When Marathon High School sophomore Ella Dunn stepped on stage last Friday night to help tell the “tale as old as time” as Belle in the school’s production of “Beauty and the Beast,” she was also telling a tale of two generations.
“It took my breath away,” her mother Catherine told the Weekly. “It was like looking at my 16-year-old self.”
She’s referencing the eight years she herself spent as – in the Disney-approved verbiage for cast members in the parks – a “close friend” of Belle’s at the company’s Orlando theme park from 1993-2001.
When the Dunn family enters the conversation around Marathon, a few things come to mind: incredible kids, a dad who’s saved practically every animal in town, and a mom who followed up a dream career in Orlando with another one training dolphins here in the Keys.
So when the Weekly sat down with the mother-daughter duo, we got the obvious question out of the way immediately: Did Ella really not know?
“When my mom took me to Disney when we were little, I kind of knew,” she said. “Just because, there are Disney adults, and then there’s my mom. … She just had a crazy connection to people.”
But as they both tell it, the two had been content to let the mystery linger – that is, at least, until Catherine enlisted the help of her current and former coworkers to create a touching 10-minute video detailing her magical past with the classic Disney princess, shown to her daughter two days before opening night.
As part of the video, Ella learned she’d have some star-studded audiences that weekend, including Caity Ayers and Toby Williams – other close friends of Belle and The Beast, respectively, during and shortly after Catherine’s time in Orlando.
“Caity was her pen pal. Every time we’d visit, she would visit with Ella after the shows,” Catherine said. “She watched a lot of what Caity did growing up, and I think that kind of ignited a little passion in there.”
Also in the seats were former Disney show directors Suzie Lalone and Chase Senge. Senge is a creator of “Beauty and the Beast: the Magic and the Music,” a live presentation in 1991 that reunited the film’s original voice actors with a live orchestra to illustrate the movie’s characters, animation and musical composition. The show’s reception served as a catalyst that paved the way for Disney’s first foray into Broadway with “Beauty and the Beast: The Broadway Musical.”
Needless to say, MHS’ auditorium had no shortage of qualified critics.
“Having all that history, and people knowing that history, that was a lot of pressure,” Ella said. “The scariest part was auditioning, even though our director Ms. Cox didn’t know. It was very intimidating. … What if my mom was Belle, but I was a spoon?”
“When Suzie said she was coming to this show, I got so nervous, and I wasn’t even doing anything,” Catherine said, recalling the days in which Lalone showed her the ropes and taught her to embody the character’s essence. “Part of me still wanted that good note, and halfway through, she leaned in and gave me one.”
“I have to know a performer right away. That was my job for a long time, was to keep that Disney quality,” Lalone told the Weekly. “This cast, in a very short amount of time, their enthusiasm was intoxicating.”
Although Catherine’s video for Ella never explicitly stated the nature of her friendship with the iconic Disney princess, the experience only deepened a bond with her daughter that will never be forgotten.
“Before, I didn’t really understand it,” Ella said. “I was like, ‘Oh man, Beauty and the Beast, my mom loves this.’ … But she understood how it was to say goodbye to my co-partner (Dakota Mertyris, who played The Beast), putting on the wig for the first time, putting on the dress for the first time. We had a lot in common in that.”
“Ella’s my daughter, but I had always seen more of (my husband) Mike in her,” Catherine said. “The similarities hadn’t presented themselves to me before, so it gave me all sorts of emotions.
“This whole thing has been a dream. Honestly, I’m still waiting to wake up.”
