Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2

Slamming Doors and Busting Loose

I’m relatively confident (but not overly so) that we’re going to have a stupendous opening night performance of Unnecessary Farce this evening at Wayside Theatre. Comedy is hard work, and everyone has worked hard to make this show shine. The show, by Paul Slade Smith, is hysterically conceived and written. During our two preview performances yesterday both audiences (very different audiences) hooted and howled with laughter and we got some great comments that will help us shape it further in the final rehearsal this afternoon before the opening night curtain.

The cast is doing exceptional work and Wayside Theatre is going to debut three young actors in this show who are just fun to watch. Leah Raulerson, (who actually debuted with us in Moonlight and Magnolias), Dacia Dick, and Matt Baldoni are all exceptional and very, very funny. They play with Larry Dahlke, James Laster, Barbara Callander, and Dustin Loomis, and the ensemble work is as tight as it needs to make a show like this work. When they are all on and cooking, it is breathtakingly funny to watch.

I could be wrong, I have been before, but I think we’re in for a healthy fun run with this show. I look forward to the silliness on stage, and the celebrating after.

Technorati Tags: Unnecessary Farce,Moonlight and Magnolias,Wayside Theatre

One Show Down, Two More to Go

Whew.

Today was the closing performance and then strike for Moonlight and Magnolias. It was a great show. Just this last week, Potomac Stages picked the show as a must see in the Washington DC area. It is always sad to see a show close, and this was one of the sadder ones. The cast, Peter Boyer, Chris Reeder, Chris Todd, and Leah Raulerson, were all wonderful and provided a lot of great laughs for audiences.

But like all shows this one has reached the end of its run, and we got rid of all of the bananas and peanuts and now move on to donuts and sex farce.

Always Patsy Cline has one more week to play while we continue to rehearse Unnecessary Farce. It will almost seem like a vacation with only two shows to worry about this week. But not really. We’ve got a lot coming up and we’ll all be a bit crazy here pretty much up to the holidays. But hey that’s a life in the theatre.

Reviews Coming in for Moonlight and Magnolias

We’re into our second week of the run for Moonlight and Magnolias and reviews are just now starting to come in. Sometimes you wonder if they are seeing the same play, but then that’s show biz.

Here are links to two of them: The Winchester Star (Powerful Acting Pulls It Off) and The Northern VA Daily (Wayside’s ‘Moonlight’ is comedy on steroids.}

I love how they are both fixated on the messy stage we create with all those peanuts and bananas. It is a comic mess.

Also of note in the traditional paper biz, there’s a great article on Miss Sara Story who is playing Patsy Cline for us in Always Patsy Cline.

Technorati Tags: Wayside Theatre,Always Patsy Cline,Moonlight and Magnolias,Culture

Moonlight and Magnolias Now Running Strong

Well, we got her open. Moonlight and Magnolias (which should be subtitled bananas and peanuts) is now open and running strong. Although attendance was down this first weekend, performances were met with standing ovations and audiences were having a blast. I’m looking forward to the next two weeks of the run.

More pictures available at this Flickr feed.

Technorati Tags: Moonlight and Magnolias,Wayside Theatre,Gone With the Wind

Bananas On My Chest

One of our current shows, Moonlight and Magnolias features bananas and peanuts as a silly but crucial part of the action. So, for the last month or so, we’ve been making peanut and banana jokes, and dealing with acquiring large quantities of the fruit and nuts.

One of our opening traditions is that my lovely wife Thomasin purchases a boutonniere for me to wear to the show. She works with a local florist, gives them a rundown of what the show is, and they come up with something that fits, sometimes comically so.

That was the case last night when the boutonniere showed up. It featured two bananas protruding out of it. Of course I wore it, and some of the audience, that didn’t know what they show would reveal looked at me very strangely.

But in the end, it paid off and was quite the conversation starter.

A Day in the Life of Tech Rehearsals

Wow. We’re dragging today here at Wayside Theatre. Yesterday was our big technical rehearsal day for Moonlight and Magnolias, which we’re performing in a different location. We’re doing this so that our current hit, Always Patsy Cline can continue to pack them in at our home base. These days are typically heads down, go into the theatre and don’t come out until we’re done kind of affairs.

Mid-way through that rehearsal we got a call from our stage manager for Always Patsy Cline that there was a malfunction with the stage lights right as she was getting ready to start the show. Lights would not be controlled properly. So we took a break in tech rehearsals, while I got on the phone, after sending our lighting designer, Paul, who has done both shows, fleeing to Middletown to see what he could do.

Our folks explained the situation to the audience and offered them two options, while we waited until we could make a decision based on Paul’s findings, or reschedule their tickets. Most folks decided to wait it out, and we sent the Patsy band on stage to play some music under work lights and keep folks entertained.

We ended up doing the performance in one cue, as it was ascertained we needed to do some more evaluation before determining what we needed to focus on. The audience members that stuck with us seemed genuinely happy with the outcome.

Meanwhile up the street at Moonlight and Magnolias rehearsal, things progressed between phone calls and progressed in good fashion. The day there ended without incident and in good shape to move forward.

We’ve got a great team at Wayside Theatre and they all pulled their weight yesterday as we live that old show biz axiom, The Show Must Go On.

Turns out the issue is a DMX cable needs to be replaced, so I think we’re good to go on both fronts

Technorati Tags: Moonlight and Magnolias,Gone With the Wind,Always Patsy Cline,Wayside Theatre

Bananas and Peanuts, Oh My

Walking through the grocery story after rehearsal for Moonlight and Magnolias, I came across this display of bananas and peanuts. We should figure out how to get this into our marketing for the show, given that all the only food David Selznick lets his partners eat during the play are bananas and peanuts.

Technorati Tags: Moonlight and Magnolias,Wayside Theatre,Gone With the Wind

Moonlight and Magnolias: Breaking the Funny Bones

We have our first full run thru of the comedy, Moonlight and Magnolias today and I’m looking forward to what we’ll learn about the play, and also what we’ll learn about what work we still have to do. This comedy is no easy play to stage. It varies between quick paced dialogue filled fueled by some deft comic writing by Ron Hutchinson, to some crazy slapstick physical comedy, to some pretty deep discussions on some important issues.

The cast is doing a remarkable job and working hard at a piece I can tell they love. I can also tell that their brains are cramping at the end of each rehearsal.

Tomorrow we move onto the stage for the first time and we will take an inevitable step forward and two inevitable steps back as we adjust to the real furniture, the real spacing and the real world of our production. That will be fun, and is always a challenge.

I get terrified of comedy the closer we get simply because I loose my perspective on “the funny” and it all becomes analytical. I have a love/hate relationship with comedies for just that reason. Laughter, when it comes, is a completely  free reaction to something we think is funny. Lately, I only laugh when the actors create a new moment, or create a new bit. Chances are the next time around I won’t find it funny at all, and that’s when the analysis begins.

Comedy may or may not be pretty, but it sure is hard work.

Here’s a link to some local newspaper coverage.

Technorati Tags: Moonlight and Magnolias,Wayside Theatre

Slapping Silly

Today in Moonlight and Magnolias rehearsal we are going to slap each other silly. Literally. There’s a section in Act 1 Scene 2 where Selznick, Fleming, and Hecht contemplate Scarlet’s slapping of Prissy and practice it. Well that’s just the surface, but they also use the opportunity to take out their pent up frustration on each other and a gentle slap rehearsal turns into a Three Stooges like slap-fest with full contact slapping for about two minutes. Two minutes of funny stuff, that over the next two weeks we’ll spend about 12 hours rehearsing to make sure no one gets hurt.

Should be fun. Can’t wait to say, try it again. I’ll resist the “with more feeling” part.

Technorati Tags: Moonlight and Magnolias,Gone With the Wind,Wayside Theatre

Bananas and Peanuts and Gone With the Wind

We’re a week into rehearsals for our second show of the season at Wayside Theatre, Moonlight and Magnolias by Ron Hutchinson. We’re loving every minute of it so far. This is a delicious comedy that tells the story of the writing of the screenplay of Gone With The Wind by David O. Selznick, Ben Hecht and Victor Fleming. Selznick was three weeks into filming on the screenplay when he realized it wasn’t right, fired the director George Kukor and brought in Ben Hecht to doctor Sidney Howard’s screenplay.

Selznick locked Fleming and Hecht in his office and the three of them worked for five days, eating nothing but bananas an peanuts (brain food according to Selznick) until they came out with a new draft.

The comedy is fast paced and at times insanely paced as the three fight each other, their egos, and the pressure to get it done.

We’ve got a terrific cast who are just devouring their roles, and our biggest concern is how we deal with al those bananas and peanuts. They literally have to turn the stage into a giant mess every performance with banana peals and peanut shells and script pages flying all over the place. I think we’ll have to clean up the stage every night with a shovel.

Intriguingly, because we throw peanuts and step on them and crush them, we have to warn our audiences that those who might have an allergy to peanuts might want to stay away. Although we don’t force the peanuts down anyone’s throat, there is a concern that some peanut dust (?) might be released and spread through the air. Goodness knows we don’t want to make anyone ill.

It should be a wild ride.

Technorati Tags: Gone With The Wind,Moonlight and Magnolias,Wayside Theatre