Sunday Morning Random Thoughts After One Cup of Coffee

I saw this morning that I wrote ten more posts to Pooh Sticks in 2014 than I did in 2013, hooray me. But it was half of what I wrote in 2012, so I can do better. There are a few pretty unrelated things bouncing around my head this morning so instead of picking one I'm going to share them all. Aren't you the lucky one!

Into The Woods is a good movie. It was. Really. I highly recommend it to everyone, even those not inclined towards musical theatre. It has ethos and pathos and it's visually gorgeous. The acting is top-notch and the singing is very good. I'm not a fan of Meryl Streep the person (from what I can tell of her at least), but as an actress, she deserves the huge salary she pulls down. Wow, just wow. The choices they made as far as what to leave in in and what to cut out will grate on the nerves of theatre aficionados, but they make the movie work well in its own right rather than a screen version of the stage show. I do hope, though, that this movie's popularity will drive tons of people to see their local theater's stage versions. Live theatre trumps movies. Period.

My "Moment In The Woods" had zero to do with the show. One of the themes of this show is "moments" and people like to draw one that especially speaks to them. Despite watching BLT's performance many many times and enjoying it from start to finish, I realized watching the film version that I wasn't particularly married to any one part of the show or song or line. My moment came after the show was over, after all the audience had left, after all the actors and crew had left. My moment was, as we were leaving at the end of the night, seeing the glow around Jen, the director, that came from those nights when what she had just seen on stage matched up with the vision that she had been carrying around in her head for who knows how long. Her happiness some nights was almost palpable and seeing that in a very close friend was worth all the effort.

Galavant is on tonight. I can't wait. This thing looks absolutely awesome. It's a musical comedy that looks to be going completely over the top in a delightful way. Kind of Monty Python-ish, I'm hoping. AND this is my chance to do something completely frivolous and watch this show from start to end, for however many weeks it runs, no matter what I am "supposed" to be doing. So there! :)

The Winnie-the-Pooh Workshop kicks off this afternoon. I'm headed to the theatre this afternoon for an hour or so to help wrangle parents and paperwork as almost 30 children prepare to venture into The Hundred Acre Wood. I loved Pooh growing up, I shared it with my sister when she was young, John's first stuffed animal (you know, the one you buy him before he's born?) was Pooh Bear and he came home in a Winnie-the-Pooh onesie. If it's windy I always announce that it's a blustery day. If it's cloudy I say "Tut tut, it looks like rain". I play Pooh Sticks. A piece of me has always and will always reside in the Hundred Acre Wood. This Let's PLAY! session is making me very happy.

It's time to take the Christmas stuff down and I'm OK with that. Usually this day depresses me. Not this year. It's not that I didn't like Christmas this year, it was actually one of the best ever. But I am happy. Lisa and I are happy with life and the way it's developing for us. John is happy and growing into a wonderful man-child. My family is happy. Life is GOOD. I'm just happy and satisfied and fine with moving forward into a really cool 2015. 

Stage Mangement Appreciation Day

No, I'm not going to appreciate myself for being a stage manager, but I AM going to appreciate the chance to work in this role, and the patience and understanding and teaching and pure joy I've gotten from those I've had the opportunity to work with. And I'd like to REALLY thank Jen, a great stage manger (professional stage manager, thank you very much) in her own right, for offering me the chance to enter this world and for helping me find my place in it.

And it's a place I really, really like. I get to be part of the show without being "in" the show. I have the best seat in the house for free. I get to use duct tape. I've gotten to perform shadow puppet shows and create sound effects. I've gotten to work with flying monkeys and a steampunk chicken and cross-dressing men and leather-pant-and-corset-clad women. I've fixed costumes, kept props from catching fire on stage, bandaged cuts, wrapped ankles, wiped tears and mediated disputes before they turned to fisticuffs. I've also shorted out a good third of a theatre's electical system and thrown an entire production into disarray. It's not easy and I'm not at all what I'd like to be in the job yet, but it's tremendous, exhilarating, challenging and sometimes just plain silly FUN.

See? Best seat in the house.

I had a shadow for a lot of the night during Into The Woods shows.

They are making the "scary trees" pose. By the end of the run, I had ALL the backstage crew doing it too.

I never knew they had ladders that did this. I had to hang these lights so I could blow their bulbs up later ;)

I got to wear a headset and make shadow puppets during The 39 Steps, what's not to LOVE about that?

Good thing I look so FABULOUS in black. And so do those freaks :)

At Odell, I have a huge backstage in which to work. At the Amuzu for 39 Steps, we had this. It was cozy

Getting to the theater before anyone else and just being there is kind of magic.

Making sure no one eats the props is also my job. Sometimes I've had more success than others....

Really, seeing a show from here is pure, unadulterated FUN. You should be jealous.

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.

Things I ALREADY Love About BLT's Into The Woods

We can start with that poster. Cool, huh?

I've been happily watching this show come together and largely keeping my mouth shut about it. We open two weeks from last night. Two weeks from this moment, I will be backstage at Odell Williamson Auditorium. I like that idea. So, I'm going to list a few of the other things that make me happy about this show, and particularly Brunswick Little Theatre's production of it.

1. The Writing

James Lupine is credited with "the book" on this show. That's, to my simple understanding of musicals, the words between the songs. I imagine he and Stephen Sondheim worked together hand and glove with the lyrics and spoken word bits. The story is told largely in song, so they had to. It really worked, in ways I truly admire as an aspiring writer.

During the opening number, there's a knock on the door to The Baker's cottage. His Wife asks who it is and The Baker responds in a way that sums up so clearly where this journey is taking us. Into The Woods is largely about normal people's responses to unusual situations. It is a great mix of the fantastic and the mundane, both feeding our imagination and relating to us in ways we can completely identify with ourselves. The Baker and his Wife take it for granted there's a witch next door, but it doesn't mean they completely buy into that part about "magic beans." That just strikes me as funny, they accept she's a witch but are suspicious that the beans she claims are magical really are more than just beans. The whole show and all the characters in it are like that. They are upset by a giant walking around their little world, but accept that giants sometimes do that. Cinderella talks to birds and her dead mother, but is shocked to see a giant beanstalk. It just goes to show that "impossible" is often in the eyes of the beholder.

I'm also in love with the idea that so few characters have names. The story is centered on The Baker and The Baker's Wife. Don't assume the show is sexist for identifying the female lead only as the wife of the male lead, the two Princes and called Cinderella's Prince and Rapunzel's Prince.  We also have The Witch, Granny, Little Red Riding Hood, The Wolf, the Evil Stepmother, and Cinderella's Father. Cinderella and Rapunzel have names, of course, but they are so well-ingrained in our cultural identity that both are essentially meaningless as personal monikers. The only two "real names" in the show are the Evil Stepsisters Florinda and Lucinda, which I'm pretty sure speaks to some greater point, but I haven't figured it out yet. The lack of personal names lends the whole story a general appeal, as if it's about US and not just THEM. I'm sure that was the idea, and this isn't a new or particularly subtle way to go about generalizing one's lessons, but I love it nonetheless.  There really is a bit of all these characters in all of us. We are greedy and cutthroat and kind and generous, we are clever and simple, we are loyal and fickle, we are brave and cowardly. And our children WILL listen, just as we did to our parents and their children will to them someday.

2. Steampunk

Jen decided to give this show a steampunk flair in its costumes and set, and it's looking great. If you aren't familiar with the term, steampunk refers to a sort of style based upon Victorian-age science fiction. It's Jules Verne-esque stuff, full of brass and airships and goggles and proto-industrial tech. Not to brag, but I was steampunk WAY before steampunk was cool. I was drawn as a young'un, totally mesmerized, to the 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea attraction in Disney's Tomorrowland. I mean, it was a submarine that looked like a big, metal fish. And you could see all the bolts! I loved blimps and airships. I had a Goodyear Blimp model in my room. I wore goggles and funky hats whenever I could get my hands on them. Back then I was weird. Today, it's a whole subculture and people are going to a lot of expense and trouble to look like I wanted to when I was 8. Jen has designed a whole show to fit my elementary school imagination, and I couldn't be happier to be a part of it.

3. The Costumes

I'll let them speak for themselves.

4. Milky White

Into The Woods features as a sort of character Jack's cow, Milky White. Milky White has been portrayed in different productions using everything from a big prop cow on wheels to an actor in a cow costume. Jen has chosen the middle road, an actor carrying a cow prop.  It's a great idea as it gives the audience a cow but also allows an actor to portray the cow's, well, emotions. The cow goes through a lot. And the actor Jen chose, a teenager named Chase Costen, has totally embraced his bovine side. In rehearsals, I've seen him react with his face and body in logical ways to what the cow is doing and seeing. When they line up to do vocal warm-ups, Chase brings his cow. He gets that they are one piece, not a boy carrying a prop. It's a little thing, but it really tickles me.


That's about all I feel I can say right now. We build the set next Saturday and I am sure I will be adding that to my list. But I don't want to give too much away. You'll have to come see for yourself. Find out all about it here. You'll not be disappointed

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 :-)

Giants In The Sky

There are Giants in the sky
There are big, tall, terrible, awesome, scary, wonderful 
Giants in the sky

So sings Jack in Stephen Sondeim's Into The Woods. Jack makes a trip up the beanstalk and glimpses a world that changes the way he sees the old, mundane world to which he returns. His experience has changed his outlook, he now sees somehow more even when looking at the same things. I can identify with that.

My experience in theatre has been that sort of revelation. I think it's been more noticeable and perhaps pronounced because I wasn't brought up around the performing arts (except as an audience member). I sort of climbed that beanstalk all at once and took in a new world and it's changed the way I look at things when I go back to being that simple audience member.

This past weekend, the lovely Lisa and I returned to the wonderful Durham Performing Arts Center and saw Book of Mormon. The show is outstanding and hilarious and just so, so very WRONG. We loved it. I would have loved it 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago, I'm sure I would have. But I saw it through different eyes than I would have then.

The first musical number features about ten Mormon missionaries standing on risers and each ringing an imaginary doorbell. The audience loved it, they laughed at the first finger poking the air and bringing forth a "Ding-Dong." It was a great effect, and an obvious one for working Mormon door-to-door evangelism into the show. But I watched it with a sort of heart in throat feeling, silently cheering on the sound tech who was hitting that button at just the right time to make the doorbell gag work. He did great, only one was a bit late, but I know THAT'S the thing he'll remember about that scene in that show, the one thing that wasn't perfect. And I also appreciate how hard getting that timing down can be. The boy had to do the exact same effect when he was helping out with Tuesdays With Morrie at our local strip mall theater. He nailed it, and it impressed the actors enough that they brought it up to me at intermission. Tiny things, things that may last a second at most, matter. I never would have given the doorbells a second thought five years ago.

Later in the show is a song that is in part about dysentery. Yep. It's actually got really catchy lyrics, but they are less then safe for work. Anyhow, the dancers during this rather educational segment use a long roll of cloth and sticks with different colored tassels to represent a river and, ahem, several bodily fluids. It's set to a tribal beat and moves along faster and faster as the song (and the unfortunate ailment) progresses. Watching this, I couldn't help but picture the poor choreographer on the first day of learning this bit. Sure they are professional actors, but come on, it's a hilarious song and the movements (hee hee) are not only hilarious as well, but physically tricky. I'm sitting there picturing our crew trying to pick this up and laughing that much harder because of it.

Those are just a couple examples, I could go on and on, but I don't want to spoil the show for anyone who hasn't seen it. My point is that our experiences aren't only about the joy and learning we receive while they are happening. The real magic of life-long learning, of every once in a while just climbing that beanstalk just because it's there, is a richer life --  happily ever after.

Moving Forward

As luck would have it, the first post of 2014 is also going to be the 100th post on Pooh Sticks. I have been trying too hard to think of something to write that does the confluence of essentially meaningless numbers justice. I wanted to look back at the past year and forward to the new. I wanted to set a tone. I wanted it to be most of all POSITIVE. Our 2013 saw a lot of difficulties and sadness and I'm ready for a new day. But events overtake that. Bad stuff happens all the time, it doesn't fit neatly into our divisions of time. Already this month tragedy has struck our community and serious health concerns struck a young member of our family, and we aren't two weeks into the new year yet. But this blog is about my happy place, be that Disney itself or the one we make for ourselves here at home by loving and celebrating and doing the things that make us happy together with those we care about. So today on Pooh Sticks we celebrate one of the great additions to my happy place, my family's involvement in community theater, because it just so happens that tonight I officially take the reigns of the Brunswick Little Theatre as president of it's Board of Directors. See, it's topical :-)

The story of our introduction to community theatre can be found in this post about Opening New Doors. Long story short, my friend Jen asked me one day to be her stage manager for the production of Wizard of Oz she was directing. I said "yes", then went home and Googled "stage manager" and began a journey into a world I had known next to nothing about. I can never thank Jen enough for helping open that door. It's really enhanced our lives by giving us a whole new vocabulary, mental and verbal, to use to interpret the world. We don't look at any entertainment, especially live entertainment, the same way. We always enjoyed watching "making of" documentaries and the extras on DVDs, but now we can relate to Peter Jackson's dwarf camp prior to filming The Hobbit because we've seen munchkin camp in Jen's back yard. They are amazingly similar. We watch the rehearsal footage on the Making of The Sound of Music special and can't help but recalling our actors doing all the same things during rehearsals for BLT shows. The perspective simply makes entertainment even more entertaining. Knowledge has a way of doing that, I highly recommend aquiring as much as you can, especially in areas you are now unfamiliar with. Add to that the many opportunities for family involvement that theater offers, and I can not recommend the whole thing enough. We love it.

So now I'm having to put my new-found knowledge to use as president of our theater board. I am still unclear exactly how this happened, it was mostly a matter of being the only guy willing, I guess. I do still feel a bit in over my head, but I'm getting over it. The board work is actually much more my speed than the show work (though I am learning!). I can organize and sell and move a meeting along as well as anyone. I've already achieved a few small victories (in my mind at least) and am more hopeful than wary moving forward. We have what looks to be a very entertaining season ahead of us and I have some very good people working with me on the board, so I think BLT's future looks pretty bright.

As does my own. My family is healthy and happy and loving and safe. I have another summer working as Jen's stage manager (this time on Into The Woods, a show I've actually seen on Broadway) to look forward to. We are planning a return to Disney World in the late fall to check out the Christmas happenings and the New Fantasyland expansion. The economic outlook appears to be helping my work prospects. All in all Moving Forward looks like a very good thing. And I'm dedicated to making it so. I wish you the same.