Dogfight: USU cast members perform their opening night

Cast members of the musical “Dogfight” performed their first show Tuesday night at the Caine Lyric Theatre.

At 7:30 p.m. the curtain rose at the historic stage revealing a 1960s backdrop of San Francisco.

“I feel great,” said Cade Peirce, who plays the role of Bernstein. “It’s always awesome when you work really hard on a show and put so many hours into it and it comes together on opening night.”

Another cast member, Brendon Henderson, said he was excited to finally perform and was listening to the soundtrack backstage in preparation for his performance.

“It was so exciting to finally have an audience out there,” Henderson said. “The live energy is unlike anything else. The audience makes you up yourself.”

This musical is one of the first times a live orchestra was implemented in a musical production at Utah State University.

“It’s really awesome to have an organic organization that you can work back and forth with,” Peirce said. “They can work with you while you work with them rather than these mechanic tracks that you would have otherwise.”

Peirce and Henderson said they were more confident than nervous for their first show.

“I mean we all feel confident due to the time we put in,” Peirce said. “However, it’s always nerve-wracking. You think you do it long enough and one day you won’t have nerves — but that’s not true. You always get nervous with things you care about.”

Henderson said he was satisfied with the overall performance and reception of the show.

“There’s always going to be the little diagnostics that you take of how you could fix it,” Henderson said. “But overall I think it was a really solid performance tonight. It’s such a beautiful theatre and a beautiful space with such a rich history.”

The story follows a group of Marines hosting a dogfight — this means finding the ugliest date for money. However, the multiple themes go much deeper as the show touches on the cruelty of war and the negative reception soldiers received returning home from the Vietnam War. Henderson, whose grandfather served in Vietnam, said the toughest scene for him is the Vietnam sequence.