Thur sday July 10

Wow lots has happened today. April and I took a subway 101 tour from John Viars of Des Moines Civic Theatre. John leads anywhere from 4-12 NYC Broadway tours per year with people from Des Moines. He acts as their tour guide. We learned how to navigate the different lines and headed uptown to Central Park. We left the group at Columbus Circle and walked through a large part of Central park and took lots of photos. We came across baseball games of the Broadway show league with Several of the big shows competing against each other. Then we walked from 72nd Street to 50 Street along 5th Avenue. We learned the difference between short blocks and long blocks. Long blocks go from East to West. Short blocks are North to South. We walked past all the signature stores like Tiffany's. Past St. Patrick's Cathedral and then over to Rockefeller Center. Stood outside the Today show studios and then headed back to the convention site. We then made it back to the vendor booths set up by AACT. We talked with people from Dramatists, Samuel French, Music Theatre International, Dramatic Publishing, Choice Ticketing, and several others. We purchased scripts and signed up for emails about new shows available. Then we headed back to the hotel to flop for about an hour before we went to the reception honoring Steven Schwartz. I thought it was yesterday but it was today. He talked for about an hour and was honored with the first AACT for his achievements. We heard him talk about Godspell, Pippin, and several other shows he has written. His most recent success is the show Wicked. He had several great stories about how shows were written and how he started out. He is a very funny person and tells great stories. Some of his more interesting talks were about writing shows. He spoke about the fact that sometimes songs are written for actors for the show that is being created. It took 5 years to get Wicked created and opened. During that time he wrote and re-wrote some of the songs over 5 times. A classic story he told about creating Pippin and didn't have anyone character named The Leading Player until this guy auditioned that had been in Bob Fosse's show in the chorus. His name was Ben Vereen. The part of the leading player was created for Ben Vereen and his abilities. Just as in wicked some of the songs for Christian Chenworth were created for her because of her vocal skills.

Once again it shows that even truly gifted talents don't start out with something fully formed. Things are written and re-written and reworked and it is a long process that doesn't come easy for anyone.

April and I then went to see Young Frankenstein tonight at the Hilton Theatre. The show is a funny musical comedy with lots of great special effects and the actress Megan Mullally plays Frankenstein's fiancee with great comedic talent.

After the show there was a talk back with the actors and stage manager. There are over 500 lighting cues in the show and it takes over 90 people to make the performance happen each time. The cast had some great acting tips and comments. One of the tips by the actor who played both the Inspector Kemp and the hermit was by a director who once told him not to concentrate so much on stage but to pay attention. Good acting is paying attention to what is happening in the scene and what the other actors are doing. Megan Mulllally who has no formal theatre training but has always done theatre talked about the best training is to just do as much acting, singing and dancing as you can. No matter if it is high school, community, college, or professional theatre. There is no substitute for doing it.

The stage manager who has been working for over 20 years gave the advice that if you decide you want to be a Broadway musical stage manager or a Broadway actor you will probably fail. But if you decide that you will be an actor or stage manager who will go anywhere and work on whatever job is offered that you will probably be able to make a living at it if you are willing to sacrifice to follow those jobs.

Oh by the way- Young Frankenstein cost $15 million dollars to open on Broadway and took over a year of rehearsals and pre Broadway shows to become what it is today. The cast talked about learning so many different lyrics and choreography for the opening number that it became mind numbing. They would rehearse during the day, do a preview performance in the evening and then rehearse with changes again the next day. Sometimes new lyrics or dancesteps for both.

It's after midnight and time to call it a day.