My hero has backed out of the melodrama. 🙁
So, due to the dearth of good male actors in this town, I’ve decided to use a Principal Boy in my melodrama and cast a girl as my hero. Booyah!
Category: theatre Page 2 of 6
I’ll be directing a melodrama this summer. K and M both wanted to act one, M especially since she’ll be moving back to GA in August, but there was doubt whether there would be one, because no one had submitted a proposal to do one. I told them that if they could find a script they liked, I’d submit a proposal to direct it. They came up with The Rose of Dismal Flats. I got the notice that I’d been approved a couple of weeks ago, and that my scripts had come in last night. First read-through tomorrow night! Show goes up a month from Wednesday!!!
One thing about this one, since it has a tiny cast (only 5 people), and I already had two people who wanted to be in it, and it’s not a part of the main line-up, I went ahead and pre-cast rather than holding auditions. I think it’ll be a good show.
A bunch of us went to a karaoke bar after strike yesterday. My first time, because until now I’ve only ever sung karaoke at Beth and Marcel’s parties (not that I ended up singing last night… the line was kind of long). It was fun, and we may have been a little too loud. We got a few dirty looks from the regulars. But this is the first time in ages that I’ve been in a place that allows smoking and I’m living with the consequences this morning. I haven’t been this stuffed up since my allergies wore off at the end of last season.
This may be the first time I’m glad it’s Monday, only because it means that last week is over.
Can you say, “week from hell”?
I got the flu on Monday, was sick till Wednesday, and just as I was starting to feel better, I found that my scooter had been stolen from the driveway while I was out of it. Fortunately, it was found on Thursday, but that made that a stressful day, dealing with recovering it and getting it to the shop, and talking to the insurance people, etc.
And then cap off the week with three fun, but stressful performances of Gypsy!
Ai. I’m worn out.
I’ve finished the little dress from the Dale book, and it turned out soooo cute!! I’m really pleased with it. I bought some little pewter clasps online to use as buttons.
The shower is next Saturday, so it’s pretty good timing.
I’ve started the next project. I was originally going to do one of the sweaters as a cardigan and the other as a pullover (the pattern has instructions for both), but before I started I read through the cardigan pattern and saw that it’s knitted in the round and then steeked. I’ve never done steeking before, and while I do want to try it, I figured a gift item wasn’t the best test piece, so I’m going to do two pullovers instead and save steeking for another day.
I’d be twice as far along, only I realized a couple of rows below this that I’d mis-read the pattern and was starting the rows in the colour-work graph at the wrong place (I’d started the first one in the right place, but then was going to the far right at the beginning of each new row, instead of back to the same starting place), so I frogged it and started over. Much better now. The one thing I don’t like about this pattern so far, is that there are a couple of rows that involve three colours of yarn. It’s orders of magnitude tanglier than just two.
At LV I recently finished The Sky Is Falling by Lester del Rey, another sci-fi story. My next project is What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge. I’d wanted to do it a couple of years ago, but someone else started a solo version before I could get to it, so I put it off and did What Katy Did at School instead. The other project has since been completed, so I feel like I can do mine without stepping on anyone’s toes. 🙂
Recently watched the new-ish version of Sense and Sensibility (I think it was part of that Austen series they showed on Masterpiece a year or so ago, but I missed it then). I really liked it. Well enough to buy a copy for my library. None of the others in the series impressed me that much, and I will keep faithful to the earlier versions I already own (P&P w/ Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, Persuasion w/ Ciaran Hinds and Amanda Root). Not to say I no longer like the Emma Thompson version of S&S, though.
We’re doing Gypsy at the WCT. I tried out for one of the stripper roles, but got cast as Miss Cratchitt, the secretary in the New York scene. Should be fun… I’m onstage for two scenes at the end of act 1, and the rest of the time I’ll be able to read, play cards, relax back stage. Reminds me of Christmas Carol. 🙂
Left the window cracked in my car a couple of weekends ago and got rained on, and though it’s nice and dry now, it still smells. I may go through an entire bottle of Febreeze to get the smell out. The car has been living on the roof of the parking garage in the sunshine with the windows cracked while I’m at work, hopefully that’ll help too.
Finished stage managing Woman in Black this weekend. Dressed as a dead cowgirl for this year’s Masquerade Ball (which for once actually fell on Hallowe’en!). I’m hoping to get some more photos from the others who were there, but for now there are a few on my Masquerade Ball page.
Have been able to get more work done on my recording projects since the end of the show. I’ve been putting a bit more effort into Dayspring (had been concentrating mostly on Clara Vaughan before); the chapters on that one are much longer than any others to date – I have to make sure I have a glass of water handy or I won’t make it through.
Only it was the Heart of Texas Fair, not the State Fair. K, one of the girls in the Woman in Black, which I’m stage managing, was given some tickets at work, and she invited me and M, another girl from the play to go with her. She’d never been before, and really wanted to check it out, and since the fairgrounds are right next door to the theatre, we didn’t even have to pay for parking.
When we got down to the end of the fairway, we came across the freak show booth; K had also never been to a freak show before, so we went in. For the most part it was a collection of live, stuffed and preserved animals of the conjoined twins gone more wrong than usual variety. One of the stuffed animals, however, was purported to be a chupacabra.
After looking at it for a couple of minutes M said, “That’s just wrong. That’s a deer butt, upside-down.”
 |
 |
I was telling one of my coworkers about it, and he dubbed it the “chupacabr-ass”
On our way out, we saw one of those “Old Timey Photo” booths. Yet another thing K had never done (not that I had, either, incidentally… but then I’m not really one for voluntarily getting my picture taken). I agreed to join them in the photo under the stipulation that I was not going to wear anything frilly. They did have something in the Annie Oakley style, so I was happy.
We opened this past weekend. Got a pretty good review from Carl Hoover in the Trib. Friday and Saturday were almost full, Sunday’s turnout was kinda pitiful, but at least they were awake and enjoying it (not always the case with Sunday crowds). Two more weekends to go. Hopefully they’ll be completely sold out!
OK, so I don’t often let people know when my birthday is, because, though I don’t mind celebrating my birthday, I feel uncomfortable getting mobbed by well-wishers and being sung at, but thanks to facebook more people have found out when it is. I had to go to rehearsal on my birthday, and I was about two feet away from the back door at the end of the night, when I heard the rest of the cast start into ‘Happy Birthday’. No one could see me, so I quickened my steps and snuck out before anyone could catch me.
The following night I had tickets to Broadway by Request with Betty Buckley at the Hip. The ‘by Request’ part means that as you go in, you have the option of filling out a form requesting her to sing a song from her Broadway or recording career. I went with Regan, and on our way in, we saw MB, who was ushering. About halfway through the concert, Seth Rudetsky, who was acting as her emcee, accompanist, and foil, pulled out a request form (she’d been reading them all up till then). He called MB’s name and then read out her request: “It was my friend Karen’s birthday yesterday. Would you sing to her?” So, Betty Buckley sang me happy birthday in an auditorium full of strangers (at least I didn’t have to stand up!!!).
It was a fabulous concert, though. 🙂
I have a couple of minutes before my meeting begins, so this seems as good a time as any to update here.
I’ve been working on Little Shop of Horrors for the past few weeks in the ensemble. We open a week from Friday. It’s been interesting… we rented a set of puppets from somewhere or other, but when they showed up, they were in pretty bad condition. The director ended up going to Louisiana to rent another set, only he didn’t have room in his vehicle for the largest, so we’re still having to fix up the largest of the other set (and try to make it look sort of like the other set). Other than that, it’s been quite fun. It’s a small cast, fifteen people, and the youngest person is 19 (a great relief after the huge number of teenagers in Brigadoon); everyone sings well, can do harmony, acts decently. All in all, a really nice group, and at least half are new to the theatre, which is always fun too.
Finished the two Montfort books for Catholic Audio Company, and am close to finishing Death of a Pope for Ignatius, and not too far off on the two for iPublish. Have been neglecting Secret Garden dreadfully, but after next week, I’ll have my evenings free again and will be able to record more.
I’ve also been working on a sound booth, because since the weather got hot, I’ve pretty much been limited to recording first thing in the morning, because the crickets and cicadas are so loud. I build a cage out of half inch pvc pipe. It’s tall enough in the centre that I can stand up straight. I bought a set of sound absorption sheets from Audimute to cover it with. I’ve attached two lengthwise along the sides with gromets and one inch binder rings. I’ve started attaching a third sheet to the top. I had originally planned to just hang the fourth sheet over the front opening, but quickly decided that wasn’t going to be effective, so I’ve decided to build a door and attach the fourth sheet to it with the gromets and book rings like the rest of it. That leaves a section on the back wall between the roof and the top of the other sheets. I’m planning on attaching a couple of acoustic tiles that I had for the portable sound booth to a piece of muslin and hanging that over that hole. Once it’s complete, I’m going to move the mic in there, along with a secondary monitor, keyboard and mouse so that I can continue to read off the screen, but without having to worry about laptop fan noise (and without having to move the laptop back and forth, which gets pretty old when you have as many things plugged into it as I do). I forgot to take pics of the work in progress, but I’m planning on taking some as I build the door, and then of the completed booth.
Betty Buckley is coming to the Hip this Saturday, and I’ve bought two tickets to the show. I’ve invited Regan to go with me, since she’s a big fan of the Mystery of Edwin Drood in which BB played the title role. It’s my birthday present to myself, and I had to do some wangling to be excused from rehearsal the Saturday before opening night (but I made sure to wangle before buying the tickets, just in case).