Day Two: Curtain Down
The 2012 Junior Theatre Festival has ended and I’m already getting excited about next year’s! I got the surprise of a lifetime during the ceremony today when I received the award for Outstanding Male Performer. I’m so proud of my team and all we accomplished this year. Onward to the next show, whatever that may be!
Day Two: Midday
I just got back from lunch and we’re waiting for the awards ceremony to begin. The seminar with the Smash executive producers, Brian D’Arcy James, and Christian Borle was incredible! This weekend has made me even more excited for the Smash premiere.
Day Two: Moving Out
I just finished breakfast and we’re about to check out of the hotel. Off to the last day of JTF!
Day One: Ending
I’m back in the hotel room after a long day at JTF! Even though we weren’t selected to perform in the showcase tomorrow, I’m so proud of my team. Personally, the highlight of the day was being selected as an All-Star after four years here at the festival.
A New Way to Experience JTF
With the Junior Theatre Festival less than a week away, I’ve decided to do something I haven’t done in the past. Thanks to the Droid that I got last summer, I’ll be able to post micro-blogs live from the festival in whatever down time I have. These posts won’t be long, but I really want to keep everybody up to date on what’s going on at the festival this year.
In other news, the Godspell cast is returning to the rehearsal room tonight after the holiday break! Now it’s time to tighten down and start putting the last layer of polish on the show. I’m so proud of the show we’re taking down this year; the cast is doing a fantastic job and having fun doing it- and that’s what’s really important. It’s hard to believe that in a week, we’ll be down in Atlanta getting ready for JTF!
It was also recently announced that NBC’s new show SMASH will be sponsoring the last day of the festival! Needless to say, I was floored by this news. For a long time now, this has been the show I’ve been looking forward to all season and their involvement in the festival just makes the weekend that much more exciting!
Sorry that this post was so disjointed, but there was a lot that I wanted to get through. I’m going to try and post an entry after our final rehearsal, but if not you can certainly plan on hearing from me during JTF.
Another Op’ning, Another Show
Well, we’ve made it through tech week and it’s opening night of Annie tonight! There hasn’t been much to report on this show; thus the lack of blogging the past few months. The biggest thing I’ve got going on is the fact that I have to gray my hair for the show, which h=got rather interesting. It takes about two or three applications of the graying agent (which is just my fancy term for water-washable white face makeup) before it starts showing up on my wonderfully blond hair.
All in all, tech week only brought one major comeuppance; Hannigan lost her voice right before the first tech. And she still hasn’t completely recovered. Yeah, the scream that she has in the middle of the show is now having to be dubbed in by someone else. Ah well, the show goes on and the curtain goes up tonight!
The Unwitting Good Guy
I can’t remember if I ever posted this, but after I finished Big River I planned on taking a small break and just working on Godspell, the show I’m going down to JTF with this year. When the local theatre I’m involved in announced that they were doing Annie Jr, I figured I could use something to quell my creative urge, so I volunteered to be the Assistant Stage Manager and Lighting Designer for the show. Well, auditions roll around and what happens? We have 20 girls come and audition and absolutely no guys.
Of course, this is a program I’ve dedicated much of my time to since it started, and I’ve been very heavily involved in building it up to the point it is at now. So naturally, when they asked me if I would step in and play Warbucks, I knew it was my responsibility to do everything I could to help the show go off, so I said yes. Their next question? “Are you willing to shave your head?” My response? “ARE YOU PEOPLE OUT OF YOUR MINDS?” This of course prompted much laughter from the production team, as we all knew what I was thinking at that moment. I had just spent the whole summer growing my hair out for Huck, there wasn’t a chance I was going to go to the opposite extreme.
All in all, though, I’m having a fun time with it…even if I am the unwitting billionaire.
Farewell, Muddy Water
And so it was that on Sunday, July 31st, Big River ended its four week run. This show is quite easily the hardest show I’ve had to close before. The cast was very close to me because we had zero backstage drama. We all just gelled, and that made this whole process so much easier. As for the show itself, I’m going to miss it dearly. I really loved getting to go out every night and play Huck. I loved hearing the reactions to his various escapades (including a riotous scene involving a dress and my brilliant head voice), but I think I loved the audible reactions to the show’s more dramatic moments even more. For anyone who doesn’t know the show, Big River has no major closing number. The show ends with Huck delivering one final monologue and leaving the stage. I had been dreading this final monologue at the final show for several weeks, and when it finally came, it was incredibly difficult for me to hold character instead of disintegrating into tears. Oh, and to top it all off? Apparently, William Hauptman thought it would be a fun thing to give the actor playing Huck the line, “If I’d-a known what trouble it was gonna be to enact this history, I never would’ve tackled it. And I ain’t agoing to no more.” Yeah. Needless to say that I had a hard time getting through that line. Alright, I’ll quit rambling on now. I just wanted to take a moment and give Big River a proper, final send off. Now, onto the next!
Week 1 Down!
I apologize for not posting at all during the opening weekend of Big River, but in my defense I was completely exhausted! Honestly, it was the best opening weekend I’ve ever experienced (and I’ve been doing this for 10 years). The audiences were so receptive and they got better every single night. Each performance escalated in its quality; we all just kept clicking with the material. What made the whole experience, for me, was when we would go out to greet the audience afterwards. So many people came out saying that this was the best show they had seen at this theatre. It’s funny, but that’s when I felt validated in that role. I had done what I had set out to do; entertain the audience. That’s always been my favorite feeling in the world, and now I have carried a show and done it as well. Anyway, I won’t ramble on about the semantics of opening weekend, but all in all it was really fantastic, and I can’t wait to get back this Thursday and start all over again!
