Odditions

The closed auditions went well last night. Considerably FEWER folks showed up than who had promised, but I did have a chance to work with Arryck, Tami, and A.J. to fine tune the audition process.

And the folks we had were great... both of them. If this were a two-person show, we'd be golden, but there are eight other slots to fill. On the positive side, it's two less great people I've got to find during open auditions. I also got to work through a couple of the scenes I've been prototyping. They seem to work okay, but I need a few more folks to read them.

And hopefully, the folks who didn't show up for the closed auditions WILL show up for the open auditions. Arryck and Tami taught the auditioners the choreography in just under twenty minutes. They are a pleasure to work with, and I will now go to the ends of the earth for either of them. And A.J. Holmes was a great find. He served as our audition accompanist, and did exceptionally well. My only regret was that we only needed him twice.

So, I'm a little antsy in anticipation of this weekend's turnout for auditions. I'll probably have nothing to worry about, but right now, to quote Valmont, it's beyond my control.

Still lacking a stage manager. A couple of options, some riskier than others, but nothing that grabs me just yet. Crossing my fingers on that, as well.

- Sean

And So, It Begins...

Thursday night begins the production phase of the show, starting with the "closed" auditions. These auditions will give me a chance to work through a few items, and will give Arryck a chance to try out his audition choreography. We're going to be using A.J. Holmes for audition accompaniment. We're going to have to pay him, but I'm fine with that. He was great to work with during Charlotte's Web auditions, and I think this will lead to an enhanced relationship with him and ETC.

I have been prepping the script and vocal score. I got all of the music from everyone late last week, so I've been working on a good way to collate all the versions of the score. Remember that I have FOUR sources of music:

• The base score as provided by Theatre Maximus
• Alex Lacamoire's arrangements from the 2001 National Tour
• Dan Schachner's supplemental guitar, drums, and bass arrangements from the 2000 Off-Broadway production
• Other supplemental sources (ragtime incidental music, etc.)

And I have to combine each of these into a set of cohesive charts each for vocals, piano, guitar, bass, and drums. And the arrangements SPECIFICALLY indicate that they are not to be photocopied, so I have to annotate AND flag each of the charts so that the musicians can read them AND access them easily. Yikes!

The script is done. I got all of the original blocking and comments OUT and infused my own. I still don't have a Stage Manager, so the more blocking I can print into the script, the longer I'll be able work without a Stage Manager... not that I want to, but I can spread myself a little thinner and get more work done until someone steps up to the challenge.

I'm limping along without Bill Wagner, the musical director. He's taking his band students on a trip, and he's not available for a week. I'd hoped to have all the music together ahead of time for him, but it didn't happen. And in the process of reviewing the music, I decided to use a few more of Alex Lacamoire's versions: All For the Best and On the Willows. His charts are GORGEOUS (to the extent that I feel guilty writing on them, even in "soft black pencil"). Dan Schachner's charts are solid, but they don't REPLACE the core charts for the piano. And some of the charts for his bass and drums are two or three generations old. Alex's are fresh, new printouts. Ahhhh.

I hope to get everything ready to go for auditions tonight. I need to extract some script for sides, and I still need to get back with Brian Harwell regarding the percussion audition stuff.

Busy busy.

- Sean

Staging - The Menhirs

My scenic design for Godspell is minimalist: I am using essentially the same black box set that Agnes of God will use. But I'll be incorporating six "things" on stage that all fit together, and which store props and costumes. They'll be six to seven feet tall, and will likely be about two feet wide, but they'll be wedge-shaped, like slices of pie.

So, in adding my blocking to the script, I discovered that I had to name these damned things. Objects, wedges, pie pieces, units, whatever. None seemed right.

Then I remembered something from my youth: Asterix and Obelix, the cartoon characters. Well, particularly Obelix, because he carried around large stone objects for a living. The name escaped me for a while until I hit Google and got the name: menhirs. It essentially means "long stone".

And even though they won't look like stones, I at least have a name to hang on these damned things.

- Sean

Charlotte's Web - Recap

"So, what have you learned, Dorothy?"

In a nutshell, my experience with Conejo Players' production of Charlottes' Web was wonderful. My primary goal was to work with Erin Fagundes, Shawn Lanz, Arryck Adams, Celeste & Aaron van Etten and the rest of the Conejo Kids and build those relationships. That, I did in spades. And I also got to work with a lot of other great people like the Shaver family, Mike McCauley, Jeff Raum (and his family), the Parmenters, the Grodmans, the McCabes, and many others.

I wanted to work at a venue closer to my home. CPT is much closer to my home, but deceptively so: it's still twenty miles away, beyond the half-way point to ETC, so I really only save 10-15 minutes in travel time. Still, closer it is.

And finally, I wanted to perform in something my kids would enjoy. They did, and so did folks at work. I'm fortunate here in my current job to have a group of folks who, despite the craziness of the job, truly appreciate each other. At my previous job, it was rare to have folks within my business unit come to see my shows. Other friends I'd made came out to support me (Rayna, Liz, Sue, Sam, Brad, thanks!), but the core coworkers in my group just didn't. I guess I made the right choice after all!

And what great resources this group has at it's disposal. There is a huge potential for achieving greatness with Conejo, but I don't want to sap resources from our own productions.

Either way, it was time well invested, with a big, fun, happy dividend to boot.

- Sean

Opening Night in the Square and High Street Extension: REDUX

In the meeting with the ETC Board last evening, I presented both plans for leveraging the resources we're already putting into Godspell to gain a better return on investment. The first plan was to present opening night up in the Heritage Square courtyard, leveraging the promotional engine already in place for the Concerts in the Square series. The second was to move the production up to the High Street Theatre in Moorpark to try to glean eight extra performances out of the show.

In reviewing the High Street extension, Ralph Mauriello of the High Street Theatre Foundation gave me a very useful spreadsheet that called out the specific costs that would be associated with bringing the show there. I categorized the costs into Tiers, ranking them by which costs would be paid in order, according to the total amount taken in from ticket sales: musicians, royalties, and rent were tier one expenses; promotional, cost-recovery items, and consumables were tier two; all the way down to offering staff and performers a stipend at the lowest tier. Then I projected three scenarios: an average turnout (120 seats per show), poor turnout (60 seats per show), and sell-out (250 seats per show). For the poor turnout, we were only able to cover the tier one costs. With an average turnout, we covered all costs and wound up with about $2000 income for both High Street Foundation and ETC. And with sell-out, we both take home over $10K, which would be great. The problem was that we had no solid information on whether our "average" scenario was accurate or not. Based on feedback from others who've attended shows at High Street, our "poor" scenario seemed to be more typical. As a result, the recommendation was that we would decline the offer to move the show to High Street after the Petit run.

But on the positive note, the ETC Board was very enthusiastic about presenting opening night up in Heritage Square. My main goal in presenting this plan was to garner support within the board, and have someone work with the Heritage Square group to coordinate the logistic aspects of the performance. As mentioned before, I'll have no problem managing the technical aspects. The show will already be designed for portability. So board member Ruth Ballin agreed to chair the sub-committee to handle the arrangements. The numbers presented looked great, and many of the ETC board members already buy season tickets for tables to the concerts event, so we've already got a leg up on table sales. Concerns were raised regarding whether or not we dilute the rest of our run with this "big bang" opening, but honestly, we rarely do that well on opening night anyway. I'm excited to see how things shape up, but for now, it's a go!

That's it.

- Sean

Script Status & Clarification

There was some concern that I was changing the script from the original text, and let me assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. I value the text of the script above all things, and as both an actor and director I seek to present the material as originally conceived by the playwright.

That said, Godspell is a special case. The script as-written is a transcription of what was originally developed as a semi-improvisational piece. I have seen it presented a variety of ways, ranging from a word-for-word exact presentation of the core script, to minor contextual changes, to complete re-adaptations of particular sections. Some worked. Some didn't

That said, when I stated that I'm retyping the script, I am doing it for two reasons: to clarify and isolate the original text (essentially removing ALL stage directions and blocking); and to clean up and streamline the text for the purposes of our production (remove character names and assign color names, and format the script for easier duplication, readability, and use).

That's it. Nothing exotic. No rewriting of John-Michael Tebelak's wonderful script.

That said, I've finished entering the first act and will probably complete the second act over the coming weekend. I will print it out and review it for mistakes (and have a second or third set of eyes do the same), and then I'll format it for ease of use on stage. After that, I'll start developing my "paper" blocking, using a model of the set and colored plastic game pieces, to get a sense of the necessary "mechanical" components of the blocking. I'll review those, and they will get entered into the script as well, proofed, and then that will be our base script for rehearsals.

As a side bar, I always create a copy of the script and music that my performers can tear the crap out of, marking, hilighting, etc. to their heart's content. The notion of "marking in soft pencil" in librettos or songbooks that must be returned is retarded and doesn't acknowledge the need for an actor to "consume" and "personalize" their script. I take those scripts and tuck them away, untouched, until it is time to send them back. I do the same for the charts as well, as I expect my musicians and music directors to interact with the sheet music.

That's just my two cents on the subject.

More to come this weekend, including a couple of new costume designs and a first pass at a ground plan. Also, I meet tonight with the ETC Board to discuss opening night in The Square and the High Street extended run.

- Sean

Audition - The Media Blitz

So today was the day I finally got ALL the audition notices out to as many sources as I could. I hit all the local newspapers (Star, Daily News, Reporter, etc.), the local NPR radio stations, the theatre departments of the local colleges, and all the local community theatres. I also did the usual paid submission to backstage.com for good measure, even though I personally have not had anyone audition who did so because of the posting there.

So, if there's anyone I missed, or who you know who can post this, please feel free. Here's the release:

Open auditions for Elite Theatre Company's production of Godspell will be held at ETC's Petit Playhouse in downtown Oxnard on:

- Saturday, April 1, 2006 from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM
- Sunday, April 2, 2006 from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM

The production will feature all new arrangements and stagings, tailored to the intimacy of ETC's Petit Playhouse.

Auditioners are asked to prepare a vocal selection, approximately two minutes or less in length (32 bars), demonstrating their vocal range and technique. Please provide sheet music in your key or a CD with accompaniment only (no vocals).

Auditioners will also be required to perform one or more cold readings from the script, will learn and perform a group movement/choreography number, and are urged to demonstrate any additional skills (juggling, magic, puppetry, etc.).

There is no pay and no fee to participate.

Visit the Audition Information section at http://elitetheatre.org for full details.

- Sean