At The Old Red Lion!

This isn't how I'm feeling at the moment- it's a production photo of the character Alex, from Suicide Brunette, by award-winning playwright, Gary Mitchell. We've opened Suicide Brunette, by Gary Mitchell and The Native, by Christopher Hanvey at The Old Red Lion and the run continues until Oct. 30th. Please join us if you're in the UK- they're exceptional pieces-

So, it's been an amazing month- and a wee bit busy!

Anything Goes finished fantastically well. Audiences enjoyed out production, I was delighted with how the cast did and we raised almost $2000.00 for the Red Cross as part of our pre-show improvisations.

I had to leave before the end of the run and the cast treated me to song, with special lyrics written by our Musical Director, David Hall, followed by a group hug (by 43 people!). I was a bit teary and very proud- and then dashed out the door to get on a plane to the UK.

Arriving on the Monday morning- I had the day to get into gear and meet the designer for the plays that we began rehearsing on Tues. Sept 27th. Gary Mitchell flew over from Northern Ireland- and we dove into both pieces.

Here's a photo of Christopher Hanvey playing Marshall, the young man pressured into killing a young, pregnant Sioux woman- with an unexpected outcome...


I've lots more to write about, but just wanted to get blogging after a busy few weeks... more very soon!

SummerWorks and beyond

The past three weeks have sped by.

SummerWorks ended very well. We had a super audiences for our three performances- and I was extremely pleased with how the play gelled over the run. It was an immense pleasure to work with the company on this beast of a play! We were listed in the Best Ensemble Category of Now Magazine's 'wrap up' of the festival- a testament to the company's work. Thank you again to all the peeps who worked on, helped, supported, encouraged and attended our production- it meant and means an huge amount! (The picture above is of the Smackheaded Company in full-flight, photo by Scott Gorman. And here's Bryan and Emily in an earlier scene from the play- I'll be posting more production photos very soon...)



The last couple of weeks have been a swift change of pace from our re-investigation into poor theatre....

It's been 'a systems go' with Anything Goes. The day after our last performance of The Sad and Cautionary Tale of Smackheaded Peter I began the the 19 hours that I had allotted myself to do the blocking (or staging) of the piece. This would just be the 'first pass', but the only week when I had priority (the two weeks prior to that were focusing on music, the two weeks after 'my week' gave priority to choreography and tap dancing). Well, we did it! Normally I allow myself about 15- 20 mins/page on a 'first pass' blocking rehearsal. To get the work done in my 19 hours I worked at 8.5 mins/ page... and had 43 peeps in the room, most of the time. It was a wee bit intense...and I'm not sure that I'll ever do that again... (Thankfully I've arranged lots of small, 'non-priority' rehearsals that run concurrently with choreography rehearsals, so I've had a more traditional 15- 20 mins a page since then!)

We also had one, 'full Equity week' with the teens. This was a six-day week of rehearsing 10-6. On our last afternoon that week we had two treats: a pizza party and a stagger-through of the musical. (The staggering was not caused by the pizza- it was just that we were putting it all together for the first time- that's generally called a stagger-through...)

Now we're on a five day break so that the cast/production students can focus on getting back to school. When we start back I begin to move into production mode on Anything Goes. I'm very excited about getting onto the Main stage at The Grand!

Today though it's R and R. Reading and relaxing... Reading The Native and Suicide Brunette (the two plays I'm directing at the Old Red Lion in the UK in Oct. by excellent Northern Irish writers Gary Mitchell and Christopher Hanvey) and relaxing...I'm immensely grateful for a wee break- it's been a busy and brilliant ten weeks.