Please see the Hartford Courant article below featuring Rhea Katzman.
By Christopher Arnott Hartford Courant
Rhea Katzman has traded the Connecticut winters of Granby for the magically shifting frosted landscapes of Disney on Ice. The Connecticut native is the tour coordinator for “Magic in the Stars,” the newest of several Disney on Ice shows that are currently on the road.
“Disney on Ice presents Magic in the Stars” will be at the XL Center in downtown Hartford for seven performances from Jan. 4-7. There are special preshow “Family Fun with Elsa and Mirabel Character Experience” events, with storytelling, games and other activities for children aged 2 and older, held an hour before each performance for an extra charge.
The tour brings Katzman back to the same venue where she was first entranced by Disney on Ice as a child. This time, she is backstage.
The Disney on Ice format has been around for decades. Professional ice skaters portray characters from a wide array of Disney animated features. Each film gets its separate routines, and the whole show is tied together by an introduction and between-scenes bits by hosts Mickey and Minnie Mouse and their friends.
“Magic in the Stars” has a particularly intriguing lineup, spanning over 80 years of Disney magic:
Jiminy Cricket from “Pinocchio”
Asha from the latest Disney feature “Wish”
Raya from “Raya and the Last Dragon”
Elsa and Anna from “Frozen 2”
The Madrigal family from “Encanto”
Moana and Te Ka/ Te Fiti from “Moana”
Lightning McQueen and Tow Mater from the Disney/Pixar feature “Cars”
Buzz Lightyear, Woody, Jessie, Rex and Hamm from the “Toy Story” films
Tiana from the 2009 New Orleans-set fairy tale “The Princess and the Frog”
Aladdin and other characters from “Aladdin”
The Disney princesses Cinderella, Snow White, Belle and Rapunzel
Mickey, Minnie and other iconic early Disney stars
The “Frozen 2” designation is important because it has Elsa and Anna skating to “Into the Unknown” rather than songs from the first “Frozen” film. This marks the debut of “Into the Unknown” debut in a Disney on Ice show. (If you’re dying to experience a live rendition of “Let It Go,” the national tour of the Broadway version of “Frozen” will be at The Bushnell Feb. 8-18.)
Katzman has worked for Feld Entertainment, which produces the Disney on Ice shows, for two years, and has been with “Magic in the Stars” since it premiered in September. She went from the oldest Disney on Ice show at the time, “Let’s Celebrate” (previously known as “100 Years of Magic”) to the newest one. She believes it was “100 Years of Magic” at the Hartford Civic Center (which is now the XL Center) that she saw when she was a child.
A different “Disney on Ice” production, “Find Your Hero,” was at Bridgeport’s Total Mortgage Arena in December. Yet another one, “Into the Magic,” will be at the MassMutual Center in Springfield, Massachusetts, in mid-March.
Katzman is just 23 years old, and this is her first job after graduating college. It is also the type of job she went to college to try to get. She majored in Entertainment and Arts Management at Drexel University in Pennsylvania. While still in school, she started managing her friends’ bands and found she was good at it, though she joked that “I was 19, and I had no business pretending to be a booking agent. Now, instead of wrangling college students in a van, I’m wrangling 50 cartoon characters.”
She credits her family with suggesting she have a backup plan in case her dream job of being a professional dancer didn’t pan out. Katzman studied with the Albano Ballet Company in Hartford, where it happens that one of her teachers started as a figure skater, so she was already acclimated to the concept of skaters as dancers. From fourth grade through high school, Katzman attended Hartford’s R.J. Kinsella Magnet School of Performing Arts.
She admitted that the Disney on Ice concept of cartoon characters (some from warm environments like a jungle or the tropics) sliding about on an ice rink can seem bizarre to some, but argued that “Disney animation lends itself to the ice format. Animated characters move differently. It lends itself to all kinds of stories.” She described the opening number of “Magic Stars” as a prime example of the form: “There’s Jiminy Cricket singing ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’ while the Blue Fairy glides like a magical creature.” She said that the Aladdin number includes an onstage transformation that earns gasps from the audience.
The skating is enhanced by huge set pieces, glitter, snow and lighting effects. “If you want rhinestones, we got ‘em,” Katzman laughed. There are also huge video projection screens. The character voices are recorded, when possible, by the actors who originated the roles in the films.
Each of the Disney on Ice shows has its own tour coordinator whose job is to oversee hotel bookings, travel details and other issues involved with getting the performers from city to city. “I have a strange job,” she conceded. “I work on everything but the actual show — visas, touring, scheduling. I make sure the cast and crew have what they need. I travel with the show. I set up promotional events. The performance times are my downtime when I get to just sit and watch the show.”
“Magic in the Stars” is a very large show even by Disney on Ice standards, Katzman said, with 55 performers. Some of the skaters come from the world of professional competitive ice skating. Others are “freestyle” skaters, a term for those who do special trick moves, often wearing hockey skates rather than figure skates. There are also some circus-style aerial acts in the show. All the performers bring a high level of skill, Katzman said.
Besides all being excellent skaters, “they’re portraying roles,” Katzman said. “They’re not performing as themselves, the way competitive skaters do. There’s some rehearsal and special training needed for that. We work closely with the Disney organization to make sure the characters are being properly portrayed.”
From her vantage point of having seen “Magic in the Stars” play for dozens of different audiences in different states from Texas to the East Coast, does she sense different reactions to the material? “There’s local pride. If the show is in Louisiana, Tiana brings the house down.”
“Disney on Ice presents Magic in the Stars” will be performed on Jan. 4 and 5 at 7 p.m., Jan. 6 at 11 a.m., 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. and Jan. 7 at noon and 4 p.m. at the XL Center, 1 Civic Center Plaza, Hartford. $26.35 to $96.35. xlcenter.com.