theater – Technobabbles

Archive by category "theater"

Goodbye, Albert

dgw 2010-05-20 - 15:52 2010-05-20music, musings, theater 0

The students of Saint Bernard’s School put on a fine production last week. After starting a theatre program eleven years ago, the school is shutting down this year (like Folwell Middle School, where I ) and I think the year’s ending with a decent bang. As , playing Bye Bye Birdie made for an intense week. Even more intense, in fact, since I had fewer rehearsals in which to learn the music. I joined the St. Bernard’s pit at the last minute, following an eleventh-hour decision at Lion’s Gate Christian Academy that cut out most of the pit orchestra for…

Best Beware My Wrap-Up

dgw 2010-05-12 - 17:16 2010-05-12theater 0

So, all that studying of lines and mental review of songs and dances actually came to something. In our intense 80-minute performance, we also conclusively proved that more rehearsal makes for a better show. The three hours we spent before the show working through and fixing stuff was probably the most useful rehearsal of the last month. Best Beware My Sting went off without a— Well, I can’t say “without a hitch” because there were hitches, of two types (mistakes and marriages). Actually, three couples got hitched, and uncountable tiny errors crept into, well, everything. We had some bigger problems,…

That was fun! Let’s do more!

dgw 2010-05-04 - 18:00 2010-05-04humor, music, theater 2

Three weekends of funny later, the Morris Park Players’ production of Cinderella is over. Set strike for the show was Monday. Next on their agenda is packing up all their equipment; the school they’ve performed at for 25 years—Folwell Middle School—is closing at the end of the year, and so it’s time to move everything to their new home, Edison High School. Aside from having “Ten Minutes Ago” and “In My Own Little Corner” stuck in my head still, I have lots of good memories and a few annoyances. Why did the director (not the music director) want “The Search”…

A Summery Summary: Cherubs

dgw 2010-04-16 - 14:42 2015-10-29musings, summer, theater 7

I started writing this on August 22, 2008. I should have started about twenty days earlier and finished at least by the end of the year, but I’m really not good with publishing on time, am I? Oh well. unfortunately. This one’s for you, Margaret. 🙂 I’ve preserved as much of what I initially wrote as possible. Inevitably, there are gaps; I can’t do much about that, but hopefully the incompleteness will motivate me to be better at getting these things done in the future. A lot can happen in five weeks… And I mean a lot! Let’s see, what…

The Sorcerer & Jack and Rochelle Wrap-up

dgw 2010-04-07 - 19:10 2015-10-31humor, musings, theater 0

So, my month-long commitment to two shows is over. Both The Sorcerer and Jack and Rochelle closed Sunday afternoon, March 28. Obviously I wasn’t at both shows that day; I did my last run of J&R the night before, and played pit for The Sorcerer on Sunday while my replacement did projection at the JCC. I hate to say it, but there’s no way I’ll miss running J&R as much as I’ll miss playing pit for The Sorcerer. Normally I really hate to close a show, but Jack and Rochelle is quite honestly rather depressing, despite its overtones of romance…

On Morning Matinées

dgw 2010-03-19 - 13:15 2015-10-31ideas, musings, opinion, theater 0

Image by Micah Taylor via Flickr This morning, I had the dubious pleasure of waking myself at 08:00 to work a morning matinee of Jack and Rochelle. Not falling asleep until around 04:00 didn’t help things, but even getting just four hours of sleep would have been worth it if everything had gone as planned. But as it happened, this morning’s show was canceled for insufficient audience. OK, so Friday morning at 10:00 is kind of a strange time to have a show. The target audience is school groups, since most people are at either work or school; the only…

Summer 2009: Theatre, Theatre, Theatre

dgw 2010-03-18 - 15:48 2015-10-31GIMP, summer, theater, travel, w00t 2

This post took a long time because 1) I was moving the site, 2) I was doing lots of college applications all at the same time, and 3) I spent too long waiting for media from other people that never came. Once I bought my domain and started setting up WordPress in late October, I didn’t really want to publish any new posts at the old site. I didn’t want to publish anything at the new site either until everything was set up properly, and I only in mid-February because I wasn’t through with college apps until mid-January. So sue…

The Jewish Humor Festival Ends

dgw 2010-03-08 - 16:00 2015-10-31theater, w00t 0

The Jewish Humor Festival is over, and what an event it was! Comedians from all over the Twin Cities and beyond came to perform, and I was in the booth for most of their shows, running the lights or sound. My senses of accomplishment and satisfaction right now are, I think, greater than they’ve ever been before. I mean, really. (Except for the closing cabaret. I mean really, that was the least technically interesting event of the whole week. But I got a lot of laughs out of it.) I’ve been working the festival for 12 days—though I shouldn’t include…

Orchestra, Tech, & Audition Opportunities Seized

dgw 2010-02-20 - 16:19 2010-02-20music, theater, w00t 2

As mentioned in , my involvement in the pit orchestra at Temple of Aaron led to an offer from the Gilbert and Sullivan Very Light Opera Company. Well, last Sunday I attended my first GSVLOC orchestra rehearsal; there’s another tomorrow. It followed a week of back-and-forth emails with my contact (from Arizona, where I went to celebrate my grandmother’s 86th birthday). I also worked out dates for another potential gig in technical theatre at the Minneapolis JCC for their Jewish Humor Festival—about which I just happened to receive an email the day after the offer from GSVLOC. After Sunday’s GSVLOC…

“Guys and Dolls” Retrospective

dgw 2010-02-14 - 19:45 2015-10-31music, opinion, theater 0

This was meant to be published last Wednesday, but WordPress missed the scheduled post. I’m looking into how to solve that problem in the future. I told myself I’d blog about anything significant before I started it. That didn’t happen, so I’m doing my normal post-project wrap-up. Combining the first time I’ve ever assistant-directed a show with the first time I’ve ever played in a pit orchestra (despite plenty of “regular” orchestra experience) was a job. Here are the highlights—or at least the important bits—and my usual summary of tech week. Becoming Involved I got involved in my two different…

Category: theater