Art

     I have been drawing for longer than I can remember, my mom still has some of the drawings I scribbled was a 2 year-old (I won't be showing those off here). For as long as I can remember I've had stacks of spiral-bound notebooks all over the house. I'll fill one up, tear out the good stuff, throw the rest away, and start with a whole new set of ideas...some of my best puppet/character ideas have come from random drawings I've done at 2:00 am, in the middle of a church service, or on a road trip... Never know when inspiration might strike! I'll draw almost anything: cartoon characters, animals, celebrities...when I was 10 my mom tried to sign me up for art lessons, but I refused to take them, because I wanted to draw what I want, and a bowl of fruit just didn't hold my attention....
        Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Calvin and Hobbes, and Garfield where an addiction for a while, I even created my own comic strip "ARTernate REALity", and wrote some 2,000+ strips...I still have those...somewhere....

          

         One day, I hope to illustrate children's books... Yeah, I have a lot of dreams, deal with it!

Little Shop of Horrors

         

          Since I've been involved with theatre there are a few shows I've desperately wanted to be in/work on, this Fall it looks like I'll finally be able to mark one of them off the list! In November, Springer Opera House is presenting Little Shop of Horrors, a musical comedy about a singing, man-eating plant from outer space written by Disney Legends Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. The original Off-Broadway production opened in 1982 and starred Lee Wilcof and Ellen Greene as Seymour and Audrey, the latter going on to re-create her role for the 1986 film directed by Muppeteer Frank Oz. The show came to Broadway in 2003 and starred Hunter Foster, Kerry Butler (be still my heart!), and some of the largest puppets ever produced for the stage!
       One of the Artistic Directors of the Springer casually mentioned to me backstage at one of the final performances of Cinderella that "we'll have a project or two for you next season, too", and though he couldn't tell me what it was, or anything about it, I got the feeling it was something big. I didn't think much about what he'd said for a few weeks, but when I finally got word of the season announcements some could say I "freaked out", but that would be a horrible understatement.
        Almost EVERY professional puppeteer in the country has worked on this show in some form or fashion... and if I, a nerd from the middle of nowhere, can get a gig in this amazing show, maybe my dream of being a Muppeteer one day might not be so crazy. And the Springer... THE Springer Opera House having enough faith in ME to pull off one of the biggest puppet shows in the history of musical theatre... I might have a future there, too. The pressure is on.

          The thought of doing this show has been in my head for nearly 5 years now, I've been sketching, and problem-solving this character for what seems like forever, so I certainly have a few ideas as far as the puppets are concerned. In all my excitement, I decided to create what I call a "proto-plant" for my first production meeting to give the team a taste of what I knew I could do with the designs. Using just scrap material from other projects, and a few ping-pong balls, I knocked out this build in just a few hours. Finally seeing this plant in 3D made this project seem even more real.

             There will be 4 puppet versions of this plant, ranging from a simple hand puppet for a very complex puppet large enough to move across the stage, and eat 3 of the 4 principle cast members. In order to prepare myself to build, and ultimately perform this monstrous character, I reached out to Martin P. Robinson, a gentleman who plays Snuffy, Telly, and a number of other characters on Sesame Street, and designed, built, and performed Audrey II for both the Off-Broadway and Broadway productions of Little Shop. I contacted him through his website, and he replied with a very detailed email about the plant and the materials to build her. Some could say I "freaked out", but that, too, would be a horrible understatement.
        And that brings us to the present... I get to start building in a few weeks, so as everyone is heading back to school, I'll be cramming for my big test, too! There's a great creative team that will be helping me (especially on the 4th and final plant in the show), and I'm very excited to see what we can come up with as a group. If we do our job correctly, no one will think about me sweating like crazy inside these huge puppets, but ,with any luck, be afraid that this plant might actually be hungry for them, too!

Once on This Island

            In 1990, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (the team that wrote the fantastic music for Seussical, and many more Broadway shows) wrote a little show, based on the 1985 novel My Love, My Love by Rosa Guy, entitled Once on This Island. The show is loosely based on Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid, with elements of Romeo and Juliet thrown in for good measure. It is what's known as a "Sing-Through" musical where the dialogue is to a minimum, and almost everything is sung, much like Seussical, Rent, or Les Miserables.
         In January of this year, Auburn Area Community Children's Theatre launched a production of this bold and beautiful show. I was on board to stage manage and build special props and costume pieces for the production, and had even gone into meetings with the creative team about all the fine details of the show, however...The audition process turned up too-few guys for the casting requirements and the director called me in for a private audition for one of two lead roles. You see, this would have technically been my Senior show, but, due to the perks of being homeschooled, I got to graduate a year earlier...so technically I wasn't "too old"...just "too graduated".
         I did the best I could with the score at auditions, and landed the role of "Papa Ge: Sly Demon of Death". In the context of the show "Papa" is the closest thing the story has to a "villain", he's also the most vocally challenging as far as the music is concerned,  having to hit some very high F#s that I've never even tried singing before! Since the show IS mostly score we simply listened to a demo recording at the read-thru, the whole time I was gritting my teeth wondering if I could possibly hit all the high notes people were expecting of me...
       I find it much easier to memorize music over dialogue, maybe it's the rhythm, I'm not sure why exactly... But I'd memorized my material fairly quickly (mostly backstage at Springer during down-time at Cinderella) so I was ready when my first big rehearsal rolled around about 2 weeks into production. I'd listened to the music on repeat even before I was cast, but I'd still not attempted those darn notes, but on this day of rehearsal as the music built I belted out what sounded like that F# I needed...and it WAS! I rarely surprise myself, occasionally an ad-lib with a character during a show gets me, but with hitting these notes, I was finally convinced I could be in musical theatre! Now don't get me wrong, I would never just coast through the show once I had tried everything, I started "strength training" my voice so I could be sure I hit what I needed to hit every night.
        I read in an interview with Broadway actress Sutton Foster, that when she was starring in Anything Goes on Broadway, the score was so intense for her that she couldn't "relax" during a show, she had to live "note to note". I'm no Sutton Foster, but that is exactly what I had to do for Once on This Island. I couldn't think too much about how the note sounded or where it was coming from, I had to get caught up in the story, and trust that the notes would show up. Was everything perfect? I don't know. But I do know that I was IN the story every night, and THAT is what theatre is, my friends.
        My cast mates where fantastically talented, I'd worked with many of them before, but some where new and welcome additions to the family. Papa Ge doesn't have interactions with too many of the principle or ensemble members of the cast, but getting to work with my fellow "gods", and the lovely Steffi "Ti Moune" Ledbetter was an extreme joy every night, for me...not Papa Ge, of course! Our director, Kim Hirt, whom I've had the honor of working with on Fiddler..., Seussical, Alice..., and Hairspray took to this show with as much energy as she had given us in the past, not so much to "direct" us, but to help us see and understand what this show "was".
           Without spoiling too much of the plot, Once on This Island is a very beautiful, very touching...and very confusing show if you don't look at it from the right point of view, and those who know the show know exactly what I mean by saying that! In fact, I didn't really "get" the show until opening night, during the final song of the show tears started forming in my eyes... Once on This Island IS theatre. Every night we tell OUR story. It doesn't matter how many theatres have done the show, for that 2 hours it is ours and no one can take it away. For that 2 hours, we share our hearts with the audience, and they open theirs to us.
      As I write this, it is 6 'o clock in the morning, I woke up over an hour ago thinking about this show. What it was like working with the cast, how beautifully the show was put together, and how I miss working on "children's" shows where you can very easily "leave your baggage at the door" and emerge yourself into a whole new world full of a totally different kind of thinking. When I come to any new show, it is my goal to take that stance, and focus only on the show's heart, on the show's purpose.
         And that's my story.

Is This Thing On?

I haven't written anything on this blog in quite some time. Not that I haven't tried, on the contrary, I have tried posting several entries but for some reason I couldn't publish them... Hmmm, but now I'm back, and will finally update on EVERYTHING as quickly as possible!

            1. I'm still acting in theatre, having recently been featured in Hairspray and Once on This Island! More "in depth" looks at both of these shows coming soon... I hope!

2. Since last September I have been working for Springer Opera House (The State Theatre of Georgia), teaching Puppetry and Puppet Building classes with The Springer Theatre Academy. I can't begin to describe the trill it is to work with a HUGE groupe of people who live and love theatre like I do! In December, I got to design and build a set of animal puppets for Springer's production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, I also made a brief on-stage appearance in the show as "Puppet Master". How cool is that?

           3. I'm also on TV! In the last few months I've been working on a national TV and web show that shoots in Phenix City, AL called Light Talk with Sam Beman! Chase Golden and I appeared as guests on this show in May of last year, and since then Sam has been giving me lots on-the-job traing, letting me build some new puppets, work crew on shoots, create and star in some skits, even "host" an episode myself! It's been very nice to work in-studio and shoot with a great guy who's (almost) as quirky as I am!

      I've also been making regular appearances on Heath and the Checkershoe Band Show, a local Christian-based show hosted by a group of puppets! These shoots are always fun, plus they give me another chance to play with my buddy Hare!

4. Speaking of Hare: My web show The Puppet Improv is going strong! With my puppetry partner, Alex Hubbard, and a new group of up-and-coming puppeteers from Springer's Theatre Academy, I've been able to work on some REALLY fun stuff, most of which will be coming out in the next season of the show...including a special episode featuring one of my characters at the "Happiest Place on Earth"!

Well, that's all I can think of right now...I'll be in touch soon!

Alice in Wonderland: March 3-5, 7&8

I'll just wrap all of Alice in Wonderland up in one post:

Didn't have too many mishaps, other than a few plunger malfunctions during my fight scene...much to the joy and amusement of the stage hands. We added an additional performance for Tuesday, March 8, because tickets sold out for every show! That's two years in a row that ticket sales have allowed me to live in a fantastic world for another day! It's really been too long for me to remember all the details, but I do remember what a great show, and a great cast I got to work with for my senior year. Thank you all.

March 2, 2011 pm: Opening Night

So, even though our first audience didn't do too much for our spirits, we were all still quite excited for opening night. So, before we knew it (and after a nap) we were back again, ready for the show to begin.

And the crowd was great! The laughed in ALL the right places (and then some!)

My only complaint for this performance comes late in the second act... as The White Knight, I, after a quite comedic scene, give Alice a lift to the 8th chess square (all of Wonderland is a giant chess board after all). To accomplish this Alice jumps on my back, piggy back style, and I gallop away on my broomstick horse (with a kick stand!)

As part of my costume, I wear a tool belt with a roll of duct (duck?) tape, a paint brush, and a wooden mallet on it, but one night during our final dress rehearsal Kati had issues hanging on because of that darn roll of duct tape, so from now on I make sure I shift my belt to the side so she won't have that problem again, however it caused me a problem when I performed a stunt. I get thrown from my horse, whom I affectionately refer to as Buttercup, Buttersworth, or Fredrick, and get thrown to the ground. On this night I'd already shifted my belt and I came down on the wooden mallet..hard.

But I couldn't dwell on my pain, because hey, we had a show going on! So I kept going, and got through the show, it wasn't until I was in the dressing room changing that I realized I was still quite sore for the fall... I've done stage falls before; Milky White the cow's death, and a few more in some workshops, but I'd never landed on a hammer before... that was something new!

But other than a slight bruise, the show was great! Got a lot of good reactions (during and after the show), and I don't think it could have gone better!

Six more shows to go, and the end is in sight...

March 2, 2011 am: School Show

What can I say about our school show? Well, I suppose I'll just quote the audience on this one...







...Exactly. We heard very little from this audience; not to say they didn't enjoy the show, they just didn't give us much response during the performance, and that can be slightly discouraging.... but we did the show, despite the crowd's non-reaction.
Let's see... did anything funny, odd, or just plain wrong happen during the show? Ah, yes! So, at the beginning of Act 2 Alice (Kati Judd) meets up with Mouse (Stuart Bell), and Mouse begins telling her "tail", (clever pun, no?) but just as she gets started Mouse is interrupted by a Card Soldier (Mitch Warren) doing battle with The White Knight (me). So I am doing some stage combat with a wooden sword and a plunger, (The White Knight is a handy man, of course.. I also find plungers humorous) battling the Soldier who has only a wooden sword to defend himself (ha ha!) As we are battling his sword spontaneously combusted.. well, not really, it just broke. BUT shards and wood dust did fly out. So, being quick about it, I up looked at him and said: "Now I've got you! You sir, are my prisoner!" A line I was supposed to say anyway, but this made it even more effective. And the audience had no idea this wasn't supposed to happen, ah, the joy of live theatre...
            We hang up our costumes, and head out, knowing that we'll be back in a few hours to do it all over again!