God's Favorite Opening

With two performances already completed of the God's Favorite the response has been very positive. The plays main themes and comedy resonates with audiences and the performers are doing a terrific job with their parts. Diane Byrd's direction keeps the comedy and the humor well paced.

April has been rehearsing the footlights plays and was happy to see that almost all of the youth who are in footlights were there today. This is a performance trimester which means that all of the kids need to be there every Saturday in order to get the play rehearsed and ready for performance on March 20. Last weeks snow didn't help with many of the local kids missing while the out of town kids made it in. Not only are we teaching performance skills and teamwork but at times it feels like we are teaching commitment as well. When a person agrees to be in a play they join a group of people who all depend on the members of the group to be there. When a person is missing from rehearsal then that part of the whole is missing. Each performer in a show from the person who is onstage with the most lines to the person who enters for only one line are critical to creating the play. That person with only a couple of lines can make or break the whole production.

God's Favorite has two leading performers who do an outstanding job with the show. But those wouldn't be as good without the supporting characters who setup the scenes and create the context for the plot. Lisa Humphrey, Landon Baker, Allyson Tracy, Dvonne Miller, and Steve Schwetman all do a great job. In addition Valerie Pollard who is the stage manager and calls all of the lights and sound cues, Debbie on sound and Kiersten(don't know if I spelled her name correctly) on lights, also make the play come to life. Leave the lights up just a few seconds too long at the end of a scene or cut off a sound cue a few seconds too early and the punch lines and comedy don't work.

With the Super Bowl this weekend we think of sports teams and they work they have to do to win the game. With the cast and crew of God's Favorite this is something they have to do with every single performance. The six weeks of hard work and rehearsal are paying off with the audience response.

The new chairs received lots of compliments Thursday and Friday night. We are still tweaking the spacing between rows and the offsets to maximize audience comfort and sight lines. We should have it just about right by Sunday afternoon. The difference of a single inch here or there make a big difference.