Director of the MCTV x Players collaboration, Billy Walker ’25, interviewed two of the cast members CJ Cotza ’23 and Brooke DellaRocco ’26 for 9to5. FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: (CJ Cotza ’23, Brooke DellaRocco ’26 Billy Walker ’25) ANGELINAPEREZ/THEQUADRANGLE
By Angelina Perez, Web Editor
Sophomore Billy Walker brought an idea to Manhattan College’s student run television station MCTV to produce a three episode collaboration with MC’s Players for their upcoming performance of 9 to 5, their spring musical debuting the weekend of April twenty first, second and third. Walker is only in his second year as a Communication student and already has produced a three episode series with the help of his cast and crew.
“I’m the marketing chair for players and I wanted to do something different.” Walker explained. “I don’t really remember where the idea first came from, but I’ve always wanted to get involved with MCTV because now I’m taking studios television production, which is a communication class for media production concentrations. And I just figured it would also be like a nice way to get extra help in the studio but like outside of class time.”
Walker was able to walk us through his process of the different productions that aired on Youtube throughout the months of March and April of this year.
“For the first episode I wanted to start with the three leading ladies Olivia Bailey, Gina Ricardo and Jenna Leonard.” Walker explained. “This whole story of nine to five really circles around their three characters, and I really wanted to get them out there first before hitting the stage. I even had Olivia sing a song from the show. The second one was more behind the scenes people like stage managers, to just really show that you don’t just have to be an actor or be on stage to be in players. And then the last one is the ensemble just to show the talent that shines even if you aren’t playing a lead role.”
Walker explained his strategy behind this angle at a marketing approach for his club.
“It creates different ways to get the word out for our productions besides just putting up posters or posting on Instagram. I hope future marketing chairs or whoever are part of players continue this right. I’ll try to continue it for the next two years. But after me it’s up to them.”
CJ Cotza is a senior exercise science major with a double minor in biology and theater who plays an ensemble member and a character he does not expect the audience to be rooting for.
“I play Dick, who is Judy Bernly’s husband or ex husband depending on how he’s feeling that day.” Cotza He’s a cheater, liar, and absolutely lives up to his name. He is just the worst and it’s a blast to get to play him. That’s one thing about my acting style is I love to play characters that are unlike me. So I always go for a villain type of role. And then on the other hand, I am also a featured ensemble member so I’m in almost every dance number. It is just so much fun to go from acting to then heavy dancing.”
Cotza explained to the Quad how he and Walker were able to take the bond they have created working on stage together and bring it in front of the cameras to create something different.
“Billy and I did cabaret last year together and we have been close ever since.” Cotza said. “He had mentioned to me that he was thinking of doing some sort of interview session for nine to five and I was like, oh my god, that is absolutely genius. Then when he had mentioned that he wanted to do a few different episodes with one of the episodes he planned on featuring some of the ensemble members, he had asked me if I wanted to be a part of it. And I said absolutely, but even the episodes that I wasn’t a part of I was looking forward to because I wanted to know what he was asking my fellow cast members.”
“We have really taken a new step towards promoting these shows, which is something that I think is really important because for past shows we have had people come up to us and tell us they had no idea that the production was happening and they wish they had known earlier. So I think that this is really going to be a phenomenal way to promote not only this production, but also future productions and really get the word out there to a more vast environment of students. Because I mean, we can promote it all we want on the players’ social media pages but with that only people that follow the performing arts groups will know about it. This kind of goes out to a much wider group of people. So a lot more people are gonna see it and if they’re free on a Friday, Saturday, afternoon, night or Sunday afternoon, they might say, Hey, let me go see this musical that I might know a few people on or I might know nobody in, but it might be something to do and it’s a blast on the show.” Cotza explained.
Seniors Caroline Bart and Maeve Kirk were able to close out their time here at Manhattan College by using their concentrations in media production and well equipped knowledge of MCTV to help Walker bring his vision to life.
“Billy reached out to me at the beginning of this spring semester and was just like, hey, I have an idea for a potential collaboration between players and MCTV.” Kirk said. “Billy is also a media production concentration, and is taking studio TV so when he brought up the idea to do a late night talk show, I was like, yes, absolutely. And Billy is a great person to work with, he’s so easy, and so fun. He came every week prepared and ready to do his thing. So it’s been very fun to film segments.”
MCTV has helped not only communication majors but others as well who have a passion for working the camera or behind the scenes.
MCTV is the Manhattan College student-run TV club.” Bart said. “It’s a really great club that’s open to every major, but it can especially help if you’re a media production concentration, because we always say it’s like extra help outside of class in the studio learning on our own time. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say it’s really helped improve my time as a media production student in all those types of aspects.”
Kirk was a freshman here at Manhattan when the pandemic hit and brought her and her classmates online to learn studio production.
“I think after the pandemic the club kind of died a little bit. It was kind of inevitable because we couldn’t shoot in the studio, even with the e-board trying their best to produce content. When we came back in person it was hard for students to get a hang of everything because they had taken these classes remotely and had never walked into our studio before. Numbers were definitely a struggle after that but with these new collabs there are more people in the studio then I have seen in a while. I hope the enthusiasm and the numbers keep going up so more people consider collabing with MCTV.” Kirk said.
The duo Bart and Kirk told the Quad how much they loved working with Players and hope next year more collaborations with different organizations on campus happen.
“MCTV has had an amazing time with players.” Bart commented in a response to Kirk. “It’s been so fun to produce a show like this. It’s always great to get content out there and I think we really hit the jackpot with working with amazing people, especially Billy who’s brought in some really talented people which has brought a lot to MCTV and players too. We are just so happy to have helped produce this.”
Sign up to work with MCTV by emailing them at mctv@manhattan.edu and lookout for the review of 9 to 5 from the Quadrangle as well. New members for both are always welcomed.