Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2

A Theremin In A Matryoska Doll, Lots of Them

Amazing. We're using a theremin in our production of Shadow of the Raven: Stories of Edgar Allan Poe. But not like this. Japanese theremin maker Mandarin Electron embedded theremin's in Russian matryoska dolls and you have a whole chorus of Matryomin's.

Amazing.

Via Gizmodo

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Shadow of the Raven Diaries: We're Open

Well, I'm recovering today from a great opening night and a really fun opening night celebration for Wayside Theatre's world premiere of Shadow of the Raven: Stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

The audiences this weekend were very enthusiastic about the play and opening night even yielded a standing ovation, which made all of us feel great about the hard work we had put into making Steve Przybylski's script come alive on stage.

It has been a wonderful and remarkable journey to get it to opening; full of hard work, lots of stress, technical nightmares, and enough wackiness to make even Edgar himself cast a leery eye or two. But it is open and now we head into the run.

What I loved about the response last night and this weekend, was just how full bodied it was. I'm sure the play isn't for everyone. But for those who are willing to take the ride, it seems like the really enjoy the journey and the spooky fun.

I am really thrilled with everyone's work on this show. A true collaboration that yielded some really wonderful results.

More pictures available on this Flickr feed

Technorati Tags: Edgar Allan Poe

Shadow of the Raven Diaries: Opening Night Tonight

Well, we survived and feel pretty good about the first two previews yesterday of Shadow of the Raven: Stories of Edgar Allan Poe. The audiences got the humor and seemed generally caught up in the mystery and the supernatural journey. We've still got some work to do to tighten things down this afternoon and sharpen the show prior to the opening night performance, but I'm looking forward to that.

I have to admit I breathed a sigh of relief last night after the two shows. With a new work, you just never know until the audience tells you. While I don't think this is a show for everybody, I think those who are willing to take a trip into the supernatural are going to have a real spooky and fun treat ahead.

We'll see what the tonight's audience says.

Shadow of the Raven: First Audience Today

It has been quite a week as we've been preparing the world premiere of Steve Przybylski's Shadow of the Raven: Stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Lots of technical issues, some rewrites and cuts in the text, and just a lot of hard good work.

Today we have our first two audiences for a matinee and evening performance. The show needs to get in front of real people now to find out if it is going to work or not. That's a scary thing, but a good thing. I'm looking forward to seeing if we've done this well. Audiences don't lie.

Here's hoping.

Shadow of the Raven: Edgar Allan Poe, Larry Dahlke, and a Theremin

Wayside Theatre and its audiences are blessed with some wonderfully talented, and often multi-talented actors and actresses who ply their trade on our stages. Larry Dahlke is one of those multi-talented marvels. As an actor he is a gifted chameleon, and as a musician he can make music out of just about anything. In our World Premiere production of Steve Przybylski's Shadow of the Raven: Stories of Edgar Allan Poe, Larry gets to show off many of this talents, including making music with a theremin. If you don't know much about a theremin, you are not alone. But to give you an introduction to this unique instrument and a bit of its history, Larry offers this quick little video.

Also posted on InsideWayside, our company blog.

Technorati Tags: theremin , Wayside Theatre , Edgar Allan Poe

Shadow of the Raven Diaries: Ghost Stories with Vincent Price

Working on a play about the supernatural, Edgar Allan Poe, a ghost or two, and some pretty deep psychological mysteries is always fun and a lot of work. Working on any play, sometimes things happen in the work that tie directly into the play. Yesterday, a spooky (yet fun) event happened in rehearsal.

Shadow of the Raven: Stories of Edgar Allan Poe is set in a library, created to honor Edgar Allan Poe. It is full of his books, and other Poe-like items. We had our first rehearsal on stage yesterday and while the structure and most of the set was there, a lot of the props and dressing are still to come. The large book on the lectern that will be a collection of the complete works of Poe will be coming in this week, so we use rehearsal or stand in props until they arrive. Yesterday we grabbed an old  book of roughly the same size, that was actually an old actors directory containing headshots and brief info on the actors.This book stood in for the complete works that the characters refer to often in the story. It sits in a place of reverence on a lectern.

When one of the characters crossed to the lectern and flipped the book open while talking about Vincent Price, the book opened to, yep, you guessed it, a picture of Vincent Price.

Gave us all a few chills and a good laugh.Spooky.

First Rehearsal on Stage and Theremins

Couldn't sleep last night. I haven't been this excited about a first rehearsal on stage in a long time. I've been doing this for over 30 years now and the first rehearsal on the set is always an exhilarating time. But I couldn't shut my brain off last night anticipating today's work as we take the stage for Shadow of the Raven: Stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

Til and his crew have created a wonderful space for the story to unfold in, and I'm anxious to move away from rehearsal furniture to the real thing. Plus, each day we will be adding new effects for this little supernatural gem. Today we do a fog test before the actors arrive, and we also get to hear the organ and the theremin on stage for the first time.

Interesting note about the theremin. In our rehearsal space, which is the Town Council Chamber of the town of Middletown (a great benefit to us, let me tell you) we couldn't use the theremin as the Town Hall building also houses the local police offices. Turns out their radio frequencies interfered with the theremin, so today we  get to work that into the show for the first time.

I can't wait. You can also read more about this here.

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Shadow of The Raven: Stories of Edgar Allan Poe and Collaboration

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The collaborative process is what I'm talking about. On this show the collaboration is working really well. Spookily so, which is appropriate given the supernatural nature of the show we are working on. Big weekend ahead as we take the stage for rehearsals for the first time. The goal is to get the show on the stage in prep for the technical and special effects we add next week.

Starting Rehearsals With Edgar Allan Poe

We've just started rehearsals on a new play, actually we're calling it a Mystery with Music. My long time collaborator, Steve Przybylski is the author and the composer of Shadow of the Raven, The Stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Steve has been cranking all year on this and yesterday we had a read-thru after a week of workshopping.

The beauty and the pain of doing new work is the evolution process as the script keeps changing, but hopefully in a few weeks we'll have something really special. Steve had created a really special world, now my job is to make that world come alive.

Along with this, Wayside Theatre is trying something new on the Internet. We've launched a blog (in addition to our website) where our artists and staff can contribute posts about their process and hopefully give you a glimpse of life backstage at Wayside Theatre. It is in early form, but we hope, that it will help us change the conversation a bit about who we are an who we want to be. That will be a challenge in our area, which, if the rest of the world has is living in Web 2.0, is beginning to discover, Web 0.1. But we're going to give it  shot. Steve has already contributed a few posts about his process an I believe there are more to come.

If you've got the time and interest, check out InsideWayside and let me know what you think Suggestions always welcome.