Once again...

I have failed in my duties as a blogger! I really do apologize, the last few weeks of the show are very stressful and incredibly busy. I kind of forget that anything else exists except my show! Seussical was a huge hit. I am so very grateful to our wonderful audiences, our administration, and of course my wonderful cast and crew. Several people I spoke to said that this was their favorite show they have ever seen at ECC theater. It certainly is the fastest selling since I have been here. Today I'm heading into work to mail back some of the costumes and just start cleaning up the props and everything else that was left over from yesterday's strike. But before I do - here's one last picture that I took last night during the show from the sound booth. Thank you so much for making Seussical a wonderful experience and I hope to see everyone at the theatre soon!



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Tech is tomorrow..

The weekend before the show, the entire cast comes in both Saturday and Sunday along with the crew. We run the show with all the lighting cues, all the set changes, and anything else we might need for performance. On Sunday, we add the orchestra for the first time. This weekend is always an enormous amount of work and a lot of preparation goes into making sure that everything runs smoothly. One of the things I did today was driving into St. Louis to pick up costumes from our costumer and Xanax or things that are lighting designers needed. Below is a picture I took of the back of three of the beautiful costumes that are costumer has built. I think they look fantastic and I can't wait to see them on stage.



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A new addition..

This year, I was contacted by a teacher who teaches a figure drawing class on Monday night. She asked if some of her students could come to rehearsal and draw some of my actors while in mid performance. We've never done anything like that before- but I thought it might be a great opportunity! About five students showed up three Monday nights in a row, took pictures, and sketched the actors. Surprisingly enough almost all of them chose to focus on one actress, Francine. The finished products are now displayed in our lobby as life size portraits. They are really fascinating to look at. Below is a picture of my favorite one. Please come by our lobby and enjoy the gorgeous pictures and have a great time at Seussical!




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Costumes

Because of the band concert, we've had two nights off for rehearsal in a row. While it's nice to have a day off, it will also be nice to get back into the swing of things!
I used my two nights off to go and see shows at other theaters in St. Louis. It's always so interesting to see other people's shows. I always learn quite a bit from watching other directors work and I don't often get to see them.
Tomorrow will be doing another test dress rehearsal. The last time we did test dress rehearsal, our amazing costumer Marci came down with part of the bird girl costumes. Here's a picture of two of the tales that our girls will be wearing next week! Hope you got your tickets!



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Community involvement

March is Dr. Seuss's birthday. In honor of that, several of the local elementary and middle schools were sponsoring reading nights. This fits in perfectly with our public relations plan for Seussical! So when both schools called to ask if we could provide actors to read Dr. Seuss stories to the children I immediately said yes! This is a picture of Elin and Holly, my two assistants, dressed up as Gertrude McFuzz and the Sour Kangaroo, two popular Dr. Seuss characters. They went to Washington middle school and Coleman elementary school to read to students yesterday. They had a great time doing it and I'm very grateful to them for volunteering!


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2 weeks...

It's a little over two weeks until Seussical opens and this is the current state of my office floor. And I couldn't be happier.



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Another show to open!

We run shows back to back at East Central College theater. What that means is that as soon as one show closes, we basically start auditions for the next show. Which also means that while I'm in rehearsal for one show, I'm busily preparing for the one that follows. Our next show is called Broadway and Beyond 5. It's a collection of musical theater songs. I started with the original production of Broadway and Beyond my very first year here and the tradition has continued. Each show features between 15 and 20 different showtunes, which means I have to find a lot of music. I start searching for songs pretty much at the beginning of the year. It's always a struggle because there is so much great music out there. This year I've got about three hours worth of music picked out so far and I'm not finished looking! I love doing Broadway and Beyond because the style of the show is so very different than any other show that we do. Here's a screenshot of one of the songs you'll probably see inBroadway and Beyond 5- a male solo comedy song called In Short about a disgruntled ex-boyfriend.



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