Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2

Glory Bea! Has a Magical Opening Night to Kick Off the Holidays

Whew! This weekend we debuted a World Premiere Christmas musical by Rich Follett and Larry Dahlke, entitled Glory Bea! A Sheandoah Christmas Story. We had two previews, made a bunch of changes in this new show and offered it as a gift to our community at the official opening on Sunday night. To say it was a smashing success would be an understatement. Three audiences loved this show, which we hope promises many more full houses to come.

The entire company of Wayside Theatre audiences outdid themsevles on this one. Incorporating last minute changes and re-writes, while rehearasing two casts simultaneously, is no easy task, especially with children in the cast. But the kids, the adults and the staff were all sensational. This is truly an experience for the ages, on many levels, and one none of us will ever forget.

Now, it is on to a month of performances and bringing Glory Bea! and Christmas to our community. What a spectacular gift we have to offer, and what a treat our audiences and community has in store.

Glory Bea! Gets Ready to Light Up Your Holidays

We're working like frantic elves to get the World Premiere of Glory Bea! A Shenandoah Christmas Story ready for this weekend. We'll all try to fight the traditional Thanksgiving Day coma today when we come back for two dress rehearsals. This lovely new Christmas show from Rich Follett and Larry Dahlke will delight children and adults of all ages. It's full of fun, joy, hope, and a can do attitude that will make you understand just how indominitable we can be when we want to.

Here's a preview article of the show by the Northern Va Daily. Hope you plan to check it out this month. It's the best Christmas gift you can give to your family or yourself.

 

Be Thankful and Have a Happy Thanksgiving

I hope you and yours have a warm, safe, and yummy Thanksgiving. I also hope you take a moment to be thankful for all the blessings bestowed upon you and us all.

Stuck on Repeat in a Moment In Time

I suppose we've exhausted the clichéness of the cliché that George Santayana is credited with, "those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it." All you need do is look around, if you have the courage to fix your gaze on just about anything that is happening in the world today. The picture that heads this post from an OWS protest at UC Cal Davis is just one example of how we've either lost any perspective on our current roles in the continuim or have just decided, in some astonishing feat of hubris, that what we're doing has no connection to the magnificient human errors that we and our ancestors stumbled into in the past.

What's that lesson we all learn as children? Stick you hand in a flame and you get burned? Why have we seemed to take a collective leave of our senses (both physical and intellectual) when it comes to dancing so periously close to fires we thought we had extinguished? Is the burning heat and glow of the fire so seductive that we ignore the potential for pain?

Here's a small list of seemingly collective memorable moments in time within which we seem to have collectively forgotten to remember our past. 

• The ridiculous responses to the OWS protests.The crackdowns serve to inflame not douse. These efforts to diminish the protests only serve to diminish the diminishers. I mean seriously, you write a memo explaining our you are going to spend money to discredit the protesters and let it leak?
• Wall St and the finanical world, you know that place where people make money by not making anything, are heading us all into another crash. Of course this behavior and our lack of a government with any desire to do something about it led to the OWS movement in the first place.
• The Republican presidential circus primary. I mean if Newt Gingrich can be on the ascendancy then those who are boosting him upward either don't care, or the office of the presidency has lost all meaning. Probably both. But then, I think the last decade has proven that what we call the US poltical process is nothing more than a hand maiden to bigger interests.

The list could go on and on, because as a species we just go on and on. But somehow in the going on and on, we've forgotten to carry any baggage with us from out collective past as we try to step into the future unfettered. But the only thing that is unfettered or unencumbered seems to be our destiny to find ourselves, again, on the bottom of the cycle that is life, crying about the burns on our hands.

 

 

Tay Zonday is Back to Explain the Economy

Remember Tay Zonday? He became a YouTube sensation with Chocolate Rain awhile back. Well, he's back again with a new video and song called Mama Economy that purports to explain the economy. He does as good a job as anybody else is doing. Especially considering that those who can explain it (versus those who think they can) don't want it explained. That only makes the mirage disappear.

Enjoy.

 

Take the Pepsi Challenge and Help Young Playwrights at Wayside Theatre

This weekend we debut a new play, Mary Shelly: A Spark of Being. It's a really exciting new piece. What makes it even more exciting is that it was written by a young team of playwrights from Wayside Theatre's educational programs. They spent the summer researching and writing the piece and now they are ready to see this new piece about the author of Frankenstein take the stage on Friday night in the first of three performances.

This program is just one of the many things Wayside Theatre's educational programs offer. This is the fourth year in a row where we've debuted a new play by teen writers. And for a number of years now we've sponsored a playwriting competition in the spring that has seen some really remarkable work from some apsiring young authors.

As everyone who follows Wayside Theatre here knows we've been struggling to make ends meet for sometime now. We might have turned that corner with our recent Emergency Campaign, but we still need to raise ongoing funds for our programs.

One way we're attempting to do this is to drink a lot of Pepsi products. Well, actually we're taking the Pepsi Challenge, which is a wonderful program that gives us an opportunity for a $25,000 grant. We applied for the program and were accepted as a finalist and we're now in the voting stage. I encourage you to go and vote at this link. Not only that I encourage you to go and vote each and every day, because we're allowed and encourage to do that. We're currently ranked at number 91 which means we've got a long way to go and with your votes we've got a shot. You can even text in a vote each day on your mobile phone (Text109578 to Pepsi (73774) to vote from your mobile). This allows you to vote once per day on the web and once a day via text.

Help us spread the word as well. We'd love to make this work for the kids in our area who enjoy writing and your vote can make the difference.

And, hey, this doesn't cost you a thing.

Wayside Theatre Featured in Northern Va Daily's The Haunted Valley Mobile Apps

Given that this is the day after Halloween, I wish I'd known of this sooner, but better late than ever. One of our two local papers is making a real push to reinvent itself for the digital age and one of the ways it is doing so is by creating Apps for mobile devices. The NVD has it's own iPhone App and Android App. It now has a specialty App out for iOS devices and Android devices called The Haunted Valley chroniciling some stories about haunted properties around the Northern Shenandoah Valley. One of those featured is our own Wayside Theatre.

We've been investigating mysterious activities here for quite some time. We've debunked a few legends and come up with a few more mysterious and unexplained events, sightngs, or whatever they are called. The Haunted Valley App tells some of that story and features my lovely wife, Thomasin Savaiano, who heads up this department for us. (Don't ask for a name of the department, we don't have one.)

We're getting checked out by a cable channel tomorrow to see if some of the events here might make their show and other producers and investigators are checking in to see if we "qualify" as well.

The Haunted Valley App is currently on sale for $.99 on iTunes. The Android price is $.99 as well.