Wizard Record

My last post was just before Wizard of Oz opened and I started writing this sitting in the stage manager cage backstage on Sunday just before the matinee to try to update what’s going on. I finished up this post this morning.

The show has received a tremendous response. As of my writing this, it only needs to sell another 130 tickets to break the Beauty and the Beast record to become the biggest selling show in MHT Main stage History. I used to try to do it by box office gross but with ticket price changes over the years, number of seats sold has become the number to beat.

The audience response has been tremendous. So many people have complimented the performances of everyone in the show, especially Emily Yocum as Dorothy, Fowler Black as the Scarecrow, Chris Schnarr as the Tin Man, Chuck Wilkins as the Cowardly Lion, and Denise Bohle as the Witch. Katy Miller’s choreography has been a real crowd pleaser with overwhelming praise for the crows, apple trees, poppies, snowflakes, and jitterbug dance numbers. The special effects and the technical production have also received dozens of compliments for the crew who is running all of the complicated scene changes and effects so smoothly.

We have had 10 great performances. We have also had a few of those moments that is the thrill of live theatre because you never know what will happen. One performance Dorothy’s dress got caught on the painted fire in Professor Marvel’s scene and pulled it over on its side. The professor quickly reached his hand into the “fire” and set it back upright. On Saturday night during the witch’s exterior our rear digital projector had a lamp problem and decided to go into standby mode for a short time. I raced backstage to catch Daniel Yokum who is running the rear screen projections before he could try to restart the projector. Without a hand in front of the screen when it restarts it will go into a test pattern which looks like those old TV test patterns with the color bars and would not have been good during the witches scene. I ended up going up to the projector, putting my hand in front to restart and then slowly raising my hand to let the image reappear on the screen. I don’t know if the audience was even aware of the screen because fortunately it happened when we have lots of scenery in front of the screen at that moment. Unfortunately that meant that I had to crawl on my hands and knees under the projection image to escape from the restart or be trapped for the rest of the performance. There are so many technical things to go wrong in this show it is only because of a constant vigilance by the staff the tech crew and performers that we keep everything intact.

We have a rehearsal Tuesday night for the auction winners to learn their parts and a full dress rehearsal on Wednesday to give the Auction winners a chance to put on their costumes and do the show before their debut for the special Saturday night fundraising event. It should be lots of fun on Saturday as several people get a chance to feel what its like to step on stage for one night only in the show. Tickets for that event are only available by phoning the box office.