Am Dram Star of the Week Matt Bridgewater is in Oklahoma!

Studley Operatic Society who perform at the Redditch Palace Theatre will perform Oklahoma! from April 24-28, with performances at 7.30pm and a matinee on Saturday at 2.30pm.

I chatted to Matt Bridgewater, who is playing the role of the villain, Judd Fry. I asked Matt how he became involved in am dram.

“I have always been interested in music and the dramatic arts and studied the subjects throughout my school life,” he told me.

“After school I went straight into work, and as a result I very rarely exercised my acting chops, but after a while my desire to perform became more and more prominent, so I began to look for opportunities in my local area. The rest, as they say, is history,” he laughed.

What attracted Matt to the role of Judd? After all he is a pretty nasty character!

“The part was actually recommended to me. I had not seen Oklahoma since I was very young and remembered very little about the show,” said Matt.

“After researching the character, I realised how much of an interesting role it would be to play, particularly because of the multi-layered subtleties of his nature and the range of emotions he would express in the show. He is not just a standard bad guy; there is so much raw emotion beneath his rough exterior and putting my own take on such an interesting character was a challenge that I very much wanted to tackle,” Matt concluded.

As you can imagine, Judd is involved in some fight scenes in the show, which can be dangerous if not controlled correctly.

Matt told me, “We have had some guidance from a trained stage combat tutor, as it is important to do things safely. In terms of the choreography, we wanted to make the fights appear as realistic and brutal as possible, to really ramp up the tension for the audience.”

“My character is larger than life, but we have worked hard to make sure that the fight scenes were well balanced between both combatants, so that the end result of each battle is that much harder to determine from the audiences’ perspective.”

“I don’t wish to spoil the fun,” he continued, “but suffice it to say there is plenty of flying fists and close combat, that make for a really captivating scene.”

And what does the future hold for Matt? What other roles does he dream of?

There are a number of roles I would love to undertake,” said Matt, “But for the moment my heart is set on portraying the Beast/Prince, from Beauty and the Beast, as he is another troubled yet multi-layered character that spans a wide range of emotions. He goes from being the perceived villain, to the hero in the end, and that makes for an interesting and varied role, that I would love to tackle in the future.

We love a villain Matt! Enjoy Oklahoma!