DIE FLEDERMAUS

Date of Run: February 17-27, 2011
ROLE: Chorus

While I had finally made my stage debut in Growing Up in Neverland, it was over a year before I would set foot on a stage again. I still had not branched out into community theater and had not made proper connections and friendships in that time. Not to mention, I was still not confident in my abilities, and I didn't know the first thing about the theatre community at large.

The first full length musical show I ever did was probably the most unlikely. I didn't really want to do this show because I had reservations about doing it, but it happened. In my senior year of college, I was cast as a chorus member in Die Fledermaus, a popular German operetta by Johann Strauss. The title translated to "The Bat." It was to be directed by Amanda McTigue with music direction by Lynne Morrow and choreography by Amy McGrath.

This was the first musical I worked with Katie Foster and Ted Smith. There were too many people in the cast to list, but it included my now friends Zachary Hasbany, Christa Durand, Dominic Dei Rossi, Chris Trujillo, Claire McCaffrey and Rachel Deatherage. It also included my friends Christine Ormseth and Autumn Mirassou. During tech week and the show, I was reunited with Stephanie Halbert and Chris Colburn who served as stagehands. Sadly, against my dragging heals, Autumn left the cast about a month later because she was the lead in another play and Amanda and Lynne were not very compromising with her. So, when it came to it, she chose the play in which she'd have more stage time. She was replaced by Claire.

Some of the Cast. That's me in the middle in the grey jacket and red pants.

This was the first experience I had with developing a character. Amanda would have a one-on-one with each member of the cast to discuss character motivations, lives, objectives and give each one a name, even the chorus members. However, to this day I'm not sure I ever applied what we discussed to my character. I didn't feel it necessary, especially since I had no speaking lines.

Musicals at SSU were always in the spring semester. Rehearsals took place over a six month period taking place on Tuesdays and Thursdays and one Saturday per month in the fall. In the spring they would be nearly every day. This was mostly to accommodate Lynne for her life consisted of an endless line of rehearsals, concerts and even recordings. Everyone was called to every rehearsal. Most of the time was spent on the music which I had a hard time learning. The bass section was written in bass clef which is written an octave higher than it really is and I didn't know how to transpose it. I listened to Lynne sing the notes and those around me and recorded it and I memorized it that way. Thank goodness I have a good memory for it.


The rest of the time when we were not called for music was devoted to staging the show. Amanda was filled with ideas on what to do, even applying characters no professional production would ever use. We even stage the overture. If it were up to Lynne the overtures in shows would be cut all together.

Sometime into rehearsals we lost two cast members. The first one was fired from the production for being drugged during rehearsals. He was felt to be a bad influence on the rest of us. He was eventually replaced by a man named Sam Cardenas. The second one was lost due to the World Series. The person was a high schooler doing this show and a Giants fan. The Giants were in the World Series that year and he cared more about that than rehearsal. So they told him to choose and he decided he cared more about that than the show.


Around early November it was time to learn the choreography. I had been dreading this because I am no dancer. I love dancing only when I know what I'm supposed to be doing but I hate the learning. Amy McGrath came in to teach us the waltz and the polka because in this show they were traditional. The directors wished to have this show appeal to a modern audience so Amanda decided to add crumping. Four girls were selected for this to be done during one of Rachel's songs in the second act. Then Amy turned on some music and told us to dance however we wanted because she would select four people for a solo piece after the crumping. I don't know what possessed me but at one moment I did a handstand. Amy saw it and I became the third solo. My solo piece consisted of me walking forward big steps, arm raised wide, looking both sides bowing to Rachel and doing a handstand.

My handstand moment

It was about this time that Yvonne's father passed away. We all felt so sad for her loss. For a couple weeks Lynne stepped in to play the piano for her.

Thanks to Christa, I received my first ever headshots, one of which was placed on the website for the show. The headshots were taken exclusively for the show website, but I got to keep all the ones of me for my personal use.

Overture/Act 1 Costume

Act 2 Costume

I was displeased at having to wear orange in the second and third act. I detest that color. During tech week we had three rehearsals with the full orchestra. It was different hearing all of them, but I wasn't worried because as I had no solo I'd never get lost. Once the show started Amanda continued to give notes on what to do differently. I did not approve of this. In a professional production the director leaves after the show opens. In a college production being in a show is a class and the show itself is the final. Also, I felt that it meant that she wasn't trusting that we could do the show on our own.

Act 3 Costume

During rehearsals in Person Theater, I was assigned two cast members, Elliot Sneen and Benjamin DeShazo-Choushot to be prepared to catch me when I did my handstand should something go wrong. In the rehearsal room I had all the space in the world, but in the theatre with the set being so large I had not too much room between it and the orchestra pit, maybe just over ten feet. Since I had to go far up to avoid kicking the set, I had to be very careful about doing every night because if I lost my balance I could fall into the pit. Elliot and Ben were prepared to catch me should that happen, but they never really had to. Unfortunately, no photo of the handstand exists. My mother attempted to get it, but it went by too quickly.

A couple small details helped to hurt the show. For example the board which had the subtitles was drowned in the lighting so the lyrics were never seen. There were generally no problems at all during the run but one night I had to fix something. At the end of the first act, Sam, Dominic and I would enter from the house stage left. At the steps leading up to the stage would be a bell and rope. Sam rang the bell and the tassel at the end of the rope came off. He simply threw it behind him and when it came time for me to go onstage I turned around and picked it up quickly then threw it offstage almost hitting Stephanie Halbert in the head. The same thing happened on the final night during Christa's first entrance. Again I threw it offstage. Another night it rained nonstop. It was raining when we were called, it rained all during the performance and it was still raining when we ended.

The strike at the end of the show proved to be unbearable. It took over four hours because the set was so complex. We were finally released very late, like around midnight or one in the morning and no one felt much like partying afterward. I don't remember if we ever had a cast party. Maybe, but I don't remember.

I managed to obtain recordings of two different nights from Christa. During the run it was good from my side of the stage except for one long stretch in the second act where the chorus did nothing but stand around and we could've easily been offstage. But then when I viewed the recordings, I said to myself, "Were we really this boring?" It was just not a good show, despite the efforts of the directors to modernize opera and make it appealing to younger audiences.

The Cast on the Set

For my part I recorded songs and other moments from the stage. These two clips feature Katie Foster, Chris Trujillo and Christa Durand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaZXB71XrlU&feature=channel&list=UL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu7wWgSeIJ4&feature=channel&list=UL