95 Days: Every Role a Starring Role

Working for Disney. It's a dream for many a Disney Geek, and I am certainly one who shares that dream. Due to the wonders of social media, I've heard all the criticisms of Disney as an employer......they pay too little, value employees not enough, make unreasonable demands. But if I do it, it will be a retirement gig, so I hope to not care much what I'm paid, and after the career I've had, unreasonable demands are a big ho hum. I'm ready, sign me up, put me in coach.

I always figured I could do about anything that didn't require a ton of skill or special knowledge. I'm not above anything, really. I wouldn't turn down a chance to be the barf scooper in Town Square if it meant I got to work....OH MY GOD!!!!....IN Town Square. I have a CDL and good driving record, so I thought maybe a bus driver or a tram driver. Then, on our trip last September, I saw THE DREAM JOB. Amphicar Driver (or captain, I guess). Those things are the coolest. And the driver gets to wear an old timey captain's hat. I am a sucker for a hat. I would be great, too. I would chat up the guests, tell them all about Disney Springs, flirt with old ladies. I was born for that gig. Now, I just have to retire comfortably, move to Florida, and convince Disney Casting I'm their guy.

I would look SO good in that. And the HAT!

If you've ever dreamed of a Disney Job you might want to check out the Every Role A Starring Role video series from Disney Parks Blog. I stumbled across it last night looking for the Live Streams saved on YouTube and got completely sucked in. I haven't watched all 70 videos, but have seen most. They are short and cover the gamut from Show Director for all of Disneyland Parks to the dude who sells balloons. There are resort jobs and park jobs, behind the scenes jobs and on stage jobs. I particularly enjoyed the Stage Tech video about the people who do for Fantasmic what I've done for our local community theatre. The series is limited to Disneyland, so there's no Amphicar Driver segment, but it does feature tram driver, monorail pilot and Mark Twain Riverboat captain.

As expected, it's all unicorns and rainbows from these people, they all say they love their job. The thing is, they really seem to mean it. And these are mostly not actors. They don't all even say the name of the series correctly in their little introduction. Some are comfortable on camera and some less so. I loved it for it's authenticity, taking into account it's Disney PR. It's very well done PR, and I respect that and can relax and enjoy the chance to dream of a DISney job for myself.

So, How'd Those Resolutions Work Out?

Last year about this time I wrote a post about some New Year's resolutions I planned to make stick. It's fun to look back to a year ago and see what you expected or hoped to happen. It's kind of like a mini-cyber-time capsule of sorts. Cracking this one open might make for a fun post to begin 2016, so here we go.

So that's what I'm resolving to do. I'm going to spend more time watching TV. It sounds like an anti-resolution, doesn't it? But it's symbolic of how this year will be different from last. I'm not a huge television guy, but there are amusing things on there I'd like to enjoy, things friends watch that I'd like to be able to discuss, things our whole family can sit and get into together, things Lisa and I can experience as a couple. It starts Sunday night with ABC's Galavant, which looks hilarious and Lisa and John have both expressed interest in. No more writing press releases or answering a dozen inane emails or updating the website or editing and sharing photos or balancing the BLT checkbook as first priority. I'll get around to the things I agree to continue to do, but it won't be as fast or as consistent. It won't be first on the list, and I regret that it ever was.

I DID watch some TV last year. We saw all the Galavant shows (and watched the season 2 premier Sunday night, it's soooooo good). I discovered Star Wars Rebels on On Demand and Clone Wars and Daredevil on Netflix. But the TV watching thing was really kind of tongue in cheek. What it represented was spending more time in the living room and less in the office with the computer. As far as that went, mission accomplished.


The theatre board involvement sort of worked itself out, though not in a way I'd have expected this time last year. As 2015 began, it fell to myself and another board member, my friend Melanie, to do all the behind the scenes organizational stuff that allows a show to become reality. From Winnie The Pooh (which turned out to be one of my favorite shows ever) to a murder mystery party, to Godspell JR to a "directors' challenge" comedy show, to a Broadway revue in the park, to Shrek the Musical, Mel and I kept insanely busy making sure i's were dotted and t's crossed, making sure publicity happened and tickets were sold and rooms for rehearsals were assigned. There is A LOT beyond the jobs you see in a show's program that needs to happen, and Mel and I made sure it did. Then, about halfway through the year, we were each told to consider what roles we wanted to pursue in Brunswick Little Theatre. We were told that maybe being on the board wasn't a good idea as involved in shows as we were. Basically, we were told we were too involved in community theatre to serve on the community theatre board. We both resigned. I mean, who wants to be a part of THAT sort of thinking, right? If the board was no longer to be in the business of theatrical performing arts, I really had no interest.


Where that leaves the organization as a whole remains to be seen. This year they've scaled back considerably, choosing to drop the popular park show and the Big Summer Musical in favor of a slate of small-cast, small-crew, inexpensive-to-license, simple-set and -tech shows that can be easily produced in the converted church they rent as a home base. Those shows will all likely sell out (everything in there does, no matter what it is), but even so will reach fewer audience than just the park show and big summer musical alone typically bring in, which is a shame given their desire to raise enough funds to purchase the space they currently rent. Fewer souls with be reached, either as participants or audience, this year than any year in BLT's recent past. Be that as it may, it's no longer my problem, and that is liberating.

I'm also going to read. I am part way through about 8 books and I'm going to finish them all. Stephen King's "Revival" is gripping me right now, and I've devoted time to it the last week or so, so I have a head start on that one. I'm going to buy a new handheld GPS and begin geocaching again. It gets us out of the house together, it shows us the world and it leads to paths full of roses to smell. I'm going to walk on the beach again. I'm going to play our new Disney Infinity game. I'm going to take naps, dig out the computer room and plan weekend or day trips to new places. I'm going to write on this blog much more. 

The reading thing was middling successful. I loved "Rivival." I finished the rest of Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Chronicles (though I see the next is out right about now), I read a new Star Wars novel. I pecked away at several Disney-related nonfiction books. I'm sitting on quite a few of them still, plus some new ones and this year they WILL get read, along with more fiction. I love to read and need to do it more.

I did buy that new GPS unit but have used it very little. This was a very inactive Geocaching year, something I once again hope to change in 2016.

I played a good bit of Disney Infinity in the first couple months of 2016. I did not get to the beach much at all. I didn't nap much, did clean out the computer room and did take a good number of day trips (even if many of them were band parent-related). I had the least productive year ever writing on this or my other blog.

What's this year have in store, you ask? Or you don't, it doesn't matter, I'm gonna tell you anyhow.

Even though BLT isn't doing anything that holds any interest for me, I've not left theatre behind. I'm organizing a BLT contingent to travel to Raleigh and participate in a marathon reading of all of Shakespeare's plays in conjunction with the NC Museum of History. I didn't give BLT any choice in the matter. Well, in my defense I DID forward the email to the board president and simply took lack of a "no" response as an endorsement of the idea and went ahead. That should be fun.

I'm also joining the Shrek creative team in exploring ways to keep the kinds of shows BLT did in the past but no longer seems (for now at least) interested in pursuing alive in Brunswick County. Can't say much more about that, but it's been fun brainstorming with two men who I admire so much. I'm really excited about the possibilities.

But it will be, I think, mostly groundwork-building. It certainly won't be devoting months of my life and my family's lives to a show this summer. It will leave time for the beach, something we tend to sadly neglect during "show summers." We'll be making trips to visit colleges, a sort of bitter-sweet thing as we prepare to send John off into the world. In the fall, Halloween to be exact, we'll be indulging in one last family trip to Disney World, including a behind the scenes tour, something I've wanted to share with Lisa and John for years.

Who knows what else lies in store. I certainly hope (once again) to be writing on this blog more and to begin again writing on Liberty's Harbor (I mean it IS an election year and all). I'm curious to know what this will look like in hindsight as I read it in January 2017, but I'm not so excited I want to rush it. 2016 could be a year of giving ourselves the time to enjoy simply living the Stites Life, and that would be perfect.

Stiteses In The Swamp, Part 3: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

That was my mantra for this show. From being asked to participate as an actor/singer/dancer on top of stage managing to losing our tech director to heart troubles during tech week, from watching the list of costumes grow to seeing the size of our set pieces. At every turn, there seemed to be another.....challenge. And go wrong things did. But that's live theatre, ya know? That's what makes this fun and challenging and interesting and worthwhile. The show was great. The audience loved it, every night. The cast had a ball. The crew had fun. All the newbies want to do it again. The actors new to BLT are anxious to be or already are back involved in other shows with us. The whole sha-bang is something for everyone involved to be very proud of. But holy cow was it a wild ride!

I'll be the first to admit I bit off more than I could chew. I said it before in my blog about Lisa and I'll say it again---without her I'd have not survived this with my sanity intact, and the show would not have been nearly as good. She was a port in the storm, and not just for me either. Director Cal pulled her right into his circle and kept her close during rehearsals and after. She was a Godsend. But there were things she couldn't help with. Like the singing and dancing.

I'm not sure I can express this correctly, so I'll start with the simplest statement: I had no idea how HARD performing musical theatre was. I don't want to give the impression I thought it was easy by any means. It was just one of those things I knew I'd never do so I was just content to really admire those I saw doing it and that was that. Until I tried to learn to sing and dance at the same time. It doesn't help that I have no experience or talent in either one. But even so, I was completely blown away by how difficult it is to make one's brain do two things at once. It requires concentration like I've not needed in I don't know how long. I just don't challenge myself that way, which is sad, I guess.

The concentration thing got me. I could "get it" if I was thinking about what I was doing and only what I was doing. My friend Adrian told me in the very beginning that would be the case, at least it was for him. It was what he enjoyed about the exercise; it was a way for him to force himself not to think about his law practice. Everything he said turned out to be true. It was an escape. Rehearsals were so far from what turned out to be a really stressful summer at work that I grew to really look forward to them. Work troubles completely faded away while I tried to remember which foot was supposed to be stepping forward first. It was great.

My problem, and the reason I think I bit off too much, was that I couldn't do the same thing with show concerns. I couldn't force them from my mind during rehearsals....or shows. I guess it's because the two were too close. It's easy to forget routing of a delivery truck when you're in a kick line, but less so to not wonder if the kid a few people down will return to rehearsals in time to learn the choreography. I was too involved in things outside of performance to get the full enjoyment out of singing and dancing away. Cal called me his producer, which I don't like as it connotes some financial oversight, and I neither had nor wanted any of that. But he did include me in about all the decisions during production, from casting to staging to sets and costumes and tech. I love all that stuff, but I wish now I'd have either done that or performed, not both.

I'm sure there are those who could do it all, but I kept getting "Squirrel-ed!!". Even during shows. I remember during our closing number one night, a really fun combo of a bunch of 60s dances, I turned around (as we were supposed to) and happened to see a backdrop that had been giving us trouble and thinking to myself "Hmmmm, now why is that thing getting caught on the way down?". Then totally forgetting what I was supposed to be doing. That happened a lot. I'd be bopping along all fine and dandy then my stupid brain would step in and wonder why the costume chick was walking by ranting just before we went on stage. Or try to look to see if the stagehands needed for the next set change were at the ready (one tended to wander off). Or try to count heads in the audience and do some math to see if ticket sales would pay for this extravaganza. I just could not FOCUS sometimes.

Now, sometimes I could and did and those were the most fun parts of the show for me. When I could just play my little part and know I was doing it right and that it fit in with everyone else and together we were making magic for the audience, that was magic for ME. I just wish, both for my sake and the show's, that I could have done that all the time.

But all in all, Shrek was my favorite theatre experience so far. Having my family so deeply involved in production, having them as fellow parts of a wonderful creative team, made this one truly special. And as exhausted as I felt, and kind of still feel, with the show over, I'm jumping in again. Already. Cal has a plan and I'm back riding shotgun and bringing the family along.

Stay tuned :-)

Stiteses In The Swamp Pt 1: J5, the Unsung Hero

I haven't written a word on here about Shrek the Musical. This is strange because because it was such a huge part of the Stites Family Summer 2015, but it's also precisely BECAUSE it was such a huge part of the Stites Family Summer 2015. I've not had time to write much.

My own experience was overwhelming, in terms of what I learned and what I did. But more importantly, and so firstly, I have to blather on about how proud I am of Lisa and John. These two followed me into this whole theatre thing like Tonto follows the Lone Ranger. Two finer companions couldn't be wished for. Let's talk about John first.

John has embraced the role of Sound Tech. The wonderful Katie Deese took him under her wing and taught him the basics on Wizard of Oz three years ago (and stepped up this year to help John with sound checks and teaching him even more about the finer points of sound engineering) and he handled Into The Woods pretty much on his own last summer, so he was a shoe-in for sound guy for Shrek. Turns out we ask a lot from the guy. Hannah Funderburke, John's newest mentor and friend in theatre tech (and source of his J5 moniker), was pretty horrified that we expected John to handle over 20 actors being mic'ed. She said pros would refuse to do that, it was just too difficult. John took it in stride, he had that many in Into the Woods last year after all. This time he had 24 actors (give or take, the equipment was constantly breaking down) with microphones, three choral mics hung from the flies and a reverb effect to deal with. In addition, he played the fart machine during one song, something that sounds funny but required him to basically play a percussion instrument along with the pit orchestra but do so from the tech booth. It was a great gag as long as it was perfect. The actors made body motions along with the sound effects so the timing had to be spot on to work. If it did, it was hilarious, if not, it would have shown. It WAS perfect. Every night. Oh, and I, in my wisdom, saddled the kid with sound effects and a video projector on top of everything else.

John realized what I didn't realize, or didn't want to think about. He had too much to do himself. Now, he was not the only one to be stretched too thin on this show. Our tech director had a heart problem and missed tech week and the first weekend of performances, throwing Hannah and I into the roles of co-acting-tech directors, and both myself and Jen were trying to fill simultaneous production and stage roles. John, I must say, handled it best, far better than Jen and I anyhow. He saw he was in the weeds and asked if he could ask for help from the director, the wonderful Cal Chiang, who was already in the booth watching the show each night. John recruited Cal to run sound and video effects, but had to cue him. But hey, it at least allowed him to keep his hands on the sound board, right? Cal, by the way, claimed John was "bullying" him (and saying so with a HUGE smile on his face). John said Cal kept "leaving his post" and needed to be called back. John is 15 and taking it upon himself to tell the director to keep to his work. Many adults in community theatre wouldn't do that.

John put a tremendous amount of time into this show, showing up two hours before call each day to try to make the sound work with whatever equipment was functioning that night. The mics were old and the replacements cheap. We had some very intense movement on the part of some actors and that was tough on the wires. Every time a mic was replaced, that meant a new place for that mic's actor on the soundboard. So with 24 actors' mics to keep track of, John could never count on all of them being on the same buttons two nights in a row. They never were, not once. And yet, John had the correct mics on and off when they needed to be and kept everything in balance throughout trios, duets, solos and big ensemble numbers. I have no idea how he didn't lose his mind, but not did he not, he was having fun.

John is looking at a career in sound design/engineering. The experience he's gotten has been wonderful, but what I think will serve him best is his attitude. The guy is rock solid. You can't teach that. And I couldn't be more proud of him :-)

I'm Going Far, Far Away This Summer

It's been a rough year so far. A work situation has left me running a route since early January and I'm about worn out. You can trust I'm not really being a whiner here because my boss (and mind you I work at a company where sarcasm and abuse is the rule) actually sincerely apologized to me last week. Never happens. But things are looking up. It's spring and I have a new project to delve into. Shrek the Musical.

I'm stage managing once again, this time for a director other than Jen, which is both exciting and a bit scary, but it's going swimmingly so far. The director, Cal, is new to the area and to Brunswick Little Theatre, so a few of us have been really helping him with recruiting cast and crew. It's already been a lot of fun. Once again, Lisa and John will be joining the crew, John on the sound board and Lisa as an assistant stage manager.

See, I needed to find someone to take charge back stage a few times while I'm otherwise occupied. For the first time in forever, I'm going to be on stage performing in a few scenes. It's a small part as one of seven guards. I'm not trying to make a huge deal out of it, it's kind of like being a tree in the elementary school show (if your school's trees were dressed up like The Gimp). But, the role DOES appear in the Shrek Wiki. It's not much, but heck, it's there :-)

The guards are on stage with Lord Farquaad and are sort of his posse, or, if you prefer (and I do), his S1W. I'm told there is a bit of back-up singing as part of this group (shudder) and some dancing. On our knees.

This knee dancing part is the reason I am making my stage debut. Myself, Cal and Michael, the musical director, were standing around late one night after an audition discussing how we could find enough able bodied males to be guards when Michael suggested me. Cal jumped on it and when the cast list appeared, there I was. I wasn't recruited for my talent, I was recruited by virtue of being male and ambulatory enough to dance around on my knees and still stand up afterwards without requiring medical assistance.

That, and the fact that I will clearly look fabulous in pleather.

Black, I hope. That way I won't need to change to return to stage manager detail :-)

Long Time Coming

Once Upon A Time.....

There was a woman fond of directing large, all-ages cast community theater musicals. This woman also happened to be a mom, a home schooling mom, of two young boys, the older of whom was already showing signs of serious theatrical talent and interest. When choosing her musicals, she had to take into account the difficulty in finding tween and teen boys willing and interested to act in a show. She had an idea that she hoped would introduce more children to live theatre at an earlier age than was the current norm in her theatrical home. She hoped to bring in children, and hopefully a good, solid number of boys, and allow them to experience theater from an actor's perspective without the pressure of auditions. These children would grow in skill in a supportive, safe, non-judgmental environment and would perhaps be more likely to remain involved into their teenage years. This idea was called Let's PLAY!.

The Let's PLAY! Children's Theatre Workshop was proposed as a series of weekend classroom sessions for children from 4-12 years old exploring song, dance, acting, improvisation and theatrical terminology and traditions through the vehicle of fun exercises and games. The workshop was to utilize older children in technical and backstage roles such as assistant director, stage manger, light and sound tech and set and costume design and construction. At the end of the series of classes, the children would mount a short "KIDS" show, a one act performance designed for young actors. "Aladdin, KIDS" was included in the original proposal with the intent to charge minimal admission and ask for food donations in honor of the "street rat" main character.

The theater mom director, fresh off the heels of a hugely successful summer production of The Wizard of Oz, brought her idea to her theater home's board of directors. They listened politely and told her they'd discuss it later in the meeting and let her know. She left. Also at this meeting was a man very green to the world of theater, having been introduced into it during the aforementioned Wizard of Oz production. This was the final board meeting of the year and he was to become a board member the following month and was attending to observe and get up to speed on board business. When discussion of the Let's PLAY! workshop began, he was shocked to find it centered around the fear that the workshop, and its director, would reflect poorly on the theater organization. The scope of the workshop was questioned and more surprising to the meeting's observer, the director's credentials were questioned. In the end he couldn't remain a quiet observer and when it looked as though the proposal would die, he broke protocol and prevailed upon the board to table the decision until the next meeting when they could address their concerns to the director in person. And so they did.

During the next month's meeting these concerns, including the questioning of the mom/director's credentials as a theater instructor, were voiced and discussed and argued with all interested parties present. Voices were sometimes raised, eyes were rolled, feelings were hurt, but in the end the Let's PLAY! Children's Theatre Workshop was approved. But it had been changed during discussion to win the eventual unanimous vote of approval. The teen technical and support training was dropped entirely and the license of a show to culminate the workshop experience was replaced with a "showcase" performance to be designed by the director along the lines of a recital. But the door had been opened and Let's PLAY! began.

The first session was a huge success, with a full roster of children, many boys, of varying experience levels. The classes were fun, the showcase was terrific and everyone walked away happy. More sessions followed, and a summer camp version was added. Registration day began to resemble a rock concert opening ticket sales, with people lining up in cyberspace for slots that filled within hours. It also became clear that without a license to purchase and a specific show set to build and costumes to procure, there was little on which to spend tuition money. The board, which had been chilly to the point of virtually ignoring the program, began to take notice and value it as a revenue source. This was frustrating to the director and others who truly loved and supported Let's PLAY! on its merits as theater education and the joy it brought to its students. But Let's PLAY! chugged along.

After a time, it came to pass that the observer at that first meeting found himself president of the board. And so it also came to pass that the director came to the board with what was essentially her original proposal, a workshop to include teen assistants helping on a production of a licensed musical. The first Let's PLAY! session of 2015, exactly two years after the very first session, would be the Let's PLAY! Production of Winnie the Pooh, KIDS.

Today was the final of four shows capping off that workshop experience. Every one sold more seats than we had available (we had floor seating, so everyone got in, seat or no seat). That means close to 400 people watched these 30 children sing and dance their way through the Hundred Acre Wood. The children are itching to carry the show over into NEXT weekend. We can't, another show is moving in, but we could have, I'm sure, sold another 400 tickets.

I'm a very happy guy tonight. I'm happy and proud of the children and teens and the adult leadership of Let's PLAY!. I can't put into words the respect and admiration I have for the talent and work ethic and simple love for these children and the theatrical arts embodied by Let's PLAY!'s founder and director, Jen Iapalucci. But my joy is tempered by frustration that it took two years for such an obviously needed and valuable idea to finally come into full bloom. There is no rational excuse for that, it's simply a matter of silly intra-group politics and run-away egos. This session made much more money than any previous session, but MUCH more importantly, it gave 30 children and a handful of teen leaders an experience they will never forget.

I'd love to hear some apologies, but Hell freezing over is more likely. What I can and do expect, though, is a recognition of the value of Let's PLAY! in lives affected and hearts warmed and lessons learned. Here's hoping it doesn't take any more raised voices.

Presto Change-O

I had the absolute best time last weekend. We had a great murder mystery party Saturday night, but for me the afternoons before and after the party, when we transformed the space twice, were just as much fun. I'm endlessly amused and intrigued by the way Brunswick Little Theatre's theater space can be used. It began as an empty church sanctuary.

Then it was transformed into a theater for the first show, a showcase performance culminating a week of Let's PLAY! summer theatre camp. It was still basic, but featured a for reals stage and comfy seats.

Then Steel Magnolias moved in and a beauty shop appeared.

I have to admit I find the colors of this set nauseating, but it IS impressive

Then the Big Dawgs moved in and our beauty shop became the sandy point at the end of Pleasure Island for a production of Hermit of Fort Fisher.

I was amazed how much of the previous set remained and yet looked entirely different

Then the Best Christmas Pageant Ever arrived and it was back to a church.

Since then, Winnie The Pooh has been moving in, but first we had that murder mystery. It was a fairy tale themed thing, so Jen decided to go with an Enchanted Forest look seeing as we had the Hundred Acre Wood taking shape in the space. It worked out nicely. Owl needed a tree so we brought in the giant tree from last summer's Into The Woods and made it a part of the forest for both events. You can't tell from my photos, but Adrian had the brilliant idea to light the tree up from the inside and it looked super-cool. The Hundred Acre Wood will feature a few cut-out trees, so we just hung "fairy lights" on and between them as well. We hung a bunch of Chinese paper lanterns from the ceiling, brought in tables and table clothes, and all of a sudden our theater was a dinner party venue.

I wish I had a decent photo of the place with the lights out and lit with the lanterns and fairy lights, but you'll have to trust me, it looked spectacular.

Now it's being turned back into a Pooh set. The tree had to be trimmed a bit and turned and shifted stage left, but a few of us handled that easily Sunday. The seats are back, but set up with an open space in front so the littlest guests can sit on blankets and get an up close view of the show without squirming on mom or dad's lap.

Today some stairs are being added to the tree so Owl can come get in and out. The trees will be painted. Who knows what else? But rest assured I can't await to see :-)

Impressions from a Pretty Nice Weekend

I spent a lot of last year using this space to vent frustrations. I have dedicated myself to making this year different; not just trying to ignore the bad and focus on the good, that's mumbo-jumbo, I mean changing circumstances to lessen the bad and create more good. So far, so good, as evidenced by my weekend. I started out Friday getting all my work done that I wanted to while also visiting the BLT prop and costume storage and figuring out some geeky stuff on my new GPS. Saturday was a great day spent with Lisa while John was at band Districts Auditions (he didn't make it, but had a good time). So to celebrate, I'm going to share highlights :-)

The Crazy Uncle's Attic -- I always liken the Brunswick Little Theatre storage units to the crazy uncle's attic. I've loved digging through old stuff since forever (hence the anthropology minor) and BLT has lots of old stuff. Looking through this stuff for props and costumes for use in our upcoming Once Upon A Murder mystery party (buy tickets today, it's going to be great) and the Winnie-the-Pooh Let's PLAY! show was every bit as fun as I expected it to be. Well, digging through this stuff with Jen was every bit as fun as I expected it to be. She's like having your crazy uncle (aunt?) around to ID the stuff you find. Max or I would hold up a kimono or a jacket or an urn or a crystal ball or a plumy hat or a giant fake joint and ask "Hey, what was THIS used in?" and Jen would rattle it off. Great fun! For Max and I at least. And just having time to chat with a pal is always good for the soul. Better than any medicine when you've been feeling blah.


My New Toy -- OK, so I recently came into a little bit of money from my grandfather's estate, long story. Anyhow, I used a small bit of it on myself and bought a brand new handheld GPS to replace one that had died about a year or so ago. This new one looks much the same but it's color and has much more memory and new capabilities for geocaching. One feature is its ability to accept map downloads to augment its internal maps (which suck). I spent some time Friday tinkering around and found a great site full of free maps for download, and also figured out how to get them on my new toy. It's pretty damned cool, trust me. I just bought a micro SD card so I can find MORE free maps. I have a thing for maps.

Big Retail Sucks -- Ok, it's hip to hate on Walmart and "big box" stores and all, but I resist that as much out of my distaste for group-think as anything else. Saturday, though, really brought the failures of major retail outlets to my attention. We went to Kohl's so Lisa could spend a gift card that has been burning a hole in her pocket. While we were there and she was looking around, I was tasked with finding a few long-sleeved shirts and a jacket for the boy. Turns out almost all the clothing that is even remotely fit for the weather we are actually experiencing outside has been thoroughly picked over with the residual inventory on a collection of 70% off clearance racks. Really? No long sleeved shirts in January? I'm too much of a realist to get all choked up about the clothing being produced by 5 year old Bangladeshis, but at least have the freaking little slave kids churn out some sleeves for sale in January, ok?

Next stop is Target, where they carry everything. Everyhting, it turns out, except the two things I wanted to buy. I wasn't looking for anyhting exotic, just some tupperwares to hide in the woods (see Geocaching above) and a micro SD card for my new toy. I batted zero, so today I placed orders on Amazon.com that will be at my house Wednesday. Easy peasy. Screw driving to Wilmington.

But Local Kinda Rules --  I love the "Buy Local" movement in theory. In practice, if you define local as really close to home, the SE Brunswick County area, it only really works if you're in the market for weird artwork, quasi-locally grown produce, or other people's discarded items. The retail options in the Southport-Oak Island area aren't exactly expansive. But Wilmington, now there is some cool stuff. We went to a camera shop on the advice of an ex-reporter friend and camera aficionado and I can't wait to go back. The place was a little like the Crazy Uncle's Attic of photographic......stuff. They had all sorts of new and shiny things, but also loads of old and funky things. I can't wait to go back and browse for, like, ever.

We Regress -- Lately, Lisa and I have been able to have more "couple time" than we've been accustomed to having. John's involvement with marching band and indoor percussion have him busy all day on a bunch of Saturday's, leaving Lisa and I up to our own devices. John's having fun and we have discovered that we still have as much fun together, just the two of us, as we did when we were dating. In fact, we kind of tend to regress to those days a bit. This is great for our mental health, sometimes not so much for our physical health. Yesterday, for example, we had hamburgers with Marianna sauce and fried mozzarella sticks on top of them for lunch. Then, since we decided we had eaten so much and weren't hungry for a "real dinner," we had Pillsbury cinnamon rolls and popcorn for supper while sitting on the couch watching Penny Dreadful on Blu-ray. Good times :)

Museum Book Stores Are Nirvana -- Even small museums have them and they are ALL awesome. The one at Brunswick Town-Fort Anderson is no exception. I found so much worth buying I need to go back. They have Stamp Act Defiance t-shirts (if you don't think THAT'S cool, you were probably the kind of person the opposite sex talked to in high school). None in my size yesterday, so darn, I need to check later. I did declare that since Lisa made me leave the house before my coffee I was buying myself a book. A Big Book. With lots of maps. So there!

New Year's Resolutions

I don't do these. Never have. I don't have a good reason, it's never been my thing and I'm kind of generally opposed to doing what you're "supposed to do" in pretty much any case. But this year I'm giving it a try and hoping to take it seriously. But they aren't going to be the kind of self-improvement, make the world a better place resolutions that are called for in politically correct society. Nope, tried that, not the resolutions, but the branching out into new things and giving of one's self to the benefit of others thing this year and it's left a sour taste in my mouth.

I started out all hopeful and ready to jump into it, as evidenced by this first post of 2014. By August the stress was getting to me. We'd just put on a show that drained our resources to almost nothing and didn't attract the ticket sales we hoped it would and then began the lease of a new facility that threw us into totally uncharted waters. My complaint at the time was purely personal, that it was changing me in ways I didn't like and causing me to run past roses I normally would have been smelling. That sentiment only grew the rest of the year. And it is the basis for this year's resolutions. I would normally feel bad about resolving to do LESS good for others, but not this time. Others frankly don't appreciate it.

That sounds incredibly self-serving, self-centered, self-everything, but damn it, it's true, so sue me. I never wanted a parade or any sort of recognition for the work I did as BLT president, I know that in the performing arts it's the artists who seek and get that, and that's perfectly fine by me. I'm not a spotlight kind of guy and am not out to impress strangers. But I do feel I am entitled to a little respect and the benefit of the doubt, and I got neither. I got the required "thank you's" and "good jobs" and all from the people who have to say such things, but even the people closest to what was happening all year never actually grew to trust me. Despite guiding this organization through some very difficult times and leaving it in rather better shape than I found it, if there is a negative conclusion to leap to, it's leapt to. And if anyone says "B" after I've said "A" a hundred times, "B" is what even those who should know better believe. That really hurts. It makes me feel like I've wasted a lot of time that would have been better spent on family and job and even self.

So that's what I'm resolving to do. I'm going to spend more time watching TV. It sounds like an anti-resolution, doesn't it? But it's symbolic of how this year will be different from last. I'm not a huge television guy, but there are amusing things on there I'd like to enjoy, things friends watch that I'd like to be able to discuss, things our whole family can sit and get into together, things Lisa and I can experience as a couple. It starts Sunday night with ABC's Galavant, which looks hilarious and Lisa and John have both expressed interest in. No more writing press releases or answering a dozen inane emails or updating the website or editing and sharing photos or balancing the BLT checkbook as first priority. I'll get around to the things I agree to continue to do, but it won't be as fast or as consistent. It won't be first on the list, and I regret that it ever was.

The television thing is just a start, an example. I'm also going to read. I am partway through about 8 books and I'm going to finish them all. Stephen King's "Revival" is gripping me right now, and I've devoted time to it the last week or so, so I have a head start on that one. I'm going to buy a new handheld GPS and begin geocaching again. It gets us out of the house together, it shows us the world and it leads to paths full of roses to smell. I'm going to walk on the beach again. I'm going to play our new Disney Infinity game. I'm going to take naps, dig out the computer room and plan weekend or day trips to new places. I'm going to write on this blog much more.


I'll keep up my involvement with the theatre, I have one more year on the board, though as 1 of 9 I am going to point out to everyone as often as I can. But I'm going to pick and choose. There are things about BLT I enjoy and things I don't. I'm done with the things I don't. I'm looking forward to helping plan and put on another murder mystery the end of this month. I'm really excited about the Winnie-the-Pooh workshop and show. I'm trying to cajole the board into scheduling a show I will help produce for the fall. I may stage manage this summer. All things I have found I love.

It's all a part of the new year for Jeffrey, do the things that make me and my family happy. Self-improvement without sweating and pain, baby, that's me in 2015 :)

TA-DA!!!!

I'm leaving this week looking at myself differently than I did entering it.

I've enjoyed my involvement with theatre in large part because it's allowed me the opportunity to work with and observe some great creative talents making magic. I talk about that a lot on here because it fascinates me, it's something I never could do (the performance/creative stuff) and I like being around those who can and getting a front seat or even behind the scenes view of the creative process. I've seen myself as audience, in a sense, observer maybe is a better word, even of shows during which I'm backstage working. I like being near people I admire and this year has given me a chance to do a lot of that and expanded the universe of artists and directors and actors and choreographers that I get to observe.

But Monday a silly little Facebook post started a week in which I came to understand that I'm not audience anymore. My friend Jen listed all the projects her "friends in the performing arts community" are working on in the coming weeks. It was a wonderful list, really, and she tagged the people responsible for all the happenings in her post -- directors, musical directors, artistic directors.......and me. And surprised myself because I didn't see that inclusion as odd. I had begun to feel like I belonged in that "performing arts community".

I'm not a director of any one show, and am not really an Artistic Director in the sense that other theater companies use the term. Usually that is a paid position for the person responsible for the day to day, week to week operations of the theater. But this year, as Brunswick Little Theatre has moved into a place of its own and we've had to make that work and fill the space, I've come really close to filling that role in all practical terms. One of the new friends I've made recently is Steve Vernon, Artistic Director of Big Dawg Productions, the group putting on The Hermit of Fort Fisher in our space right now. He's the first friend I've made solely because of our common ground in theater, and it's made me realize I have my own real estate there, in that artistic world. We spent an hour before the opening show of Hermit talking shop. Sure, he is way more experienced than I and we both understand that, but we spoke as equals in the sense that we are both doing the same job essentially and he respects the way I've handled my challenges as much as I respect the work he's doing with his own organization. A year ago, Hell, two weeks ago, I would have entered that conversation as a pure learning opportunity, a chance to hang out with "those creative-types". But Friday night I WAS one of those people, one of a community of very different personalities all joined by a desire to bring the arts to others.

I've finally accepted that that's now a part of who I am. I organize. I facilitate. I make things happen. But that IS "arts". In a simple example, I figured out how to add enough chairs to fit 106 patrons into our theatre space while preserving a center aisle that the director wanted to use as a part of the show's blocking. In a more extensive example I oversaw the transformation of an abandoned church and school into a performing arts complex. That property will see auditions for a youth musical and rehearsals for an all-ages cast Christmas show and a children's theatre workshop and host over 100 souls attending a play.......TODAY. In Southport. In Brunswick County. And while it took the efforts of a lot more than just myself to make this happen, I am very proud of my own role. No theater in Wilmington is doing more. We, we in the Brunswick Little Theatre, are contributing as much as any group in the area to making the arts available to our community. And if the sell-out crowds are any indication, the community appreciates it.

While I got great joy out of being able to see up close and personal others making magic, I finally feel like I can say "Ta-Da" myself.

Plans Gone Awry.....WIN!!!!!

Yesterday Lisa and I planned to drive to Loris, South Carolina to watch John in his final marching band competition. The weather was iffy, well, more like definitely crappy with rain pouring down at regular intervals, but in the past the schools had moved the show into a gymnasium in bad weather, so we thought nothing of it.

We've developed a little tradition while traveling to John's band competitions. Lisa and I like road trips, and these things tend to bring us to places we've not been before. We drop John off at his school early in the morning so he can practice and ride the band bus to where ever. His group usually performs in the late afternoon, so we have plenty of time to amuse ourselves during the day. We've gotten in the habit of leaving home early enough to explore the area hosting the competition a bit, and we try to find some local, interesting place for lunch. One of our favorite finds last year was in Conway, South Carolina on our way to Loris. We planned yesterday to revisit this little cafe, Crady's.

All was going just according to plan, we were sitting at a nice window seat in Crady's looking at the really cool community theatre building across the street when I got a call from John telling us the competition was canceled and the band was heading to Planet Fun instead. So we ended up driving quite a ways for lunch (which was GREAT, by the way), but we still had until early evening before we needed to retrieve the boy. No problem, we thought, we'll just drive around and check out Conway then head home and cuddle up under a blanket until John was done.

While we were there, though, we decided to go across the street and look a little more closely at this theatre, The Theatre of the Republic. We'd seen it the year before as well when it was running The 39 Steps a week after our own closed. This time Young Frankenstein was the feature. While we were looking in the windows the door popped open and a nice lady invited us in to look around. We said, sure, we'd love to see the inside and went on in.

Well, before you know it, this little old man came up, Lisa tells him I'm the president of Brunswick Little Theatre in Brunswick County, and he says he'd love to show us around. I was hoping to see the seating area, which we did, but then he proceeded to walk us up on stage, through a sliding hidden door in the back and proceeded to show us the whole building. It was great, the place is the Tardis of theaters, it's about 12 times the size inside as it is outside. I was blown away, I have theater envy, bad. Our friend Jen took us backstage at Thalian Hall a few weeks ago, and that was impressive, but this little 325-seater has MORE space backstage than that! They have a huge scenic workshop, a big kitchen/hang-out room, make-up rooms, costume storage and workshops, dressing rooms with showers (separate from the make-up rooms) and prop storage everywhere. They've been in this facility a while, so it's like a museum of all their past shows. Lisa was dying for a camera.

The fireplace opens up. It's cool.

In talking to our tour guide, we find the Theatre of the Republic is celebrating 45 years next year, and HE was on the original board! Kind of explains why no one questioned the two strangers wandering through the back stage area 45 minutes before curtain. He was a little, as Lisa said, light on the facts. "When did you move in here?" "Oh, a while ago." "How'd you come into this place?" "Oh, it just opened up." But he was a great tour guide anyhow and showed us everything we could have asked to see and more. Including two racks containing probably at least 80 tuxedos that had just been donated. Why doesn't that happen to US?!?!?

On our way out, we were deposited in front of the ticket booth to sign up for the email list. The FABULOUS guy manning the ticket booth was in the middle of a rant about the huge pain in the ass that is cast and crew comp tickets. The audience for this rant was a woman who, I discovered to my great delight, was wearing a "Frau Stage Manager" shirt. We bonded. We got on the email list. We made plans to invite friends back to see Gypsy this summer. We left a bit exhausted and with heads a-spin just as the audience was beginning to arrive. I love the theater community.

We headed home and realized that our change in plans meant we could go to the first meeting/rehearsal for Brunswick Little Theatre's Fezziwig's Ball and Murder Mystery (tickets on sale now!). We went to our own little theatre, we danced, we discussed costumes, we got assigned characters (I'm Mr. Fezz himself and very pleased about that; Lisa is Mrs. Cratchet), we discussed how to fit all that we do into our space that seemed so huge just a little while ago, and we left smiling and happy and looking forward to the future.

Opening Night

Well, it happened.

That wasn't completely guaranteed at all, a fact that kept me up nights for the last couple months. Oh, I put on a brave face, I played my role as fearless leader telling everyone not to worry, that the show WOULD go on. I sold tickets with only the vaguest notion of how I'd refund them if disaster befell us. Most of all, I simply did something very hard for me and completely, willfully buried my self-doubt. Call it the power of positive thinking if you will, but I convinced myself that somehow I'd stop anything or anyone that tried to prevent us from opening this past Friday night.

We did it. After a lot of work by really a very few people, we did it. Lisa and I went to the first show in front of a (pretty much sell-out) paying audience. I saw it happen, saw the patrons arriving and picking up tickets and entering the theatre. We saw them enjoy the really comfy seats, saw them enjoying the company of friends and then enjoying the show and leaving happy. It should have felt......triumphant maybe? I mean, it was a long road, a bit of a fight actually, and I'd been building this night up as a sort of final battle, a chance to walk away with a win or a lose. But it wasn't. It was totally anti-climatic. I didn't walk out happy about all we've done, I left worried sick, still, about all we have left to do.

I've written before about all that needed to be done. It's not over in the way I expected it to be. Not by a long shot. I'm still going to be losing sleep over contractors and their bizarre sense of time and space, inspectors that may or may not come visit, permissions we may or may not need or have and another show coming up in just 14 days (and we still have another weekend of this one to get through).

 Now to be honest there are a lot of positives to list right now. The work paid off. They came and left happy. I've heard noting but praise for the venue from patrons. They love the seats, the lobby, even the parking. They were able to hear and see from all their seats. They were able, except a couple of ladies whose GPS led them to the ILA Hall up the road, to find us with no problems. Those with, ahem, mobility issues, were able to use the handicapped ramp easily. Our lobby easily held the crowd until the house opened. It's a GREAT place to see a show, much better than anywhere we've been outside of the main theater at Odell Williamson Auditorium. It's safe and comfortable, which a lot of our past venues were not. So hooray us.

The problems come from the performance side and the matter of permitting and inspections. I'm just confused by the whole permitting process, so I'll leave that aside. But the performance issues have me a bit worried.

In two weeks the Hermit of Fort Fisher opens and we need to have our lovely Southern beauty parlor turned into a cement bunker on a sandy spit of land at the southern tip of Pleasure Island. I've seen both the real bunker in question and the set used by the company putting this show on in their own space, so I know it can be done. However, I don't know how. I have a meeting with the Hermit director hours before we are scheduled to strike the Steel Magnolias set to determine what needs to go, what needs to stay and what pieces of the set can be left hanging around to await transformation into the beach and bunker. I'm hoping to have our Techincal Director at this meeting to start discussing tech needs for the Hermit show, because there are some and I'm not sure how they will be met. Are you sensing the pattern here? I know enough to know what needs to be done, but not enough to figure out how to do it. It's frustrating the Hell out of me. One condition of our lease of this theater to the Hermit people was a stage exit out of sight of the audience. This meshed nicely with the ADA requirement for a handicapped egress from the stage and will take the form of a ramp outside the building. I'm stressing out having this thing done in time, as it was promised to both the government and the leasees. So I've been stopping by the property every afternoon to ride herd on the contractors, who, in a very troubling way, remind me very much of Larry, Daryl and Daryl from The Newhart Show. I lose sleep over this.

Here's what the REAL bunker looks like. I imagine there was less graffiti in the Hermit's time

Then, less than two weeks after the last Hermit show, we have an event that may utilize the entire property at once. Our annual Fezziwig Ball has turned into a Fezziwig's Ball and Murder Mystery The ball and mystery part will take place in the same theater as the two shows have, but without the chairs present. I'm not sure where to put 100 chairs, especially as I'm not 100% sure how we'll be using the rest of the property. Our original plan, and the one we've been promoting, calls for a Children's Victorian Christmas Party in one of our two classroom buildings and a Victorian Food Court in the outside area between the main theater and the classrooms. It all sounded great when we planned it, and I really would still LOVE to see it come off as planned, but it's going to be an adventure. The chairs can go, for temporary, any of several places, that's not too big a problem. It will just depend on what space we use for children's stuff. But one thing I wasn't counting on was the transformation of the kitchen I suspect was supposed to play some role in the food prep situation into a lighting/technical workshop. Cooking anything more complicated than boiled water in there right now would be impossible. I saw all this work and thought how great it was our Frank the Tech Guru had found room to play until it dawned on my how close the Fezz Situation was. Now, again, this isn't a solution-less problem, it's actually a pretty easy solution, simply pick up all the equipment and tools and parts and control panels and send them back from whence they came. But it is just one more thing it never dawned on me would need to be done. I am finding I am not as good at thinking things through as I like to think I am.

Add to the mix the fact that while all this is going on we have two plays rehearsing and a children's workshop in full swing and you have one very busy theater manager with a very full brain. And a very complicated Google Calendar.

I'm wondering if I bit off more than we could chew to finish off the year. I mean, it WAS me who pushed for all this, so if it ends up turning into a train wreck, I'll take the blame, but I still think I would do it the same way if I got a chance to try again. I would rather fail from trying too much than fail from not trying enough. If this theatre wasn't being used this much, I think it would hurt us in the long run. I think also that while we are pushing the limits of our volunteer base, we are learning a valuable lesson. We need to know if we have the enthusiasm among our "BLT family" to make this place work long term. If this year ends as a train wreck, if we can't pull off all these projects, we will know that the support for a place of our own simply may not be there in anything but lip service. We've all TALKED about how we need to have our own place, but BLT needs to see how many people are willing to work to make it happen. If nothing else, I've unintentionally devised a great first test of that question.

Running Past The Roses

Sometime last year I re-posted something I found on Facebook, some meme with a photo and the words "I give great advice, but I seldom follow it" or some such thing. My friend immediately responded that she had the very same quote on a coffee mug on her desk at work, seems to ring true with quite a few people. When I began this blog, part of the reason I chose the name Pooh Sticks was because it represented to me taking the time to slow down and enjoy the simple things. Rather than using the bridge simply to cross the river that lies between you and your destination, we should stop, find a stick, go back and drop it in and watch what happens. Life is about the journey towards our goals and we miss much if we get too focused on the ends. I prided myself on being the sort to appreciate the little things, to take full advantage of the journey, to keep perspective.

I've totally ignored that advice, that part of myself, this summer. And I feel the worse for it, but I don't know how to fix it. The problem is, the things that have me running and not slowing to enjoy the path are GOOD things, largely even fun things. I am blessed with great opportunities and I feel like a heel whining about them. But I haven't slept through the night since mid-July, I regularly have a huge nervous pit in my stomach, it's an effort to not let my stress bleed over into lack of patience with others and I often fail in that. My pastor told me he loves reading about all I'm up to on Facebook and that he alternates between jealousy and sympathy and sometimes both at once. That's it in a nutshell.

Serving as president of Brunswick Little Theatre this year has been fun. It's also been much more than I bargained for. I had no idea how much stuff would end up in front of me, how many decisions others would refuse to make and leave to me, or at least wait for my input then do whatever I said. But that was ok, I could handle it just fine. Then this summer our treasurer, Jack Mical, passed away suddenly. Jack was my friend, he and I used to joke about being two fish out of water on the board, two guys with zero talent, zero experience and zero training in theater. All we had was a desire to see our friends (the same ones it turned out) with the talent, experience and training make magic and give the community great opportunities to enjoy live theater.  He was always there, always cheerful and always finding a way to turn what he knew he could do into concrete help. I admired that, learned from it, and then he was gone. And his job devolved to me. No question I was going to do it, and do it right, I mean this was the one way I could honor Jack's memory. I just had to figure out how. So with a bit of work and a lot advice I've managed to keep the theater's finances straight. Doing that in the middle of stage managing Into The Woods was a little TMI. It wasn't killing me, but it began the waking up at 3 am each night with my heart in my throat over some aspect of the books.

Then we decided to lease and run our own theater. And not only a theater, no, we moved into a 4 acre complex with several buildings, classrooms, a kitchen and more bathrooms than any normal group of people need. I signed the lease on opening night of Into The Woods, at the time our theater finances were at a low ebb and ticket sales for the Big Summer Musical were not big at all. No stress there, huh? I insisted on signing physically on the set of the show. I wanted to ask Lisa, John, the director and a few others to lay hands on me while I did it, but didn't want to look too much like the basket case I felt. I just wanted some good mojo, some clear sign of moving in the correct direction. I knew it would be a big undertaking. I'd thoroughly annoyed many long-time BLTers and some board members by throwing up every road block I could, by raising every objection, by voicing every caution while this was being discussed. They were convinced this was a no-brainer, this would be a great thing, nothing but positives. I couldn't even wrap my head around all the new work, all the new problems, it would bring. But in the end, at a special meeting, I voted along with everyone else to sign the lease. And I've been a wreck ever since.

It's been so very much more than I imagined. I liken it to moving into a new house, but more so. We have to prepare the space for we don't even know what yet. We have lots of ideas, ranging from the normal shows and workshops, all the way to sing-a-long movie nights and a medieval fair. That's part of the challenge for me, we are full of ideas, but less so on execution. Take for example the Fundraising Committee we created back in March. They were the ones who took it upon themselves to find a property for us to move into. They spoke with several realtors, a land developer and a landscape architect; they toured four properties; they generated over 4,990,876,412 emails (approximately) but have to date raised not one penny of funds. The members of the committee have donated generously themselves, but that's kind of not the point.

These are the people who said how easy it would be to operate a theater. They have ideas. But the place needs material and lights and paint and a schedule and some idea of what to use which space for. The size of that 4 acre property has shrunk massively in practical terms with requests for dance studio space, children's workshop space, a painting area, a technical work bench, a sewing room, prop storage, costume storage, and oh yeah, there' s a huge hollow tree prop with spiral staircase on  site now. We have requests to do dinner theater and a coffee house and babysitting and build a proscenium arch and knock out a wall to put a tech booth in the attic. And so far all these ideas are coming to me. Oh, and we don't have permission from the county to use the building as anything other than a church yet.

The board isn't so much absent as disengaged. We only meet once a month and most never look at their emails. They simply think we can carry on as we always have and it will all get done. I'm trying to spread out the work and it has helped a lot. I have a great guy in charge of grounds and maintenance, but he is loath to tackle any permitting issues. Jen is helping with fundraising, so we will now actually raise funds and build a real, active, renewing membership base. Lisa found me a treasurer, but the transition will take a while and a bit of work on both our parts. Still, I end up at the least overseeing all the aspects of running a theater, or really more like running a performing arts complex. How the Hell did THAT happen?

Add to this work troubles and challenges that I'm too pissed off about to even write about now, and it's been a lot of sleepless nights and days where I feel like Indiana Jones with that huge rock rolling after him. I had a Saturday morning with no plans yesterday and spent about 6 hours updating and adding to the theater's website. I could have let it wait, but when I do (like right now choosing to write this instead of adding a show and auditions to all the local media's calendars) I feel guilty and stressed over NOT doing things. It has sucked the joy out of stopping to smell the roses and I don't like it. I live less than a quarter mile walk to the beach. I moved here because of the ocean and the beach. And I haven't had sand in my toes in over a month.

I hate to even say this stuff, on the one hand. I mean, I wouldn't give up any of this willingly, it's rewarding and exciting and fun. Who can say they had the chance to start up a theater complex? I really feel like I'm making a real difference and doing something very worthwhile. But at the same time it's taking a toll. I need to find way to handle this and still enjoy the Pooh Sticks bridge. I'm just not sure how.

Do you know?

Making Into The Woods Our Own

Community theaters get access to shows only after they have run their course on the professional circuit. We are constantly told people would LOVE to see us do Wicked or The Lion King, but we can't, they haven't been released to amateurs yet. This means the shows we produce have already been seen by, or at least become a bit familiar in a second hand way to, theater fans. They enter with expectations, not in the open-to-anything way they might go to see a show that's brand new to the world. This can present a challenge, as we simply can't do some of the things Broadway can, from a technical standpoint for sure, but even from an artistic standpoint. The last two shows Brunswick Little Theatre performed on the big stage at Odell Williamson Auditorium were perfect examples. Everyone has seen Wizard of Oz and they come to the show expecting to see familiar things. Beauty and the Beast is so popular on Broadway and as a touring show, that even those who haven't seen it know what it is "supposed" to look like. We strived to meet these expectations and I think succeeded pretty well, but it was fun this year to get a chance to break out a little bit.

Into The Woods is familiar to theater fanatics, a favorite of many, but less so to the general public. This gave us, and director Jen Iapalucci in particular, an opportunity to put our own stamp on the show. Jen possesses the most unique and wonderful form of creative intelligence I've ever run across in a person. She can imagine the most amazing things then figure out how to make them reality. This is why I call her Walt. She has a blog all about it, you should check it out. Jen took a hold of Into The Woods, an already amazing piece of art, and made it her own with two big additions. First off, she gave the whole show a Steampunk look with the sets and costumes. This turned out really well given the duality and sort-of-real/sort-of-fantasy feel of the whole show. The costumes are spectacular and the set is wowing audiences, so it's clearly worked. The Wilmington newspaper reviewer even liked it despite being "over" the whole Steampunk thing himself. The cast loves the way they look and that helps a show tremendously. Kudos to Jen and the whole set and costume crews.

But Steampunk versions of Broadway shows aren't unique. What really impressed me, and what makes this show really ours, is her addition of an all-ages (but mostly children) ensemble. The Broadway show features nothing of the sort. I never told her so, but I admire Jen's courage in doing this. It's really putting a part of herself on stage for approval. This grew out of Jen's very personal love for children and insistence on making them (including her own) a part of BLT's summer musicals. She was all-in on this, too. The ensemble wasn't

just layered on top of the show, she wove them into it. If it worked, the show worked, but if not, if audiences saw it as a distraction, it could have hurt the whole production. Jen created mini-scenes, little stories within the story, for the kids to act out. She used them to create special effects like the giant and the beanstalk. She used them to create mood and help enhance the characters around them (in one instance, for example, they are flowers that wilt as the Witch approaches). They aren't icing an audience can scape off and still enjoy the cake beneath, the are baked right in there. That was a risk, to be sure, but one Jen is uniquely qualified to take.

Most of the Ensemble in a publicity photo

The Beanstalk

Milky White, the hen that lays golden eggs and stolen giant's harp are all ensemble members

Watching this come together, I knew it worked just as Jen envisioned it. The kids took to their roles with gusto and skill and the adults allowed them right into the show with enthusiasm and understanding. I knew *I* loved it and "got" what was happening, but I wondered how a critic would see it. Would he be one of those who believed local amateur theater should be judged solely on how close to the original they could get? Or would he get it as I did? We got our answer in the Star News' review yesterday:

Iapalucci's decision to cast a chorus of kids bolsters the whole fairy tale angle. Children play the birds who aid Cinderella and they open green umbrellas on a staircase to create Jack's beanstalk. It's a winning idea, even if a couple of the young performers' roles aren't entirely clear. 

He got it. And that was nice. But I find what I like most about Jen's  additions to Into The Woods is that, even as personal and very "her" they are, they make the show BELONG to all of us in the cast and crew. This isn't Broadway's Into The Woods, it's Brunswick Little Theatre's Into The Woods.

And it's EPIC.

What A Long, Strange Trip It Was

Ok, so the show didn't include any Grateful Dead (for which I am eminently grateful myself) but I couldn't resist. For nine glorious days over the last couple weeks, I got to play roadie to a rock band. How many people get that chance? I had done this last year on a similar show and loved it, so I was really looking forward to this run. I had to cut it back a bit. Last year I spent well over 40 hours the first week at Franklin Square Park, but this year work just wouldn't allow me the same flexibility. It all worked out well, though. I put in a respectable bit of work and the director stepped up and helped set up and break down the show to a much greater extent. Director Mark worked his butt off on this show, I gotta say he IS pretty rock and roll. As it was, I ended up getting to the park between 4 and 5 pm and leaving about 11:30 each night. Let me tell you, the 4:30 am alarm comes early on that schedule. I think I'm still recovering. But oh my Lord, was it ever worth every killer second!!!!

My main role, the one I volunteered for, was light guy. I had my first experience with this last year at the British Invasion park show and have picked up a little extra here and there since then from Frank Blackmon, our resident tech guru and a retired electrical engineer. The light set-up for our park shows is necessarily simple, we have two metal lighting bars we erect and are able to screw some more lights into the frame of the gazebo that serves as our stage. We started with eleven lights, three facing the stage on each light bar, one over the piano, three over the drums and one aimed out towards the audience in the general direction of the port-a-potty.

While Frank and I were sitting on a park bench congratulating ourselves on getting all these lights hooked up in such a way that they came on and off at our command from the light controller (not as easy as one would hope), along comes the show's director with his vision for the lighting of the show printed neatly on two pages of paper. I was kind of tickled that he thought to put thought into the lighting, so I wanted to make things look as much like he wanted as possible. The problem was our lighting isn't so much traditional stage lighting, used to set mood and affect color and such, as it is essentially a series of spotlights that can illuminate certain areas of the stage. They are too close to the performers to blend together or light any more than one or maybe two people at a time. But Frank isn't the kind to be deterred and always likes making anything more complicated (he IS an engineer after all) so he immediately decided we could add more lights, ones with definite color to them. "We need back lighting, anyhow" he announced and we set about finding some smaller lights and hanging six of them, two each red, yellow and blue, in the back left and right corners of the stage. I'm not sure how well they conveyed the moods the director was looking for, but I diligently attempted to light the songs as he directed. Upon hearing they'd be backlit, the costume queen/vocalist Jen turned to her sister, another vocalist, and announced they'd need slips under their hippy dresses. That's why we have costume people, the light guys wouldn't have thought of that. :-)

Here you can see all our lights but the drum and piano lights, they are facing towards the back attached to the gazebo itself. See the little one aimed towards the audience? Supposed to light the way to the port-o-potties. I labeled it "PP" on my light board.

This is my light board and the notes I made myself so I'd know what to turn on and off when. The notes got soaked in a rainstorm and needed repair. The beer just seemed to fit this show perfectly.

So, I tried very hard to light the show as Director Mark hoped while also putting light on the singers and instruments that were involved in a song. I tried to time bringing lights up on background vocalists just before they began to sing, to bring lights down on the vocalist during instrumental breaks and to focus attention where it should be at any given time. I'm pretty happy with the job I did there. But the most fun part of the job was what Frank called the "DJ Light". It was affixed center stage aimed up above the band so it hit half on the gazebo and half into the tree canopy behind and above with funky, multi-colored lights in a variety of patterns. It looked pretty cool, but I figured it should be used sparingly, especially since most of this show's songs weren't of the hard rockin', funky light needing variety. I saved it up in the first set for Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit. It turned out perfect.

You see, no one notices the lights, they shouldn't notice if you are doing a good job, I think. But in this instance, the debut of the DJ Light timed with the opening words of the song got audible gasps and "ooooo's" from the crowd. My father asked me if I paid the folks sitting next to them to "oooooo" on cue, actually, the first night he came to the show. This really made me happy. White Rabbit was Jen's first solo number of the show and she killed it every night. The timing of the song in the set had something to do with the crowd reaction as well, I think. Concerts ebb and flow as they go along and this song marked the end of an ebbing of the energy level and a reminder that this was a rock and roll show. It was one of those Walt and Roy moments, Jen in the spotlight on stage as artist and me under the tech tent helping things along in the background, both combining to create a great moment that actually got real response from a few hundred souls each night. I'd never experienced anything quite like it and it was really, really fun. Here's a link to the YouTube video, it's cool :-)

Aside from the actual running of the lights, my roadie work was much more mundane. I set up and broke down much of the non-music related equipment, ran cords (lots and lots of cords) hither and yon, plugged said cords back in when over-exuberant fans pulled them out causing black-outs and loss of half our sound, and provided tape and staples and velcro as needed. I was sort of stage manager of the operation, though less so than last year. One quasi-stage manager task I sort of adopted for myself was attempting to get the audience sat down after intermission and ready to hear the first song of the second set. It began with Crosby, Stills and Nash's Find The Cost of Freedom, which is beautiful and this band did acapella to wonderful effect. Harmonies were their strong suit. Problem was, without "house lights" to blink, people had a hard time knowing when intermission was over. Mark wanted the song to start quietly on a darkened stage, which was an awesome idea and a great effect, but because it was so dim and mellow to begin with, and it's a really short number, the song was over before anyone really knew they were singing. I tried a variety of methods to find out when the band planned to begin the second set and get the audience's attention, but none worked. The sound person was often just as confused and still out visiting in the crowd while the band was trying to begin. No one knew what was happening and it was sort of a frustration each night until the last. That last Sunday, during church actually, I had an idea that actually worked. Before the band took the stage, but while they were about ready to come out, I used our microphone in the tech tent to announce that BLT was dedicating the next song to those who gave their lives in defense of freedom. It was heartfelt on my part, it fit right in with it being Memorial Day weekend, and it got people's attention. For the last show at least, that beautful song got the attention it deserved :-)

 After three nights of tech rehearsal and six shows, we were all exhausted. My experience ended in an entirely appropriate manner. The band had all left for a cast party and it was just roadies, tech folk and groupies left in the park (Lisa and I, the Awesome Flow Family and Frank). Everything was finally packed away and locked up. We looked at our tech tent. It was old and took a beating during a storm the first weekend of the show. We had decided earlier to retire it, but Frank wanted to take it home to try to combine with another broken tent to make one good one. Did I mention he was an engineer? Anyhow we set upon the poor thing trying to fold it's broken and bent frame into something that would fit in a pick-up truck. For some reason, we all found this hilarious. So there we were, five nerds wrestling with aluminum sticks in a city park at near midnight, laughing our butts off. It may not be the first thing you think of when you think rock and roll, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Into The Woods

Into the woods,
It's time to go,
I hate to leave,
I have to, though.
Into the woods-
It's time, and so
I must begin my journey.

I don't hate to leave, leave this work week behind. I'm kinda really happy to switch gears from rednecks and thugs and malt liquor and trying to spin straw into gold so my company won't sell half my area of responsibility and make my position in the company tenuous. I'm ready to walk into a room full of excitement and talent and hopefulness. I'm ready to work with amazing and talented people, to help a friend, to learn more about this world of theater.

 Into the woods
And through the trees
To where I am
Expected ma'am,
Into the woods
To Grandmother's house

Yeah, I'm expected. "I would expect nothing less" is how it was put when I asked if I could be of assistance at auditions today. It's not granny's house, it's Building F-is-for-Fabulous on the campus of our local community college, but being plum out of grannies, it'll pass. It's an odd space. It's hell to take photos that don't turn an odd sort of yellow there. It's a special needs classrooms in its real life, but today it'll be Audition Central. 

The way is clear,
The light is good,
I have no fear,
Nor no one should.
The woods are just trees,
The trees are just wood.
I sort of hate to ask it,
But do you have a basket?

This is my third stage managing job, and yes, I finally feel like the way is clear and I really have no fear. I'm not saying I can tell where this journey will take me or exactly what I'll wind up doing, but I know what the job is in the general sense and I know I can do it well. The unknowns are the fun part. I've got a new basket (bag o' tricks) courtesy of my parents at Christmas and it's full of the tools of the trade - duct tape, medicine, staple gun, duct tape, flashlights, safety pins, scissors, duct tape, Velcro, pens, paper, duct tape, screw drivers, hammer, pliers and duct tape. 

Into the woods
And down the dell,
The path is straight,
I know it well.
Into the woods,
And who can tell
What's waiting on the journey?

The path will be anything but straight. Jen declared this show "EPIC" months ago and I think she'll wind up being exactly right. I would imagine any production of a musical is an adventure, but community theater is especially so. Volunteers are different critters from paid actors. More fun, more interesting and more impressive in my opinion, but different and twistier. Rehearsing in a classroom for a show to be staged in a real big theatre is a challenge. We get one week to rehearse and work out technical issues in our performance venue. Twisty. But I've seen Jen and Michael Stringer (our musical director) do it before and they will do it again. 

The truth is, no one can tell what's waiting on the journey. But today we take a big step toward finding out WHO will be going on this journey with us. Break a leg, friends. I look forward to being your go-to guy when the path gets twisty.

SPECIAL POST-AUDITION UPDATE:

So, Jen chose to use the song from which I took these lyrics as the movement part of the auditions. Proving once again that great minds think alike :-) I'm so excited, there are so many positives surrounding this venture. 

And I already had to use my Bag o' Tricks :-)