Wicked tears me in three directions at once. That's not nice. That's wicked.

I found this musical through a series of random events, ( Read more... ) My TV is my alarm clock, and this one morning it's tuned to The Today Show and there is a bed in the middle of the street in NYC, and on the bed are Kristen and someone green. The smarmy male announcer introduces the green woman as Idina Menzel, and the number is Popular from Wicked. It's all Kristen, this number, green woman is just a prop. The number is quirky and cute and hilarious and not nearly as easy to sing as Kristen makes it look.
( embedded popular under here )

So I broke out the CD and gave it a real listen. Maybe 20 times. Steven Schwartz's music and lyrics are mostly good, often brilliant. Kristen and Idina are both amazing. Joel Grey (the original MC from Cabaret) is less bumbling than I'd expect the Wizard to be, but blame the script.

Which is where I'm torn.( Read more... )

Some of the lyrics I like:
( Read more... )
Another way I'm torn is Wicked is in SF right now, playing at the Orpheum, and I would love to see it. I know I won't be seeing Kristen and Idina, but there's a lot of talent out there, I may not be disappointed. However... orchestra seats are $225. The cheapest non-obstructed-view seat comes to more than $100 with the obscene $11 ticketmaster service charge. Those numbers are beyond "support the arts" and well into "become a patron", IMHO. I'll be getting a bonus at work next Friday, basically an extra half-month's pay. I've already blown some of it on a Nikon lens, maybe a trip to the theater will be in the cards after all.

I'm listening to the 1956 movie soundtrack of The King and I, and this cute little voice is singing My Lord and Master, and I'm thinking to myself, I'll bet this is the last movie musical part she ever landed. It's a pretty voice, but very weak and shy. So I look at the credits.

It's Rita Moreno!

I guess she learned a wee bit about projection over the next 5 years, when she was cast in her next musical lead - in West Side Story.

A friend in the cast told me about the Thursday special for those with the sekrit passwrd, so I went last night to Foothill College's brand spankking new Lohman Theater to see it. It helped that four of my favorite theater pals are in the cast, and it was directed by all-around nice guy Jay Manley.

The Lohman is the high-class replacement for the old black box theater, which was a not-converted-much meeting space up at the top of the very steep stairs. When I was in Jay's production of Bells Are Ringing mublety-mumble years ago, I dreaded that climb. But wiser and more hypertensive minds put the new theater at the bottom of the hill, spitting distance from the parking lot. Yay!

So I was in a good mood and really jazzed to see this show. It was...uh..er...different.

Some background: Half a dozen years ago, The Weekly World News ran a big series of articles about a boy who had been found in a cave in West Virginia, living with the bats. They applied more than their usual journalistic skilz to this endeavor, causing a sensation among their millions of supermarket line readers and all six subscribers. So of course the first thing which raced through the minds of Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming was "let's write a musical!" Aided and abetted by the musical prowess of Laurence O'Keefe, they did just that. The result was Bat Boy.

The inside of the Lohman Theater is cave-like. By hanging some fabric stelagtites/mites and building a very simple set of columns dressed up to be cave-like, with some bats hanging from the light poles, we have a passable cave. All expenses were spared in this production, but these are desperate times for theaters, so I'm not complaining. Set construction was done by a class at Foothill. Costumes also were home grown, and also mostly credited to a theater class. The show doesn't need much in the way of costumes, but the forest menagerie scene had me sitting there with my mouth hanging open, marveling at the grade school Halloween quality of the costumes.

Moving on...

The cast was miked. This is a theater small enough that the cast can spit on the back row, microphones were not called for, and most of them were over-modulated and way too treble-equalized. The only good thing about the audio is there was no feedback.

The programs are a hoot - done on tabloid format newsprint, with the cast bios crammed into one unreadable paragraph.

So much for the technical.

The basic plot of Bat Boy is pretty straightforward. Starving boy found in cave by trailer trash, brought to the backwoods sheriff, who takes it to the veterinarian. Vet's wife and daughter tutor the boy and bring him to the tent revival to be healed. Or something like that. Backwards townspeople blame the freak for the cattle plague and Frankenstein logic ensues.

The music is not memorable, but Spencer Williams did a great job of maximizing the harmonizing skills of the ensemble. Anything with more than two parts is rock solid and on key. The script is not particularly clever or memorable either, but everyone seemed to have their lines down, and the over-choreographed numbers were executed well.

The play attempts to mock Christian Charity, trailer trash, coal miners, mob rule, and all the things which the Weekly World News thrives on. It was a great idea, but the results are uneven.

Casting had several WTFs. The vet's wife, who sings a lot, made a habit of wandering around the scale in search of the right key. In fact, the only soloists who could sing are Tim Reynolds, who is amazing as the evil vet, and RaMond Thomas who belts out pseudo-gospel as Rev. Hightower. Thomas also flips flawlessly between that role, the part of a rancher, and the irate mother of Bat Boy's first victim. Michael Rhone got about 95% of the way through his Pan song before running out of steam.

Several people play multiple roles, wig and simple costume changes cover most of that, but a lot of the caricatures were like high school rip-offs of bad SNL. The laughs were mostly of the laugh-at and not the laugh-with variety. 

Another vocal feast was provided by the "shadow chorus", Kevin Hull, Walter M. Mayes, Brian Palac, Karyn Rondeau and Molly Thornton. Why they were in the chorus and not in the leading roles is a mystery to me.

I almost forgot Robert Brewer, in the title role. He was okay. He can sing well enough, and he hangs upside-down by his knees like a champ. But I have to say that his emaciated days are behind him, and when they put him into that cage in the orange jump suit, he did not even come close to looking like the description in the script of a starving under-aged boy. Orange is not one of the "thinning" colors. And make-up clue: if you want to look like you've been living in a filthy bat cave all your life, you might want to look dirty.

Bat Boy is a total romp for the cast. Go see it - as long as you are not expecting a classy, Broadway-quality show, you'll be entertained.

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Performance Dates and Times:
February 27-March 22, 2009
Thursdays-Saturdays at 8pm
Sunday matinees at 2pm
Saturday matinees, March 14, 21 at 2pm


Tickets:
$26 General Admission.
$24 Seniors (65 and over).
$18 Students.
Not appropriate for children under 12 years of age.

One of the best things about Santa Clara Players' theater, a converted art pavilion behind the Triton Museum, is its 80 or so seats are all within spitting distance of the actors. This is a distinct advantage for the current production, where the audience is part of the show. Kitchen Witches takes place on the set of a public access station's cooking show, and theatergoers become the studio audience.

Written by Caroline Smith, the play gets off to a slow start, with far too much time spent establishing the relatively shallow characters of Ukrakian chef "Babchka" (Dee Baily), her son Steve (Steven Lewis) who produces and announces the show, and the ever-silent Peg the camera gal (Peggy Lynch). The boredom lifts with the entrance of rival chef Isobel "Izzy" Lomax (Carolyn Compton). This was supposed to have been Babchka's final episode, Izzy's show had already been canceled as well, but when the station manager's wife sees the Jerry Springer-like spat between the two, she has her husband offer the dueling chefs a show together, with Steve as producer.

Kitchen Witches includes lots of clever zingers, and some world class bickering between the two chefs. Casting of the women's parts is excellent with very contrasting personalities between the chefs, and Camera Gal is just plain weird in all the right ways. Lewis, however, strikes me as too old for his role, and gives the impression of far more competence than I think the playwright had in mind for the momma's boy caught in the middle of a war between two domineering matrons.

Matt Matthews has done his usual excellent directing job, the players have their lines down pat, the action moves along as quickly as the sometimes uneven script allows, and the staging is so well blocked that the 2-minute-drill cooking competition chaos scene didn't looked planned at all, though it has to have been minutely choreographed. And Matt made good use of his secret weapon - his wife Audrey created dozens of food props which looked good enough to eat. There was also a lot of real food on the set, a stage manager's nightmare which Michael Antonucci handled beautifully.

Jim Narveson's set is cleverly designed to split in half, and includes a working stand-alone sink, which is pretty impressive for such a tiny theater. There were a few bits which counted on costumes to make the difference, and Marian Narveson came through every time with everything from capes to hats to a mammy outfit.

Kitchen Witches finishes its run tonight and tomorrow at 8 pm, Santa Clara Players, tickets can be reserved online here.

Sue is up in the attic, grabbing the already-packed bag she had stashed up there. She takes out the "goobye dear, I'm leaving" note and sings it to us. Then her husband pops in hours earlier than expected. She uses a box of photos as her excuse for being up there, and the rest is TheatreWorks' production of Snapshots, book by David Stern and music/lyrics by Stephen Schwartz. You know Steven - he wrote the music for Wicked, Pippin, Godspell, Rags, The Baker's Wife, Children of Eden, Working, Captain Louie, The Magic Show and Personals. And guess what? Songs from all of those shows, including some which were cut from them, comprise most of the music for this one.

When I saw that in the program I was sure we had a flop on our hands. I mean, Schwartz is no Irving Berlin - his tunes aren't so stunning that you can build a musical from his rejects. Except you can, sort of. Especially if many of them are mashups. Lion Tamer from The Magic Show mashed into I'm Not That Girl from Wicked. Fathers and Sons from Working mashed together with The Hardest Part of Love from Children of Eden. Some of the tunes are wedged in there, not quite fitting, but most of them work.

The show is all about middle-aged  Sue [Beth DeVries] and her husband Dan [Ray Wills] and the Sue and Dan in the photos. Those are the young adult Susan [Molly Bell] and Daniel [Michael Marcotte], and the high schoolers Susie [Courtney Stokes]  and Danny [Brian Crum]. As Sue and Dan sing about the photos, the other two versions of them are right there, in a tightly scripted tag team match. As the show progresses there is more and more interaction between the three Sues and Dans, and we see the rift between them wiggling a bit.

The show was directed by TheatreWorks founder Robert Kelley, and features a lot of his trademark quick change artistry and snap.

No spoilers, but Danny was a busy young man, and Molly plays a non-Sue girlfriend while Courtney does about five minutes of serial one night stands which is hilarious. Courtney's Susie steals the show - she is far and away the most talented person on that stage, which is amusing to me because she is also the only non-Equity cast member, and a local product who is well known over in the Milpitas area for her leading roles in youth productions with Star Struck Theatre, where her mother, I believe, directs musicals as well. This is her fifth major TW show, and she's living in SoCal going for a degree in (you guessed it) Musical Theater.

Snapshots works, for the most part, and there are a couple of two-hankie moments toward the end. While hindsight says the story line is utterly predictable right to the finale, while you're watching it the little details and jogs, skips and sneezes along the way make it interesting.

Costumes were okay, but nothing to brag about. Lighting was simple and non-invasive. The strobe effect with camera snap audio was used too randomly to make it useful - I wonder if there were more in the script and they were cut, or if the playwright just waffled. Set design by Joe Ragey was his usual superb job. The four-piece band way down in the pit was adequate, not up to what I expect from TW. I found myself missing Lita.

Worth seeing. It runs Tues-Sun through July 13 at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. Ticket info is here.

Uploaded the official Man of La Mancha photos on my web site, and did some related updating as well. Check out Edmond Kwong's excellent work on my theater pages. Eddie did the publicity stills, head shots and official live photography for the show. He was also in the cast of Jekyll & Hyde with me in Palo Alto last year, where he designed the stunning show T-shirt. Check out his site, imagewurx.com.

Did not get the car washed - combination of bad timing and not having a coupon handy. Other than that it was a full day.

Took out the garbage, cleaned out the car, transferred all the MOLM mementos to a pile by the bedroom night stand, where they will go into a nearby tub which has all my scripts, flyers, posters and such. Plucked the photos of myself from the official CD for later webberization. Transferred the photos I took at strike from the phone to the PC for ditto. Webberized all the pre-show photos I took this weekend, they are viewable at my gallery site.

Located a new Thai masseuse and made an appointment. Scooped three dead tiger barbs and a dead bala shark out of the tank, and re-connected the air pump which somehow had fallen to the floor sometime yesterday, disconnecting the tubes.

Went to the bank and deposited the check for $1.34 from Toyota, which was how much I'd over-paid my loan when I paid it off (early) last month. Got cash while I was at it.

Went for the massage, she was okay, she had some "bo-rahn" training (that's the ancient massage technique which I believe was later adopted by the Spanish Inquisition) and did a good job of faking the stuff she didn't know. Tiny young woman, maybe 25-ish, from Pitsanuloke, a province upcountry not far from where I had my Peace Corps language training.  She spoke English pretty well, and we kept the Thai to a minimum because she's studying for an ESL test.

On the way home I did a major oriental food shopping stop at Lion by 85 & Saratoga. Now I know where to buy chicken gizzards & hearts -none of the chains carry them anymore. Picked up a couple of items I have never tried before, more on that when I cook them up.

Watched the first Dr Who series 4 DVD, three episodes. I know Catherine Tate is World Famous and all that, but I rate her the Worst Companion Evah. I see from IMDB I will not be getting my wish any time soon of her character dying a quick but embarrassing and painful death. Like from an overdose of Imodium taken to combat some trans-galactic form of Montezuma's Revenge. While I enjoyed the core plots of all three episodes, I am sad to say the series has to too many gratuitous battle scenes which are over-long, serve little purpose other than to mindlessly fill time - with the only advantage being they support a significant number of Cardiff's thespian and stunt person population in the process.

Tomorrow:
Work
Home ~ 2-ish to wait for the recliner delivery
Back to work
BASFA

Last night they recorded the show - two video cameras in the back row, fairly close together. I expect one was on a wide shot and the other was zoomed in, but I guess I'll have to wait till the DVD shows up. On balance it was one of our better shows, but there were some glaring (to the cast) errors. A couple of missed cues by the conductor left Don Q waiting, One of my lines came out of my mouth with different words than the script calls for, Don Q forgot one of my cue lines so he gave me the same line twice. The Padre completely blew his solo, forgot words, made other words up and had to invent a new rhyme. A pity because he has a beautiful tenor voice, and he worked very hard to get the song down and synced with the orchestra.

Before the show Sancho had asked me, in the scene after my solo, to snag some muslin strips (aka "bandages") which are left on the table, so I did, and then realized I had no pockets, and I needed both hands free to give something to Don Q later in that scene. So I stuffed them in my pants. After I crossed to Don Q and back again, the bandages started coming out the bottom of my pants leg. These pants have Velcro and snaps at the bottoms but I had gotten out of the habit of closing them. Luckily I was behind the table, so it wasn't too obvious to the audience that I was pulling stuff out of the bottom of my pants leg. Backstage the rest of the strips found their way out by themselves.

My song, Knight of the Woeful Countenance, went well. Impossible Dream brought down the house. One of the things I will miss is standing in the wings when that thunderous applause breaks. There are few moments in theater which combine inspiring words, uplifting music and a sympathetic character the way this song does, and when it is delivered in a strong, clear voice by a thoroughly Good Person™ like Walter, there is nothing for it but to stand up and cheer.

Curtain call got me a little surge of applause, everyone gave Walter a standing ovation. We probably could have taken several more bows, but one thing I'm glad howbearca did when he set the curtain call is he gave us just the right amount of bows that the audience is still applauding when the curtain comes down. And it's a nice tableau that the audience has etched in as their final memory of the show.

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scendan, _oy_, lady_leandra and her sister (whose name I didn't catch) were waiting for me, and we got Sancho to take a couple of photos of us together on their cameras, and _oy_ took a few of her own. It was so wunnerful to see and hug them all, and that they came all that way on a Friday. Wow. It's even more of a thrill because all four of them are charming, beautiful, intelligent women whose first impression for me is "Mommy, I want one!" This was my first time meeting lady_leandra's sister, and I thank Jean for springing her from the California State Home  for the Adorable.

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Finally got to a cast party. Melinda, the belly dancer, hosted and she and a couple of friends put together a fantastic spread. Everything from the obligatory deviled eggs to lasagna, cold cuts, garlic bread, mini cupcakes, cheeses, seafood salad, oreos topped with cream cheese and a chocolate-dipped strawberry slice. Her specialty is apple martinis, which folks enjoyed. I don't usually drink at parties because it takes very little alcohol to put me to sleep, and I don't like the taste anyway. But some people got pleasantly buzzed. I learned way more than I needed to know about the aftermath of gastric bypass surgery, for instance. It was a pretty quiet party when I left at 1 am, with a group out by the pool and another in the kitchen. The hostess was disappointed that more people didn't show up, and things didn't get rowdy at all. We suggested she dance topless on the table, but she just wasn't feeling it. Pity.

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Vegging today. The only thing I need to do is change the litterbox. I may go to PetSmart for a male betta and a female gourami and some aquarium plants. And I suppose I should buy more cat food too.

Closing night tonight, I will be writing a notice from The Governor on Jokes We Will Not Play, and handing out certificates to the cast. We strike the set after the show.

Man of La Mancha just keeps getting better and better. Last night was the typical Thursday audience, people who really want to be there, even though they need to get up the next morning. One of my BASFA friends was in the front row, and I am pretty sure the executive admin from work was two seats over. I'll find out when I get to work.

Looking forward to seeing scendan and lady_leandra tonight (and I forget - is _oy_ coming too?). Anyway, wait for me after the show outside the front lobby main doors. Someone bring a camera, I'll get one of the cast to take a picture of us together.

Two more shows, and I can get a haircut. 

Edit add: Yup, it was Lori, the executive admin and Jane, one of our engineers in the front row. Admin sent email to the company local mailing list this morning:
FYI - Jane and I went to see "Man of La Mancha" last night and we have to say "it was absolutely fabulous". If you haven't gone yet - it's well worth it. The acting was exceptional with lots of humor, the singing outstanding and we're so glad we went. We had front row seats which when we got there were really Front Row Seats and we thought, hmmm we might be a little too close, but it actually was just fine. Looking forward to the next play Howard.

eBay has serious problems with making what ought to be routine things very difficult to find. There was a glitch which put someone else's item on my seller's page. It took dozens of clicks before I could get email to them about it, and then they said contact a live help session, which took 10 minutes for them to respond to, and the person on the other side was very slow reading a simple "kill this auction" request. They now do not let you kill an auction which has bids on it, or is less than 12 hours from ending. After she got her head out of wherever it was, it only took a minute to get the auction killed and my account credited.

So of course I changed my password - but they reset it, and now eBay is not recognizing the newly changed password. When I try to go to the "change password" link which they emailed to me, after I enter all the security question answers, it asks for my password!

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

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Went to Walmart, mostly for kitty litter, but also got some small glow lights to make backstage safer. And I picked up both parchment and card stock paper for my cast closing night gift project. Parchment looked off-color so I used the card stock. Everything printed nicely, envelopes are stuffed and labeled, and now that's done. Whee!

Reviews for the show have poured into Artsopolis, they are short but 5-star. The Campbell paper wedged in a short review, it did not mention me by name and was hidden next to the public notices page. But it was also 5-star. I expect that's all we'll get, what with it being the final weekend.

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Meanwhile, my trip to Seattle got shorn of the day trip to Victoria, since it is too much of a time sink for such a short visit, and too big a hassle for my not very mobile parents. don't know what we'll do instead, but I'm sure my brother-in-law will think of something. They've been to most of the usual tourist sites, and after all, my sister grew up there and her hubby worked for Boeing.

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Which reminds me, Saturday the 21st I will be on my own, so if any of my Seattle friends want to get together, drop me a line.

The show was pretty good, but the audience was relatively quiet. Only 3/4 of a standing O. Lots of missed cues by the orchestra, the kind the audience would not notice - they missed the downbeat for the overture, I never got the drum cadence which intros my solo (but I did get the clarinet cue not so I just started without the drum beat, which meant we really zipped through the song quickly) Sancho didn't get anything for his final number till he started improvising more lines.

My ex-wife from Come Blow Your Horn was there, as well as friend Janice and her current heart throb (the friend I really didn't want to meet) were there. Turns out he is a lot smaller than his photos led me to believe, and he's very charismatic but not the phony I was expecting.  They took me to dinner and we had a great time.

Don Q. loved my T-shirt - I'd made it for the Sunnyvale production. So I cranked out a few T-shirt transfers for him and anyone else who wanted one. I'll bring them next week.

Just before I left for the theater we got email there will be a DVD, so I will send in my check for that tomorrow.

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Called the folks, Dad gave me a long list of stocks which are paying good dividends. I'll do some buying tomorrow, I think. There's something wrong with their email, so I read Mom the itinerary for my Israeli sister's trip. I'll be changing my reservation to get there a day earlier, so I can be at both sisters' birthdays. (19th and 22nd). Baltimore sister's is Wednesday. I'm a Scorpio. I was a mistake. Still am. :-)

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Went online with my cell phone, it said I needed to create an account at att.com, which I did. After creating the login it made it so I can use the same login/password for all my AT&T wireless stuff, which includes Wi-Fi access, or so it says on the MediaNet page. I will try it out tomorrow after work/before BASFA at Starbucks. I should be able to connect through my cell phone as long as there is GSM data service available - I've done that in the past on train trips to NOLA and Chicago - but this will also let me in at any AT&T hotspot, theoretically.

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Hillary kicked ass in Puerto Rico. Tell me again why she should quit? Lemmings, I am surrounded by lemmings.

Best audience evah tonight. Full house, minus maybe 6 seats, they laughed at jokes and bits no one has before, applause in (appropriate) places a couple of times in the middle of musical numbers or scenes. Standing O started at the beginning of the curtain call, and by the time Don Q came out the only people not standing were the folks who couldn't stand without help (some very elderly people and a person or two in wheel chair).

I was very happy with my performance. I don't know if they are going to make a DVD of the show for us, but if they are, this is one night I'd like to have a recording of.

Opening night was okay. If it wasn't sold out it was close. And it was packed with friends and family. The audience was even more responsive than Friday's, but not much louder. There were a few glitches, but nothing the audience would notice. I made a nasty scar for myself out of rigid colloidal and powdered rouge which got lots of compliments from the cast. Who ever heard of a ruffian without a scar on his face? I'm surprised I didn't think of it sooner.

Doing the show without intermission makes for an early evening - even with the gala after the show, I was home by 11:30. The gala was a big WTF. Every other theater I've done shows at has the goodies before the show - they open the doors half an hour early and the audience is buzzed on champagne when they see the show. They had a couple of tables of goodies set up in the lobby, and I thought it was pretty cheap until I went outside and discovered that they had a HUGE spread in front of the theater, in the dark. There were some people I talked to after the show who went out the side exit to the parking lot and never saw the bulk of the goodies. There was a lot left over, because people couldn't see what was on the trays, and all the plates, napkins and forks were hidden in non-intuitive places. I never did find any toothpicks. It was lovely having it outside instead of crammed into the lobby, but the execution was seriously flawed.

It was very warm onstage, thanks to 300 bodies in front of us. But we survived. I messed up my song, despite getting a good strong drum cadence and a starting note from the bassoon. I must have transited six keys before the orchestra came in with the right one. I think the problem is I'm being given the first note of my solo, and I really need the second one. I'll talk to the conductor and see if we can figure out what's going on. I am very good at matching my voice to a note that's played, so this is puzzling.

One of my co-workers showed up, he enjoyed it and will hopefully talk it up. He's one of the more social engineers, word will get around quickly.

Today's matinée was a better show, I think, but the audience was much quieter. I got more laughs on my comic lines than previously, and they generally laughed more at the cerebral humor than last night's audience. Chalk it up to them being 90% senior citizens. Greeting them after the show, one universal comment was made - everyone in the show is at the same level of talent. Everyone sings well, everyone can act, and everyone fits their parts. Of course Don Q, Aldonza and Sancho have a lot more work to do than the rest of us, so they get props for person-hours of talent. I don't think I could sustain a role like Don Q anymore. Sancho? Maybe, but not easily.

Next show is a benefit on Thursday, with Friday being the next one you can get tickets to. Of course that's BayCon, and the final Evil Genius party. If you can't go because of BayCon, we have two more weeks of shows Fri-Sun 5/30-31 and 6/1 and then Thurs-Sat 6/5-7.

Work tomorrow. Team meeting has been postponed till Tuesday, but I have a ton of tests to run. Will finally get to a BASFA meeting. Time to go home, dinner will be leftovers from the gala.
 

After posting once in September of 2005, my longtime friend** crowblog found her way back to LJ and made another entry. This one is on human-crow interactions.

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Last night I was very tired after rehearsals and just did the minimum on the computer before trying to go to sleep at 11:30. Leaky toilet kept me up. Must remember to phone the manager and have them replace the flush mechanism which is failing.

Dress rehearsal with makeup and mikes. The monitor for the orchestra was loud enough for us to hear onstage, so things worked a lot better for me this time. For my solo the nice conductor added my first note to the underscore, so i was actually able to hit it. As predicted, there is no way the actors can hear the orchestra through the audience's speaker system, but that's a moot point now.

The mikes were a big WTF. The sound guy just handed them out. No instructions, no clips or tape or straps. No nothing. I've only used mikes twice before, and both times they were attached by experienced sound crew. Since we can't hear the audience sound system from the stage, I have no idea if my mike was even on. I don't need it - the one time I have to sing over the orchestra, it's just a snare drum, a piccolo and a bassoon. If the day ever comes when I can't drown out that small of an accompaniment, it'll be time to put me in a box, shove the box into a rocket and shoot the whole thing into the sun.

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Nice surprise at work yesterday - Moto gave us all a little stock grant. Not an option, this, but free stock. All we have to do to have it dumped into our brokerage accounts is stay employed here till this time in 2012. Getting free stock is nice, being given the hint that they want us to stick around for 4 more years is even nicer.

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**I met crowblog toward the end of 1973, or the first week of 1974, when The Daily Astorian, of which I was layout editor, backup photographer and arts & entertainment contributor, sent me to the Lewis and Clark Theater with orders to audition for the community theater production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, ( Read more... )

( cut for geekiness )
In other news, last night I hauled out my stage makeup kit (a simple bright yellow plastic tackle box) and bagged 3/4 of the items in there which I will not be needing for the show. Lots of clown white, which I needed when my hair was courtesy of Just For Men or Nice 'n Easy. Several small bottles of spirit gum and a handful of latex fake wounds which they were used to affix. A bottle of scar liquid. I'm thinking maybe howbearca wouldn't mind The Governor having a nasty-looking scar. Hmmmmm. Maybe I'll put that back into my kit and try it tomorrow night.

Must wrap this up and go to weekly staff meeting. Lots of work to do today.

My first rehearsal in costume went well costume-wise. I have plenty 'o' time to do my two changes, and they are pretty easy.

This was also the first time we had the orchestra in their assigned location in the stage right wings. We weren't miked and neither were they, so musically it was a disaster. I am not pleased. It was two good groups of musicians communicating by Ouija board. Blindfolded. Wearing ear muffs. We have been promised tomorrow night we will both be miked, which will be good for the orchestra because they will be able to hear us, but this is a theater with an intelligently designed speaker system, which means the speakers do not feed back to the stage. Which means it will be a miracle if we can hear the orchestra. The cue for my song is a snare drum, which is all the way in the stage right corner of the wings, and I am most of the way stage left onstage. All I could hear was white noise, I could not hear the beat. I think I landed on the right note, though. I know I was not at the right tempo for the first two verses, when the orchestra comes in.

While I was waiting for my cue backstage, I watched the brass section, looking over their shoulders to read the music, and was very impressed by the trombones and French Horns. The trumpets actually sounded good this time when they were warmed up, but I couldn't squeeze behind them to see their music. After the rehearsal I caught up with one of the horn players in the parking lot to tell her she was awesome. Not only was she playing her part, she was showing the other horn player where they were in a very messy looking piece of sheet music.

The acting has really come together well. The set looks great, though it's not quite done yet. Costumes & props are in better shape than at closing night in some shows I've been in. Problems are being brought up, acknowledged and addressed, in all areas.

Tomorrow we add makeup and mikes. Should be way too much fun.

Rehearsal tonight was the obligatory "sit and sing" sometimes referred in theater circles by it's German name, Sitzprobe, which always makes me think of Eric Cartman's alien anal probe.

Since I don't sing till 2/3 of the way through the show, and only sing one song and two short chorus bits, it was real boring. And painful at the start. The trumpets were so bad I had to go outside and down the block to prevent spontaneous nuclear self-detonation. The orchestra had not warmed up or tuned up before the rehearsal. After they were warmed up, the trumpets were better, but they never got good. The French horns, all three of them, are to die for. Trombones were good, but they were both playing bass trombones, which is weird. Two oboes and a bassoon were excellent, I couldn't hear the clarinet or piccolo even when I was standing right next to them. Guitar also needed more volume, and more practice. I know this guy, he's really good, it'll be fine by next week. The music is very difficult and guitar has way too much of the burden in Man of La Mancha's  community theater arrangement. Our vocal director/costumer/Sancho played tympani, which I thought was not a good idea, since he doesn't have all his songs down pat yet and we needed his voice more than we needed tympani. There was no drum set, which I need desperately for my solo. I almost asked them to skip my number. Should have, it sucked.

Miraculous fill-in conductor - our regular conductor had a family tragedy, and needed to fly to New Jersey - a tragedy in itself. The replacement person showed how music is a universal language - she's fluent. The only difficulties she had were from the Tams Whitmark score's mistakes and poorly (and sometimes misplaced) actors' cues.

Off till Sunday evening's dress rehearsal.

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Obligatory critic's note: I started playing trumpet in 3rd grade, moved to Baritone Horn in high school and added French Horn in college. I play all the brass instruments which have valves, plus bugle.

We had a Transfer of Information meeting at work which ate half the day (but was well worth it - I learned things about the product I've been testing for the last couple of months which were major "aha!" moments) and then ate up the other half and then some trying to configure a machine I'm only vaguely familiar with (I'll ask for help tomorrow) and only getting it 3/49th right. This is the ad insertion machine, program it to point at any number (in this case 49) of IPTV/cable TV channels and it will send ads to those channels. Our box makes it possible for this server to interrupt your national TV station with local used car salesmen. Anyway, I never got any ads to play, but I did manage to have our machine tell me that only 3 of the 49 channels I'd configured were even being recognized by the server.

At the stroke of 7 pm I got into the car and headed to Saratoga, was about 5 minutes early for rehearsals which started 40 minutes late and ran till about 10:30. Good rehearsal. I pretty much know my lines, but still am shaky about entrances.  The director gave me some good notes after the run-through, and the funny thing is most of them were notes I got from the director the last time I played this role.

I'm kind of bummed at the lack of eye candy in this production. Last time I was spoiled, our belly dancer was a 3-time Miss California finalist, the two women in the horse & burro headgear were ballerinas with amazing legs, and our Antonia (who tried out for this show too) is a stunning redhead who could be the mother of my babies any time she wanted to be. Unfortunately for me, she was - and still is - shacked up with another theater friend.

Don't get me wrong, all the women this cast are very sweet and fun and talented, they're just not beauty queens. Oh well, you can't have everything - where would you put it?

Speaking of which, while sitting in the theater waiting for the stage to be ready, there was a long, narrow box lying across a couple of seats. And into my warped little brain popped the idea:

Bright sunlight
+ open, empty coffin
+ the shadow of a bat flying away
caption:
Think outside the box

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No rehearsals till Sunday night. My bank says my bonus has been received, along with my regular paycheck, and will be official tomorrow. I think it's time for a massage, and maybe a trip into the City.

The producer would like us to show up at the theater Saturday and help finish the set, but it will be a lot safer for everyone if I'm not allowed near power tools. Or any tools, for that matter.