The Community in Community Theatre

I know, it's a corny title for a blog post, but I couldn't find anything more appropriate. It really does speak to the point of what I had in mind. I'm referring to the collaborative, supportive, collegial atmosphere amoung people who work in local theatre. At the Kelsey, every one of our shows seems to have a great family atmosphere. Everyone's helping everyone else, they're all part of a team. I think that's one of the reasons my daughter Caroline likes doing theatre. As an only child, she's always been very atuned to "family", and every time she does a show, she feels like she gets to add to her "theatre family". I'm sure it's the same way in other theatre companies. In fact, I can't even say it's unique to the Kelsey Theatre, though that feeling is very strong there.strong there. No, It seems to be pretty wide spread characteristic among people working in the theatre. Theatre people just want to help other theatre people succeed. The suit of armor story is a great example.

As we started pre-production for Emperor, Alycia said early on that she needed a statue or a suit of armor for one of the scenes. It only appears briefly, but it's important to establishing the setting and forwarding the purpose of the scene. She did a lot of research herself looking for a source of the needed stage dressing. But everything she found seemed to cost too much money. There was even discussion of purchasing or making a real suit of armor that we could use in a future production. That way the investment could immediately be spread across multiple shows. But it just wasn't happening. Then I offered to ask the folks at NJACT.

NJACT (New Jersey Association of Community Theatres) is a group of theatres around the state, many non-profit, that produce theatre for their local communities. They are also known as the people who do "the Perry's". The Perry Awards are sort of the Tony Awards of NJ community theatre. I happend to have an email mailing list containing most of the participating theatre companies, so I volunteered to send out a note asking them for help.

When I sent the email, I really didn't expect much response. But I was wrong. I ended up receiving more than 20 emails with ideas, suggestion, and even offers from people willing to loan us their suit of armor for nothing more than a mention in the program -- friendly and free! One of the first to raise her hand was Nancy Russell over at Playful Theatre, another was Jan Topoleski at the Strand Theatre down in Lakewood. Because is worked a little better for the production we ended up using Jan's suit of armor. OnStage does this type of thing itself by loaning props and lighting equipment to other groups who ask. Our starlight curtain has served several groups well since John created it for our production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

My point? It's simple: there seems to be an underlying theme in local theatre, at least between theatre groups -- when one of us succeeds, we all succeed. I find that refeshing.

Back in the Saddle

Glub, glub, glub, cough, cough! That's the sound of me coming up for air. After late nights and weekends crammed with theatre doings -- some backstage and some onstage -- I can finally come up for air and start posting to this blog again. That's right. I'm back in the saddle.

John and I and the rest of the OnStage team have been completely swamped since going into auditions for Emperor. Producing three shows in a season is a lot more work than I expected. Granted, we've brought this on ourselves, but still, we had no clue it would be another full-time job. Anyway, here's a quick recap since my last post.

1) We held a marathon weekend auditioning for and casting Emperor. About 70 people come out and audition on Saturday and Sunday, a great turn out. Then came the casting meeting, which started on Monday night at Buzz Herman's house and lasted until the wee hours of the morning on Tuesday. That's a story in itself, one that I'll save for another day.

2) Meanwhile, my brother John and I have been working on setting up the marketing for this season. That includes giant lobby posters for all three shows (in case you've been living in a cave the last few months, we're producing The Emperor's New Clothes, Driving Miss Daisy, and Singin' in the Rain); a large postcard featuring our three-show season which we'll use as a hand-out in various libraries, community centers and coffee shops; separate buckslips for each show (those are the promotional pieces you find in your Kelsey Theatre ticket envelope); and a large postcard promoting Emperor to school teachers (gotta beef up those school sales up).

3) While that was happening, John and I and Emperor director Alycia Bach-Cantor were working on a Short Play Festival produced and hosted by Arts YOUniversity. (The show was performed September 8 to a full-house). Alycia appeared in a piece called The Mystery at Twicknam Vicarage and did a wonderful job. John appeared in Twicknam as well and also directed a piece called Judgement Day. Meanwhile, I wrote and directed an original short play for the festival called The Road Not Taken, and also performed in Judgement Day. On top of writing, acting and directing, I did a little stage managing (everyone did) and played chief cook and bottle washer. No kidding, The Road Not Taken was set in a restaurant. There were real dishes to wash.

4) While that was happening, our production of Winnie the Pooh was nominated for two Perry Awards (yeah us!) -- one for Best Set Design (John), and one for Best Lighting Design (Kitty Geltik). What's more, John and I have been asked to be presenters at the Perry Awards Dinner. We'll be presenting the award for Best Costume Design for a Musical. With that going on, we wanted to be sure all our friends sat at the same table. Let me tell you, trying to pin down 10 busy theatre people to confirm a dinner date is hard enough, but to get them to cough up $60 per ticket was even tougher. It was a lot like herding cats. But it got done and we'll be going to the Perry's on September 16.

5) And if all that wasn't enough, John and I were working nearly every night and weekend for the past few months building a new website for the company. This blog is just a small part of it. The site itself probably has close to a hundred pages including photos, casts lists, feature articles, and tons of stuff on our new shows and most of our old shows. We have lots more in store for the website. By the time we're done (sometime next year?) the site will likely grow to several hundred pages. The goal has been to turn it into a resource for local actors, theatre patrons and potential volunteers -- and of course to sell as many tickets as possible.

Allrighty, then. The new website has been launched, the Short Play Festival is over, our Perry reservations are set, and Emperor rehearsals are rolling along smoothly with Alycia at the helm. That left me with a few minutes to bring you up to speed, and so I have.

Emperor Audition Prep

Tomorrow we officially start holding auditions for The Emperor's New Clothes. I say "officially" because we've already auditioned three people who couldn't make it this weekend. But tomorrow is when the rest of the 65 actors (both adults and children) will show up to sing, dance, act and generally strut there stuff. That means we need signage, paperwork, tables, supplies, video equipment, and a myriad of little and not so little necessities. I'm on the hook for some of the signage. If I'm going to see Bat Boy tonight, I'll need to either get my signage done early, or resign myself to doing it late tonight.

Meanwhile actors are still signing up for appointments and generally jockeying for position. What do I mean by that? It's simple. We use an online audition schedule where actors can sign up for the audition appointment time of their choice. They can also cancel their appointment. All from their computer desk top. This means that as the day of the audition appointment nears, actors start looking for more amenable appointment times. Usually, we see people dropping their Saturday appointments for Sunday appointments, or trading in their morning appointments for afternoon appointments. Often times, that's because they're looking for a few extra hours to work on their audition monologue and song. More power to them.

Oh, well. Better start working on my signage.

Bat Boy

I'm trying to get out to see Bat Boy. It closes this weekend, so it's now or never. But we also have auditions for The Emperor's New Clothes this weekend. It will be tough to squeeze everything in, but Stars in the Park usually does a good job and I'm hearing good things about the show. So I'm just going to have to make the time.

No surprise the buzz is good, especially considering the cast includes talents like Kitty Getlik, Nicole Spadafino (Annabelle Glick in our production of Lucky Stiff) and many others. Caroline, (that's my daughter) has friends in the cast (Kitty and Nicole among them) and is eager to see the show. I'm interested in see in friends on stage, of course, but I'm even more interested in seeing the repelling scene. Apparently, to stage the scene where characters repel down into a giant cave, director Diane Wargo has actors repelling from the Kelsey Theatre catwalk using mountain climbing rigs. Very cool. If I can get out to see the show this weekend, I'll fill you in on the details.