‘Urleen’ a sassy country girl

Becca Cheadle plays tough country girl “Urleen” in Mt. Hood’s Winter Musical Theatre production of “Footloose.”

Cheadle described Urleen as “one of the two friends under Rusty and Ariel,” the play’s two lead female characters.

“She’s a little bit more rough than the others, and probably just a bit more country,” she explained. “She’s just got a little bit more sass-a-frass than the others do.”

In her first year at Mt. Hood as a theatre major, Cheadle came to the area from Spokane, Wash. She attended Central Washington University for two years as an opera major until she decided it just wasn’t for her.

“Singing is something I love to do; (I have) always done it,” she said. Regardless, “I love being on stage, it’s very addicting to me,” she said. “It’s just the adrenaline rush. It just feels supernatural, I love being up there.”

As for the dancing in Footloose, “I kind of just like to have fun with it,” Cheadle said. “I feel like if you just go out there and do what you wanna do … nobody really notices how terrible you could be.”

With the play’s opening night just a week away, last week’s snowstorm that interrupted practice several days could have created huge problems for the cast.

“We just recently had to cancel three rehearsals because of school closures and the weather, so that was kinda crazy,” Cheadle said. “But, we should be back on track. Now, we’re just down to the wire.”

She said she enjoys hanging out with her castmates, and enjoys the chemistry, on-stage and off.

“Our ‘burger blast’ scene is my absolute favorite,” she said. “It’s just us… it’s me and three other girls. It’s the time where the girls really get to be girls and talk about boys and make fun of each other, and we all have really good chemistry and we all really get along that way.

“Sydney (Hope, who plays Ariel) and I are always laughing during that. Always,” she said. “She laughs at everything. It makes it a lot more fun, ’cause it’s just easier, more natural to keep laughing.”

Cheadle compares the group of girlfriends in the play to the girls in the film “Mean Girls.”

“I think of the four girls in general as like the ‘Mean Girls.’ Ariel would be like ‘Regina George,’ ” she said. “Those girls, you hate them, but you kinda love to hate ’em. I like to think that she (Urleen) has a little bit of lovable-ness to her, but if I (actually) knew her, I would think that she was obnoxious.”

Although the play is based on the 1984 feature film, Urleen was created just for the play version. That allows Cheadle to “do what I want with her, which is fun… I kind of add a little bit more sass to her,” she said.

“She’s pretty funny, so I try to bring that out of her more. And I think I make her rougher than it’s intended, but I figure she’s kind of an old country girl from back home,” she said. “So, she doesn’t mind getting down and dirty and fightin.’ ”

Cheadle says if anyone enjoys watching “fun,” they should come and see the Mt. Hood play next weekend. “We have a lot of good talent, and a lot of great people, and it’s literally just a ton of fun on stage,” she said.

Footloose opens at 7:30 p.m. Friday in the MHCC College Theatre.