The tragic magic of Magic Moments | John Moore

LITTLETON – The first thing you notice when you walk into the vast atrium at Waterstone Church is the sheer number of people gathered – more than 120 in varying shapes, sizes, ages and colors. Then it’s the decibel level from all the chatter, giggling and singing. Then it’s all the wheelchairs buzzing by like it’s a Tour de France time trial. Then it’s all the touching: The hugging. The high-fiving. The volunteers gently guiding those who are blind, deaf or mobility challenged. 

It’s just another Saturday rehearsal for Magic Moments – a one-of-a-kind annual pop-music revue that since 1984 has given thousands of ordinary folks a chance to perform. Some with disabilities, some not. All with a hankering to be in a show. Or to just be together in community.

You also can’t help but notice the two women who look an awful lot alike and are running this rehearsal like precision air-traffic controllers. They are Stage Manager Carla McWilliams and Assistant Stage Manager Cathi Thelen. Yes, they’re twins – the mirrored pride of the Arvada High School class of 1974. (Note to self: Carla has the longer hair.) 

Magic Moments is built from scratch each year in an annual act of miraculous, creative, communal Lego-layering. Over the past 40 years, it has grown into an ever-expanding family of about 6,500 performers and 94,000 audience members.

The T-Shirt selection on this day tells the story of just how assorted this family has become. A teen in a “Love Like Jesus” shirt stands next to another sporting Nirvana. There’s one for “Squid Games.” A smiling man in a wheelchair dons a green dinosaur T-Shirt with the rimshot punchline: “I’m a Nervous Rex!”

Rachael Lessard, who has been with Magic Moments as a performer, choreographer and now assistant director since 2009, is wearing one from the Backstreet Boys’ concert stop at Fiddler’s Green in 2022. Even though she didn’t go to that concert.

You never know just how much meaning there might be behind a random Saturday afternoon T-Shirt.

“Gianna and I have loved Backstreet Boys since we were tiny,” Lessard says with a smile. “We  were supposed to go to their concert in 2020 for my birthday, but it got canceled by COVID. And when it was rescheduled, I had to work, so Gianna went and bought me this shirt.”

“Gianna” is Gianna Attardi, Lessard’s cousin and a longtime Magic Moments performer. She died in February, 11 agonizing days after throwing a pulmonary embolism following knee surgery. She was only 35. And remember those stage-managing twins? Cathi Thelen was Gianna’s mother, and Carla McWilliams was her aunt. One unexpected death that wrecked three key members of this year’s Magic Moments creative team just a few weeks into rehearsal.

“She was light, she was laughter, she was goofiness,” says Cathi, who is doubling as the children’s choir director. “She was a friend to all. There were no strangers for her.”

But somehow, Gianna’s shocking death did not halt preparations for this year’s big 40th anniversary show, which opens Thursday and runs through April 2 at Littleton High School. “When I was in the hospital with my daughter, I didn't have to think about what was going on with the show,” says Cathi, “because there were so many people stepping up and picking up what I couldn’t.”

That’s the thing about Magic Moments: It has arms wide enough to embrace hundreds. But the more you have, of course, the more you have to lose. The Magic Moments family is well-versed in loss, and how to respond to it. Because Gianna’s gut-punch of a death is not even the most recent this community has both been staggered by – and stood back up from.

Aaron Rendoff, a longtime company special-needs actor with spastic cerebral palsy, lost his mother to COVID on March 5. Laura High, who provided costumes for 25 years and often sang alongside her powerhouse daughter, Anna Maria High, died of COVID back in January.

You don’t have to look far here to find someone staring through the eyes of grief.

Trish Holt, one of only two who have performed in every Magic Moments show since 1984, lost her daughter, Cricket Holt, to a heart attack 15 months ago. As a kid, Cricket sang alongside her mom in five Magic Moments revues. Trish’s favorite Magic Moments memory was singing the “Where is Love” duet from “Oliver” with Cricket.

As a few of us are huddled during a rehearsal break talking about all of this, longtime Magic Moments director Ken Quintana, who just goes by “KQ,” interjects to ask Carla for a reminder.

“Make sure that I announce a moment of silence for Charlie Snow's sister, Joanna, whose house burned down completely … OK?”

For all of those navigating the choppy waves of grief, Magic Moments, and the people who comprise it, are smooth waters. This ephemeral neighborhood is like their own Grover’s Corners.

“The place that I need to be right now is right here,” says Cathi, who joined Magic Moments last year at the urging of her sister. The plan was for Gianna to come back this year after a few shows off.  But instead of doing Magic Moments alongside her daughter, Cathi is now doing it in her honor.

“This is a place I can come to and laugh and get support from the family whenever I need it,” says Cathi, whose twin sister has been down this broken boulevard before her. Four years ago, Carla lost her husband, Jerry, to pancreatic cancer. “Looking back on it now, I really had no business being a stage manager that year,” she says. “My whole world just went upside down. But Magic Moments was a major support system for me. People just took care of me. They picked me up and carried me through.”

Holt says being back in the creative chaos of Magic Moments is her therapy. “As long as I don't think about it, I'm OK – and I don’t think about it when I have something to do,” she says. “One thing you learn at Magic Moments is that everyone here has a story. And whatever your story is, you don't get over it – you get through it. We get through it.”

Heather Gregg Spillman has performed in Magic Moments shows with many family members for 12 years. One was her sister, Amy Malmgren, a paralyzed, single mother of three boys. After beating one kind of Stage 4 cancer, Amy was diagnosed with another that took her in 2016.

“It was really nice to be around people who had known Amy and we could talk to each other,” says Spillman, who is now processing the 1-2 body blow of High and Attardi.

It was a blessing, she says, that when High died, Magic Moments rehearsals were scheduled to begin just a few days later. At any other time of the year, her Magic Moments friends would have been mourning in isolation. Instead, rehearsals gave them all a daily reason to gather their wounded souls and laugh, sing and create something together. 

When the show opens on Thursday, Spillman will be wearing meaningful hidden mementos under her costumes to honor both of her friends. For the costumer High, a tiny set of scissors on a pin. For Attardi, a pineapple keychain that was handed out at Gianna’s funeral. It was a wink to her deep affinity for the fruit that is also the international symbol of hospitality.

Bring on the magic

Now, after three months of rehearsal and recovery, the collective focus is squarely on the show. And what is that show, exactly?

Each year, KQ and his writing team thread together 40-plus pop songs, standards and showtunes around a (usually) lighthearted original story. This year’s offering is called “The Envelope,” which begins with iconic secret agent 007 on his Los Angeles deathbed. As Spillman explains it: “He hands a group of nerds an envelope and gives them a mission to deliver it to Liberty Island in New York. So, they take a trip across the country while being chased by an evil organization.”

Will they make it? What’s in the envelope? That, you will have to see for yourself, but I’m fairly certain that everyone will be singing and dancing all along the way. I’ve been told this year’s song selection (with lyrics often revised to fit the storyline) will include everything from “Any Way You Want It” by Journey to “A Star is Born” from the movie “Hercules” to the Dr. Demento phenom “Cows With Guns” to the theme song from “Mighty Mouse.” Each cast usually includes a few ringers from the wider theater community, and this year’s guest stars are multiple award-winning actors (and married couple) Megan Van De Hey and Robert Michael Sanders.

My favorite part of any Magic Moments show is the sheer spectacle of the curtain call. Something about watching all those performers taking in all the love from an always adoring crowd. But this year, no matter how crowded that Littleton High School stage is, a few people will be missing. Or will they?

“Gianna is here,” Lessard says, “and Laura is here. There are memories of them both here. And the people who remember them and love them and miss them are here. And while we laugh about them and we cry about them – they will be here.”

It takes a village, as the saying goes. “And Magic Moments is a big one,” Lessard says.