Date of Run: April 10-26, 2015
ROLE: Armand
Production Photos by Jeff Thomas
This musical has a special place for me. It was the one that inspired me to go into theatre. I saw it about ten years earlier and when I did this, it came full circle. See my post entitled "The Beginning" for further details.
My first show of 2015 was the show that inspired me to start theatre in the first place: Once on this Island. If you'll look back to my post entitled "The Beginning," I state that this show was the spark that started my love of theatre and inspired me to start it. And now a decade later I would get to act in the show and complete the circle. The show would be staged by the Napa Valley Conservatory Theatre, directed by Jennifer Ruygt, musical direction by Eve-Anne Wilkes and choreography by Pam Rogers.
I first heard about this show one night at a Dracula performance from fellow cast member Michael Miller (who also auditioned but opted not do the show after all). He didn't know too many details except it would be in Napa. At first, I thought I would make the trip to see it because, even though it would be a long distance away from my home and I would probably know no one in it, this show would always be an exception for instances like this. Then after I did some checking, I found out that auditions hadn't happened yet. I knew then and there that I had to audition for this show and get in it.
The auditions were November 6 and 7 at the Napa Valley College. I attended the second night. I was one of only two men to show up, the other being Michael Miller. It did not look as though many men showed up the previous night. Nearly a month would pass before they contacted me about the callbacks. They said they would try to get the casting to us before Christmas and New Year's, but I didn't hear anything for what seemed like ages. I was cast as Armand and a storyteller. On Broadway this show was done by eleven people, but in this case, we were going to have a cast of over twenty. This was the first time since my first show, Growing Up in Neverland, where I didn't previously know at least one person in the cast.
The cast included Jenny Veilleux, Alexander Belmont, Pamela Drummer-Williams, Travis Purvis, Lauren Mitchell, Debra Harvey, Christopher Arriola, Fiorella Garcia, Kevin Rebultan, Ashley Hall, Martina Sanchez, Kevin Barney, Ellen Beller, Wesley Brown, Angela Devlin, Norma Campos, David Foushee, Deanna Maher, Alissa Meyer, Karenna Meyer, Liana Meyer, Christina Reyes, Adrianna Soria, Dorothy Unsicker, Aisley Wallace-Harper and Lesa Ward.
Rehearsals began in the middle of January, starting with the singing. Two weeks later we started learning the dancing. In the beginning rehearsals were about four days a week, and when the dancing started, I began to have more rehearsals doing that rather than singing because as it turned out, I was not going to be in every scene. However, I decided to sing offstage anyway to get my voice back into shape.
Three of the four rehearsal dates were days when I had to work, and I always had to go straight there as soon as I got off. Luckily, I worked at the halfway point, so I had just enough time to grab dinner before rehearsal, evenly though just barely on Thursdays and Fridays. For the entirety of the rehearsal process and the run of the show I had to have dinner at a fast food restaurant in Napa, except on Wednesdays when I was off work.
We began with the singing, which was difficult to say the least because most of the show was mostly all sung with only a few scenes with no music at all. Not only that but the music itself was very tricky. It took some time for me because I was singing the right notes, but the wrong words on each note. I guess I jumped ahead on some of the words. A few weeks later we began the dancing, with the opening number and as it turned out that was the only dancing, I would be doing. For most of it I was in the front in plain sight. I was also one of the taller ones in the group so that helped keep me in sight.
It was difficult to get off book for this one due to the fact that most of the show was music and for some of the songs we did not spend as much time as we did on others. The same could be said of my experience with Evita, but the time on the songs was more even and less obsessive there. This time around though, I had trouble with not only because of that, but because some of the other actors and myself did not always stay in time with the music as it was written, but we were not pressured to do that. Not that they gave any opportunity to record the music because they never stopped and played so we could do that.
The music direction, I regret to say was not the most stable I've ever had. During rehearsals we had to work with three different pianists. Also, as I said, I felt the music director was not spending enough equal time on the songs. She would teach some of them, but she would skip over anything where we were missing people on rehearsal nights. Unfortunately, I was in some of those sections. Then she would want us to perfect certain lines in the songs, but we spent too much time on that and not enough learning other parts. Then they told us we probably wouldn't have the orchestra until opening night. We ended up having them through all of the rehearsals of tech week, but without a proper sitzprobe. While we managed to muddle through it, there were still problems: During the last Saturday performance, for some reason, they sped up the tempo on nearly all the songs. I don't know why that happened, but it made us sing too fast and it caused the choreography to look off. Also, as I said, with this show they did not use microphones. When my mother attended a performance, she told me afterward that there were parts where the music drowned out some people.
The problems with my memorization and learning the music were nothing compared to the inner struggle I was having. With each passing day I felt that the spark I used to have from doing theatre was not there. I can't believe I'm writing this, but I felt as though my interest was waning. This line of thought was not new to me. I had thoughts of quitting theatre for some time before doing Dracula, but at that time it was because I felt that way because I felt I was in a place where I was not good enough. Now I just wasn't feeling interested anymore. Come to think of it, I did not seem to be interested in a lot of things in that time.
Tech rehearsals for this show lasted only three days and it was not until after the college spring break when we started, a first for me in that experience. Two days of running light cues and one of a full run through of the show with the lights. Then we had nine days off. Since this was a college, they had Spring Break about a week before we opened. I felt it inconvenient, and I worried about it because I felt that we would lose some of what we worked on, but luckily, we didn't. Even those who hadn't been doing so well were doing a bit better, though one not quite as much.
One drawback to this show was having to do shows at 10AM for younger students. There would be one on Wednesday April 15 and Thursday 16 and then Monday April 20 and Tuesday April 21. That meant having to get up at 7 those mornings, be on the road by 7:30 and at the theatre for 8:30 call. Two of those days were also workdays so I had to come in sometime after noon. It also meant seven straight shows. Then a few days before opening we received an email saying the Wednesday and Tuesday shows were cancelled. That was good for me because those were days off work and I could sleep in, but I would rather it have been the other two day off so I wouldn't lose money from work.
The first and second shows had at least 50 and both were very responsive. The third had at least 70 and not as responsive as the first two, but they still loved it. The Sunday shows for the entire run were always the fullest.
On the first night, I apparently missed my curtain call. As per the norm of theatre it had been staged right before we opened (two days before to be exact), but after that it was changed so Lauren and I would be in the last group to bow. I had no idea about it until Lauren told me right after. When I checked the notes, I saw why I missed it; apparently the note listed my character's name and I completely missed it because I was looking for my own name. But since no one I knew was in the audience that night it didn't really matter to me. Also, during the scene between me and Travis where I was the guard the orchestra suddenly stopped playing before I was to start. I'm guessing they made a mistake and just stopped. I waited a brief moment before deciding to just go and they started up again with me.
The second night there were a few mistakes and in one of my scenes something weird happened. In the scene I pretend to slap Travis while someone behind me makes a slap sound. That night I did that, and I didn't really notice it at the time, but there were two slapping sounds. It wasn't until in the dressing room at intermission when someone asked if that happened, when we realized. I quipped to Travis "I just slapped you. I didn't bitch slap you." The same thing happened the next night and that time I distinctly heard two sounds. I don't know whose fault it was, but something got lost in translation. It never happened again.
The second weekend included the two school performances. For the first one the kids were pretty well-behaved for children. The second school performance was filled with middle schoolers and, though they were quiet, we could tell that many of them did not want to be there at all. It seemed as though they were being held there against their will. I don't know why because when I was a kid we looked forward to field trips because it didn't mean we had to be in the classroom.
For the first two regular shows of the second weekend nothing usual happened and there were at least sixty both nights. The second Sunday had a large audience again.
At the second Saturday show at the end when the main character, Ti Moune, dies a boy in the audience, of about ten I'm guessing, broke down in tears and began sobbing and, even after the show concluded, could not be consoled. We could hear it over the speakers in the dressing rooms.
For the final weekend on the first and second nights the audiences had at least fifty people, but they both seemed to be smaller than the previous audiences. The final audience was by far the largest and the best. It was the most responsive and though not everyone stood up at the end, quite a few did, and more so than any of the previous performances.
I do wish that had been a community production, rather than a school. After nearly four years of doing community theatre, I consider myself spoiled. Before every show we had to do different kinds of warmups that I don't recall doing for other musicals I've done. I preferred the community theatre way where they expect you to bring your skills and trust that you will retain what you've learned. Personally, I like to sit at my dressing room and meditate for a few minutes before going on. I will say this for the Napa Valley College Theatre, they did have two private showers rather than a shower in the bathroom. I used it on the last day after the strike was over before joining my mother and her friend for dinner and was very grateful to get cleaned up quickly. I wish I had used it more than once, but I was unsure whether I was allowed to.
This musical has a special place for me. It was the one that inspired me to go into theatre. I saw it about ten years earlier and when I did this, it came full circle. See my post entitled "The Beginning" for further details.
My first show of 2015 was the show that inspired me to start theatre in the first place: Once on this Island. If you'll look back to my post entitled "The Beginning," I state that this show was the spark that started my love of theatre and inspired me to start it. And now a decade later I would get to act in the show and complete the circle. The show would be staged by the Napa Valley Conservatory Theatre, directed by Jennifer Ruygt, musical direction by Eve-Anne Wilkes and choreography by Pam Rogers.
I first heard about this show one night at a Dracula performance from fellow cast member Michael Miller (who also auditioned but opted not do the show after all). He didn't know too many details except it would be in Napa. At first, I thought I would make the trip to see it because, even though it would be a long distance away from my home and I would probably know no one in it, this show would always be an exception for instances like this. Then after I did some checking, I found out that auditions hadn't happened yet. I knew then and there that I had to audition for this show and get in it.
The auditions were November 6 and 7 at the Napa Valley College. I attended the second night. I was one of only two men to show up, the other being Michael Miller. It did not look as though many men showed up the previous night. Nearly a month would pass before they contacted me about the callbacks. They said they would try to get the casting to us before Christmas and New Year's, but I didn't hear anything for what seemed like ages. I was cast as Armand and a storyteller. On Broadway this show was done by eleven people, but in this case, we were going to have a cast of over twenty. This was the first time since my first show, Growing Up in Neverland, where I didn't previously know at least one person in the cast.
The cast included Jenny Veilleux, Alexander Belmont, Pamela Drummer-Williams, Travis Purvis, Lauren Mitchell, Debra Harvey, Christopher Arriola, Fiorella Garcia, Kevin Rebultan, Ashley Hall, Martina Sanchez, Kevin Barney, Ellen Beller, Wesley Brown, Angela Devlin, Norma Campos, David Foushee, Deanna Maher, Alissa Meyer, Karenna Meyer, Liana Meyer, Christina Reyes, Adrianna Soria, Dorothy Unsicker, Aisley Wallace-Harper and Lesa Ward.
Rehearsals began in the middle of January, starting with the singing. Two weeks later we started learning the dancing. In the beginning rehearsals were about four days a week, and when the dancing started, I began to have more rehearsals doing that rather than singing because as it turned out, I was not going to be in every scene. However, I decided to sing offstage anyway to get my voice back into shape.
Three of the four rehearsal dates were days when I had to work, and I always had to go straight there as soon as I got off. Luckily, I worked at the halfway point, so I had just enough time to grab dinner before rehearsal, evenly though just barely on Thursdays and Fridays. For the entirety of the rehearsal process and the run of the show I had to have dinner at a fast food restaurant in Napa, except on Wednesdays when I was off work.
We began with the singing, which was difficult to say the least because most of the show was mostly all sung with only a few scenes with no music at all. Not only that but the music itself was very tricky. It took some time for me because I was singing the right notes, but the wrong words on each note. I guess I jumped ahead on some of the words. A few weeks later we began the dancing, with the opening number and as it turned out that was the only dancing, I would be doing. For most of it I was in the front in plain sight. I was also one of the taller ones in the group so that helped keep me in sight.
 |
| Some of the cast during "We Dance" |
We did not begin the staging until early March. It was here that I found that I was not in as many scenes as I previously thought I might be. By this time though I began to worry about some elements of the show. For starters, we were told the first day that there would be no microphones. They wanted to keep the show "as natural as possible." Having experienced this previously doing musicals at Sonoma State University, I couldn't get on board with that.
I also began to doubt Travis, who play Tonton Julian. At first, I thought he was tone deaf because whenever he sang, he usually did it an octave down, or the wrong notes and it messed me up whenever I was next to him in rehearsals. Whenever he messed up, he would groan in his frustration. I found out later from Eve Anne that it was his first time doing a show. That's usually forgivable if a person has a good ear and able to learn fast, but this guy was not in some places. He had no ear at all and mispronounced a word in the same line over and over no matter how often he would be told the proper way to say it. Eventually they gave the line to someone else. However, as time went on, he did get better and by the end, though he was far from perfect, you could really tell that he had grown a lot since the beginning.
It was difficult to get off book for this one due to the fact that most of the show was music and for some of the songs we did not spend as much time as we did on others. The same could be said of my experience with Evita, but the time on the songs was more even and less obsessive there. This time around though, I had trouble with not only because of that, but because some of the other actors and myself did not always stay in time with the music as it was written, but we were not pressured to do that. Not that they gave any opportunity to record the music because they never stopped and played so we could do that.
The music direction, I regret to say was not the most stable I've ever had. During rehearsals we had to work with three different pianists. Also, as I said, I felt the music director was not spending enough equal time on the songs. She would teach some of them, but she would skip over anything where we were missing people on rehearsal nights. Unfortunately, I was in some of those sections. Then she would want us to perfect certain lines in the songs, but we spent too much time on that and not enough learning other parts. Then they told us we probably wouldn't have the orchestra until opening night. We ended up having them through all of the rehearsals of tech week, but without a proper sitzprobe. While we managed to muddle through it, there were still problems: During the last Saturday performance, for some reason, they sped up the tempo on nearly all the songs. I don't know why that happened, but it made us sing too fast and it caused the choreography to look off. Also, as I said, with this show they did not use microphones. When my mother attended a performance, she told me afterward that there were parts where the music drowned out some people.
The problems with my memorization and learning the music were nothing compared to the inner struggle I was having. With each passing day I felt that the spark I used to have from doing theatre was not there. I can't believe I'm writing this, but I felt as though my interest was waning. This line of thought was not new to me. I had thoughts of quitting theatre for some time before doing Dracula, but at that time it was because I felt that way because I felt I was in a place where I was not good enough. Now I just wasn't feeling interested anymore. Come to think of it, I did not seem to be interested in a lot of things in that time.
Tech rehearsals for this show lasted only three days and it was not until after the college spring break when we started, a first for me in that experience. Two days of running light cues and one of a full run through of the show with the lights. Then we had nine days off. Since this was a college, they had Spring Break about a week before we opened. I felt it inconvenient, and I worried about it because I felt that we would lose some of what we worked on, but luckily, we didn't. Even those who hadn't been doing so well were doing a bit better, though one not quite as much.
One drawback to this show was having to do shows at 10AM for younger students. There would be one on Wednesday April 15 and Thursday 16 and then Monday April 20 and Tuesday April 21. That meant having to get up at 7 those mornings, be on the road by 7:30 and at the theatre for 8:30 call. Two of those days were also workdays so I had to come in sometime after noon. It also meant seven straight shows. Then a few days before opening we received an email saying the Wednesday and Tuesday shows were cancelled. That was good for me because those were days off work and I could sleep in, but I would rather it have been the other two day off so I wouldn't lose money from work.
 |
| As Armand |
The first and second shows had at least 50 and both were very responsive. The third had at least 70 and not as responsive as the first two, but they still loved it. The Sunday shows for the entire run were always the fullest.
On the first night, I apparently missed my curtain call. As per the norm of theatre it had been staged right before we opened (two days before to be exact), but after that it was changed so Lauren and I would be in the last group to bow. I had no idea about it until Lauren told me right after. When I checked the notes, I saw why I missed it; apparently the note listed my character's name and I completely missed it because I was looking for my own name. But since no one I knew was in the audience that night it didn't really matter to me. Also, during the scene between me and Travis where I was the guard the orchestra suddenly stopped playing before I was to start. I'm guessing they made a mistake and just stopped. I waited a brief moment before deciding to just go and they started up again with me.
The second night there were a few mistakes and in one of my scenes something weird happened. In the scene I pretend to slap Travis while someone behind me makes a slap sound. That night I did that, and I didn't really notice it at the time, but there were two slapping sounds. It wasn't until in the dressing room at intermission when someone asked if that happened, when we realized. I quipped to Travis "I just slapped you. I didn't bitch slap you." The same thing happened the next night and that time I distinctly heard two sounds. I don't know whose fault it was, but something got lost in translation. It never happened again.
The second weekend included the two school performances. For the first one the kids were pretty well-behaved for children. The second school performance was filled with middle schoolers and, though they were quiet, we could tell that many of them did not want to be there at all. It seemed as though they were being held there against their will. I don't know why because when I was a kid we looked forward to field trips because it didn't mean we had to be in the classroom.
For the first two regular shows of the second weekend nothing usual happened and there were at least sixty both nights. The second Sunday had a large audience again.
At the second Saturday show at the end when the main character, Ti Moune, dies a boy in the audience, of about ten I'm guessing, broke down in tears and began sobbing and, even after the show concluded, could not be consoled. We could hear it over the speakers in the dressing rooms.
For the final weekend on the first and second nights the audiences had at least fifty people, but they both seemed to be smaller than the previous audiences. The final audience was by far the largest and the best. It was the most responsive and though not everyone stood up at the end, quite a few did, and more so than any of the previous performances.
I do wish that had been a community production, rather than a school. After nearly four years of doing community theatre, I consider myself spoiled. Before every show we had to do different kinds of warmups that I don't recall doing for other musicals I've done. I preferred the community theatre way where they expect you to bring your skills and trust that you will retain what you've learned. Personally, I like to sit at my dressing room and meditate for a few minutes before going on. I will say this for the Napa Valley College Theatre, they did have two private showers rather than a shower in the bathroom. I used it on the last day after the strike was over before joining my mother and her friend for dinner and was very grateful to get cleaned up quickly. I wish I had used it more than once, but I was unsure whether I was allowed to.
In spite of whatever problems I faced during the process, I was grateful to have the chance to do the show that had been my inspiration to start performing in theatre.
No comments:
Post a Comment