March 18

Wow, what a difference a week makes. Last Tuesday I posted a blog from home with a sick child. I apparently caught the bug and was flat on my back for the next couple of days. Then my back went out from the coughing and sneezing. Thursday and Friday Follies rehearsals went ahead without me under the supervision of stage manager Valerie Pollard and Assistant Director Lori Devine. I emerged from my house Friday to go to the doctor and Saturday ran lights for the footlights elementary troupe performances. The kids did a great job. Sunday was two show day for elementary footlights at 2pm and middle school footlights at 4 pm. April does an outstanding job with the kids and helped them bring their talents to the stage. The middle school show "15 reasons not to be in a play" is a great parody about how being in a play will ruin your life- from the young actress falling in love with the cute guy and attending the cast party and seeing a jello dessert which brings back bad memories and causes the actress to throw up on the boy she is trying to impress to the matriarchal great aunt who is always demanding perfect posture. The audience laughed and applauded as we were all well entertained by the both troupes.

Follies rehearsals resumed for me last night and tonight. We are working through the "rough" spots in the shows. (Places that I haven't quite finished in some cases and places that tend to train wreck consistently in others) I'm using a new program Google sketch up to work on some quick sketches for the sets for Tuesday's with Morrie, Follies and Zink. So far I like the program. In about 2 hours I can develop a basic 3d drawing of set ideas. The follies is finishing the last minute details. I picked up the painted wall sections yesterday from the Follies props committee. I got a chance to look at the "trucks" that are being built as costume pieces for our Convoy number. We arranged for the sound system through Rowton sound and they are always great to work with. Jim Keeney is out buying lumber and materials to make the scenery today based on the drawings I gave him yesterday. I'm searching for really good images of the late 60's and early 70's to turn into large set pieces to hang in a collage about the stage area. I also am looking for backgrounds for the digital images that will be behind the performers. I'm still searching my back copies of a couple of magazines to find a platform brace developed by a new company to see if we can order those in time for the follies.

Tuesdays with Morrie set will be a combination of simple pieces of scenery that need to move on and offstage without any visible stage hands. That is always tricky. The show is a series of episodes that all flow together without any scene changes. Director Phil Counts and I will meet to work through the conceptual ideas about the show before we settle on a set design.

Zink auditions were last night and tonight. That show will have lots of technical challenges not only because it is in the studio theatre where there is no "offstage" space to preset scenery for changes. Turn out was a little lighter than expected last night. Many of our high school kids are not auditioning because the show runs during prom.

Today I wear my Scenic design and engineering hat, my graphic design hat as I build some new ads with the desktop publishing software, my directors hat for rehearsal tonight and this afternoon as I look at costumes for follies, my managing directors hat as I write a couple of grant applications, my arts advocacy hat as I continue to track down answers to some questions about the community wide Arts economic impact study and finally my press and PR hat as I write some press releases. Oh I'm also meeting a former board member who in now on the board of a different community theatre who wants to pick my brain to help that theatre group.