May 21 2012

A huge thank you goes out the volunteers who manned the Market House Theatre booth at the Lowertown Festival this past weekend. I'm not sure if I have all the names but I know that April and Jade Cochran, Jim and Kathy Keeney, Don and Renie Barger, Melisa, David and Ashley Mast, Sandra Wilson, Josh and Lea Morehead, the McHaney family, and Janet Bloomingburg all helped fill in shifts. Thanks to all! Saturday during the day while the festival was going on Jim Keeney and I worked on the set for Hairspray along with Kelly Salchli who came in to paint several of the scenic pieces used in the show. The set is starting to come along. There is still lots of painting left to do. Jim is starting today on building the giant Hairspray can for Edna to appear out of. We ordered a case of the Canned Haze product to use for the Hairspray that is used in a couple of numbers during the show. The product is generally referred to as canned smoke as well. We found out we lost the use of our digital projector last week so we scrambled and trying unsuccessfully locally to rent a 5k-10k lumen projector have rented one from a national company who does that. That will arrive a couple of days before the technical rehearsal. Our drummer Joe Plucknett arrives tonight to start working with Patt Lynch and we are about to put up the webbing for the orchestra pit after the drumset is put in. Debra Harned has been working hard to finish up the program and we just got the last cast bio and photo last night! With graduation this week we will be missing some of our teenage performers but hopefully most will be there for the majority of the week. The show is in the final week and a half push to get ready for opening which means long rehearsals and lots of work on polishing and shaping. Thursday and Friday of last week we made lots of progress and I hope that continues this week. Next Sunday is the technical rehearsal where we bring all the costumes lights and scenic elements together. This week and a half is the time I call "hell week" It means that the cast will have 4 hour rehearsals almost everyday until opening and Jim and I will work 14-16 hours a day every day until the show opens. Everyone works incredibly hard to make the final product look effortless. I always think of the questions I get from people who ask "So what do you do when you aren't in performance". Think of it like the launch of a brand new product that takes hundreds of hours of preparation and is still being created right up until opening night and has to unveil to the public fully formed. Most businesses that create a new product spend months testing and trying out the product. Then doing "soft openings" to tweak their products based on consumer feedback. The life of the theatre is that opening night the audience and the critics come and a show has to be at its peak. We expect and demand a professional attitude and quality from the amateur performers and it never ceases to amaze me how time after time they step up to that challenge.