I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change Final Weekend

(***After I wrote this Tuesday, I found out that our website provider has been experiencing some technical problems they hope to have resolved later today and will get us changed over hopefully by the end of the day Wednesday.)



As I write this I'm using a new blogging software and the theatre will hopefully unveil our redesigned website today. I hope that you like our new website format. While it is easier to update and change it has taken me a while to learn the ins and outs of a new software program. As a result I'm behind in my blogs about the show and what's going on at the theatre. We hope that the new home page format will allow smart phone users and computer internet users an easier way to interact with our site.



I Love You You're Perfect Now Change is about to enter its third and final week of performances. It has been a wonderful run so far with lots of great moments. Audience response has been overwhelmingly positive. During the first weekend we had a very special treat for audiences on Friday evening Sept. 3! I had been contacted by Russ Whalen about using the theatre for a short time so that he could propose to his girlfriend. Russ was driving in from Louisville and meeting his girlfriend Emily Kaler in Paducah. I suggested instead that he come to the performance of I LOVE YOU, YOU'RE PERFECT and at intermission "pop" the question. The production of I LOVE YOU, YOU'RE PERFECT, has had more people propose during performances than any other. He agreed and on the night of the performance I went up to do the raffle drawing and then said "We have decided to pick someone at random out of the audience to do or drawing tonight! I then walked back down the aisle to his seat and pointed at Russ and said we had chosen him. He stood up and then turned to Emily and said "before I do that I would like to do something else" He pulled out a diamond ring and asked her to marry him.



The second weekend our audience response was overwhelmingly positive again and we settled in for a great weekend of performances. On Saturday evening during the "car" scene Melanie Koch's chair got a flat (lost a wheel) as she was spinning around in circles and she had to literally drag the chair back to the center to finish the song. She did it with such style that I couldn't tell what had happened. On Sunday Towneley Williams called me to tell me she had lost her voice. I called all of the actors in 30 minutes early and Towneley tried to sing her part. I made a decision to have the other actresses fill in for her in her solo scenes. Melanie did "A Stud and a Babe", Audra did "He Called Me" and because of the difficulty with the staging and the lyrics, Towneley acted the role in "The Marriage Tango" while Victoria Parrish stood offstage and sang while Towneley lip-sinked the song. The entire cast all did a great job of covering and we are all keeping our fingers crossed that Towneley has fully recovered for the final week of the show. It is one thing to be familiar with the show and to step in to do someone's role. It is a whole other level to step in with 30 minutes notice to learn the music and do the movement in front of an audience and do it from memory. Fowler emailed me Monday morning to tell me that his voice was gone and that he was headed to the doctor for some help before we start back up again Thursday night. I've got my fingers crossed we have a healthy cast on Thursday.



I knew that when the Play Selection Committee selected I LOVE YOU, YOU'RE PERFECT, NOW CHANGE that some in our audience would not like the play. It has a little bit stronger language and adult content than many of the plays that we have done in the last several years. I received a call this afternoon from a season ticket holder who did not like the show at all and wanted to express his feelings. I noticed a few people leave at intermission and I assumed that the play was not something they enjoyed. The gentleman who called me this afternoon was very polite and simply wanted to express his feelings. It is never easy to sit quietly and have someone tell you how unhappy they are with something you have done. I do appreciate that this ticket holder cared enough to call me to let me know that not everyone loved the show. Every audience member is important to us and we value their opinions. We are a community theatre and as such we try to make sure that the majority of our programming reflects the community values.



As the Artistic Director of the theatre it is my job to select and review all the plays that the theatre considers producing. I am the person who submitted this play to be considered by the play selection committee. It received rave reviews from other theatres around the country. I wanted to take a moment to share why I thought this was a show that MHT should produce. I LOVE YOU, YOU'RE PERFECT, NOW CHANGE contains a comic view of men and women and the biological and emotional rollercoaster that we ride on as we look for love and companionship in our lives. Two of the songs in the show are extremely poignant in the show. "I Will be Loved Tonight" and "Shouldn't I be Less in Love with You". Speak about the joy and the pain that relaitionships, or the lack of, bring to our lives. "The very first dating video of Rose Ritz" is an incredibly funny and moving story of a woman whose husband abandoned her and whose world collapses, yet she picks herself up and goes back out to find love again. "Funeral's are for Dating" lets us look at what it is like for two older people who have lost the love of their lives, their spouses to death, and they continue on with life because they still have so much to give. Very few plays can bring us to tears from laughter and tears from an honest moment in the story of relationships. The last song- "Keep coming Back" sums it all up. Those were the reasons that I submitted this play for reveiw even though I knew some of our season ticket holders would not like it.



The theatre's purpose is to enrich our lives with stories and entertainment. Our brand " We don't just entertain... We change lives" means more than just a slogan. If we wanted to just entertain we would never do anything that would upset or challenge our audiences. (I'm not sure it's possible to not upset anyone and still do something that has value.) Almost every play that has some "guts" to it will upset someone. Cinderella upset some audience members because they thought it had too much kissing in it. Wizard of Oz upset some audience members because it had magic and witches. Smoke on the Mountain upset some audience members because they said we were doing church plays and not secular plays. Any time we do a drama we upset someone because they feel we should only do comedies that make us forget about the problems of real life. If we do a children's show some adults don't want to see children acting, if we do an adult show some audience members want us to do shows that acceptable for children to watch. In the end the only thing I can do is to accept criticism from others in the spirit that they really do care about the theatre and feel that their thoughts and feelings matter to make MHT a better place.



Each play we put on someone comes up to me and tells me they love this play and it is the best show they've every seen and someone else will walk out at intermission (or before) and tell me how much they hated this play. Like the song at the end of I LOVE YOU YOU'RE PERFECT NOW CHANGE, we as a theatre company keep coming back. Back to deciding to produce another play, back to auditioning another cast, back to creating a play that we know someone will love and someone will hate.

Pefect Now Change

Tech week is over and tonight we open the show and the official start of our 47th season. It must be something in the air as all of the other arts and business people I talked to in the last week talked about crazy things are right now. Getting the first show open is a marathon task. Debra Harned is the graphic artist for the theatre who lays out our program. We were late this year in getting our ad sales and sponsors which then pushed the program up and past the deadline. We print the cover and all the color pages once for the entire year. That’s 10,000 covers and color pages that have to be correct for the entire year. After we dropped off what we thought was the final proof on Friday August 13, we had two more color ads come in from businesses that we had given up on. I literally ran over to our printer and told them to hold the press and had them reset the color pages. We worked almost round the clock on the weekend of August 21 & 22 getting final ad copy and sponsor listing for the 32 black and white pages that we turned in August 23. I was still talking to sponsor and getting and creating ad copy right up to turning in the proof. The good news is that we received the printed programs yesterday and they look great.

At the same time we were in rehearsals for the show and trying to finish the set and lights. Last Saturday it was a 14 hour work day which was to finish the hang and focus of lights which started on the Thursday before. We began setting light cues at about 3:30 Saturday afternoon and ended about 10:30 that night. Setting light cues involves Stage Manager Denise Bristol walking through the different scenes on stage while I sit in the audience with the light board and set the cues. At 10:30 Denise left with a prop list of items that was needed for the tech rehearsal the next day and I went home to work until about 1 AM locating images on the internet and creating title slides for the large rear screen projections during the show. This continued starting about 6 AM the next morning until 11 AM when I programmed them into the computer backstage to display the images. (The majority of the images I found and programmed I changed almost immediately after the technical rehearsal because they didn’t work the way I thought they would and pulled “focus” from the actors in the scene.) From 11 AM to 1PM I focused on finding sound effects for the show and setting up the 8 wireless microphones and receivers. We are using the microphones primarily for a monitor speaker for Patt Lynch who is playing piano to hear the actors because he is seated several feet behind the actors and can’t hear their singing as he plays the music for them. We had the tech rehearsal on Sunday technical rehearsal last Sunday we have been dealing with microphone and sound issues along with scenery issues. The lighting and follow spot crew got their dates mixed up and Jim forgot to confirm the day before so they didn’t show up for the rehearsal. When the mistake was discovered TD Jim Keeney had to make and emergency call to his wife and daughter to fill in for the missing crew along with his running some of the equipment. The technical rehearsal went well and afterwards the cast was treated to a great meal while I gave notes from the rehearsal. Volunteers Don and Renie Barger, Ralph and Stephanie Young, Dick Holland, Valerie Pollard and others have taken on the task of making food for the cast crew and orchestra as a way of showing their appreciation for the hard work that has been done to get the show open.

Sunday evening I spent working with April to design the set for Alice in Wonderland Jr. which April started staging the next day. April has asked to create a set that can grow and shrink with Alice. I had some basic ideas for how to make that work but working through the actual design takes lots discussion and sketches of different ideas and how the actors might move in the different scenes in a space. There are over 30 actors in the show and they all are onstage in a couple of different scenes. We need lots of different height levels so the audience can see everyone and at the same time the choreography and movement needs a flat floor space to work best. We settled on a raked floor that will will elevate those at the back above those in the front and give us a space without steps that would impede the choreography. A rough sketch of the set was completed with very general ideas of how special effects would work to make things grow and shrink. That was enough to get her started.

Monday the focus returned to Perfect Change and the costumes, sets, lights, sound and staging. I had been unhappy with a section of one of the songs in the Wedding scene and decided it needed more choreography. I spent time in the afternoon working through some different possible movements for the “gospel church choir” to do which made them more involved in the scene instead of just standing and singing. When the cast arrived at 6:30 we spent 20 minutes on learning the choreography that would be performed in the song in the first act. Just as we were about to start we had major sound issues with the piano because I had tried to add a hard masking piece in front of the piano for a visual effect. Patt couldn’t hear what he was playing on the piano. We ended up adding monitors for Patt and the percussionist. We started the rehearsal and in the first act a scene with a bed began with a crash. Three actors have to get in a bed that was built to fold in half between the head board and the footboard so it would get through the side masking to get onstage and the head of the bed is elevated so the audience can see the actors when they sit up. That afternoon Tech Director Jim Keeney had decided to redo the casters on the bed to make it easier to roll on and off. The larger casters changed the center of balance on the bed and when the three actors sat down in the dark scene change the bed collapsed into a V shape causing the headboard and the footboard to come together. Al Knudsen who was behind the head board was thrown backwards as the bottom of the headboard kicked out. Audra, Melanie, and Chris hit their heads hard on the head board and everyone came running on to help. We brought up the lights and made sure that everyone was okay. My first thought was “Oh God we just killed 3 actors in bed!” Fortunately everyone was able to continue bruised and a little shaken. Don't let anyone tell you theatre isn't dangerous! We hauled the broken bed offstage and did the scene with the actors sitting on 3 chairs for the rehearsal that night. The rest of the rehearsal went surprisingly well.

Tuesday Jim Keeney rebuilt the bed and readjusted the center of balance. That afternoon Jim and I both jumped up and down on the bed structure with all our combined weight to test the redesign to prevent any future breaking. When the cast showed up that night we opened up the bed and I jumped up and down on it with all my weight to reassure the cast it was now fixed. Audra Hall called in sick right before we began the rehearsal Tuesday night so the other women in the cast had to quickly fill in for her so that we could do the run through. They did a great job not only filling in but also helping us continue to improve the show to get ready for the final dress rehearsal.

Wednesday evening we did the final dress rehearsal. We pay a royalty to the authors to allow a small test audience of performer’s friends and family to see our “preview” of the show. Audra was healthy and back onstage. She had to learn some of the changes that we made on Tuesday night to refine choreography and stage the curtain call with just a very quick walk through before we started. During the second scene of the first act we suddenly had an unknown voice coming through the sound system. After a frantic search it was discovered that the church across the street from the theatre was using a wireless microphone on the same frequency as ours. This created a mad search to track down which wireless receiver was picking up the signal and changing the frequency channels while the first scene was in process. The actors and musicians kept right on going without missing a beat. It was an alert audience member who realized it was the church across the street and he went out during the first scene and asked them to change their frequency. He told me at intermission that the preacher from across the street said that the night before they were hearing us through their sound system. I can only imagine a church service suddenly hearing people sing "If I were a Stud" or "sexually trained attorneys helping you get the satisfaction you want in bed."

With all of the trials and tribulations that go with opening the show and the season, it all comes together tonight as we kick of the 47th Season. One of the family members who was in the audience for the final dress was laughing so hard she was crying at the dating scenes. In another scene Fowler Black’s solo “Shouldn’t I be less in Love with You?” moved the audience to total silence at the end of the scene when the lights went down instead of the standard applause so that you could hear a pin drop. That’s when you know you the audience is really moved by the performance. I hope lots of people will come and be moved to tears and laughter by this great season opener.