Category: summer fun (Page 1 of 7)

I LOVE community theater!

Because of my commitment to Bells on Temple Square and family and church callings, I can only usually do one show per year, with some years that I don’t get to do any shows at all. This year, I REALLY wanted to do a show. Since retiring from Bells was such a loss, I needed something to help fill that void. But which show?

Last year I did my first show with Lehi Arts. Seussical was so much fun, and I loved the experience. I heard them mention that next year they would be doing The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Wow, I thought. That’s could be fun. Fast forward to spring of this year. I kept an eye on the audition announcements and there were several shows I wanted to try for. Alpine was going to be doing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor dream coat, and I LOVE that show, so that was #1 on my list, even though I knew that I would only be a chorus member of villager. My summer schedule was still pretty full, as I had a bells concert in June, then a trip to New Mexico also in June, and we are going on a cruise in August. So, whatever show I did had to fit within those parameters. That narrowed it down a lot, and I was planning on auditioning for Joseph. However, I saw on the Lehi Arts website that the dates for the Hunchback show were being changed to earlier in July, and auditions would be in April. It now fit into my timeline, and I sent in an audition video (because auditions were nights I already had rehearsal).

I was not called back, but when I looked at the call back list, I was BLOWN AWAY. So many names of so many amazingly talented people! I knew so many of them from other shows and was instantly impressed with the quality of the cast. I was kind of shocked when I read my name on the cast list, but there it was as a member of the choir. At our first cast meeting, I met the directors and the cast, and was impressed. I hated to turn in my paper of the dates I needed off in May and June, and hoped they wouldn’t just boot me out for lack of availability. But they did mention that they understood if we had a few conflicts, but in July, they would OWN our lives. Good. In July I was available. While at that first cast meeting that night, my sweet grandbaby was born. So maybe that’s a good sign.

We started out learning the music, which is VERY difficult, with tons of part divisions, AND it’s mostly in Latin. And there is SO much of it for the ensemble to sing. Sweet. I bought the soundtrack and started listening to it ALL the time, trying to learn these hard songs. And did I mention extremely high? I chose to sing alto because the soprano part was so dang high, and they needed altos.

June came, and my last concert with Bells was wonderful, and terrible. Wonderful because it’s probably the best concert we’ve done to date, and terrible because it was my last. We had a retirement “party” where they presented me my plaque for serving for 10 years, and I got lots of pictures, and cried. At the concert, my dear friends were there offering hugs and commiserations that they would miss me, and I just couldn’t even talk about it, because I knew I would be crying, and it’s hard to play effectively with tears running down the face. But the world did not stop turning, and I’m trudging forward. About that time, I got a message from the director asking me if I’d like to play a saint in the show, because several people had dropped out. Absolutely, I would! I didn’t really know what the saints would be doing, but I knew they were the statues that are around, and that they sing. I had just been learning my ensemble blocking for Topsy Turvey, but I would gladly trade that part to be a saint.

In this show, the saints do a lot of standing really still. And then sing–while standing still. There is NO dancing, hardly any blocking, a lot of standing. SWEET! I learned that standing perfectly still is a lot harder than it sounds. But learning the new songs and a few lines was awesome, and the show was coming along.

In July, we moved the rehearsals from inside the air conditioned arts center to the hot parking lot. Yes, we rehearse in a parking lot. Because that’s where there is space to build the amazing set.

We also participated in the Lehi parades to create interest in coming to the show.

The cast was coming together! The saints were all told to choose an actual saint that is really on the cathedral at Notre Dame. Since most of the saints had already chosen their people, I choose St. Clotilde.

24 Dec 2009 — Sainte Clotilde statue in Sainte Clotilde church, Paris — Image by © Philippe Lissac/Godong/Corbis

I liked her long braids, and it’s been fun to try to emulate her.

But this show, this story, has meant so much more to me than just a play. The message of acceptance has been taken to heart by ALL the cast. There are no divas (even though these people are CRAZY AMAZING TALENTED), no drama, no exclusions. It’s beautiful. Quasimodo is someone I’ve come to love and care for, and I am heartbroken over his sadness. It’s been a way to heal my broken parts, and remind me that life goes on. I’m so thankful for everyone involved in this show. They have poured their whole hearts and energy into making this a project to be proud of.

Our Director, Colleen, said it perfectly.
“It is in fact, the most beautiful show we’ve ever produced. The cast is perfection in every way. They have all changed me in some way or another. There were more than a few times I was uncertain of our vision, preparedness, and felt very out of shape directorial wise. We had a handful of core players who believed in us and actively worked to keep the cast confident in us. To our cast, thank you for trusting us.
I love this story. It is more dramatic than the cartoon, but completely relevant to our day. Sometimes our exactness in a belief system creates harshness, piety, and an inability to truly hear and see others who do not share our beliefs. Feeling as though you are an outcast can be the loneliest feeling there is. Seeing people for who they are and loving them perfectly is the most important lesson from this show, and the greatest lesson ever taught by Christ. I am grateful to have been trusted with sharing it in our community. It has changed me. I hope you can see it, it will change you too.”

Thank you, my hunchback friends.

Not everyone understands why I do what I do, and why I love it so much. Why would I want to “waste” my whole summer just rehearsing and performing a play? It interferes with family things, makes me tired, takes up most if not all of my free time, and for what? A free t-shirt and a water bottle?

I auditioned for the Scarlet Pimpernel because I really liked that show. I had seen it before and loved the music, the costumes, and the story. I knew I would only be in the ensemble at best, if I did get in. And, I thought if I did this play at the Scera, it would have less conflicts with my weekly bell choir rehearsals, since they don’t perform on Wed nights at the Scera. It was difficult to not be in the Alpine Community Theater play, since I have a lot of friends in that group, and Natalie was in that play, too.

There was a real sense of community in this show. Almost like a family. Maybe it was from the Director.
Jerry is 83 years old and has been directing and acting for over 60 years. He is really quite amazing, but he’s soft spoken and when he gives direction, most of the time it’s in a positive way. On our first attempt at a run through, after it was done, he said, “Well, that was pretty good for a Monday.” Which we knew meant that it wasn’t that great, but he was still accentuating the positive.

At the beginning of the rehearsal process, they schedule people to only have to come when their scenes are rehearsed. Since I was only in 6 scenes, I didn’t have to come every single night, and when I did come, it was usually not the whole night. Kind of easing us into the reality that we would be spending every night with these people. When it’s run through time, there’s a lot of free time for the ensemble. The leads have things to work through, and the rest of us get time to chat. We learn things about each other, like that fact that about half of the cast is related. Seriously. I was talking to one girl, and she pointed out her four sisters and about 8 cousins. “Oh, and Jerry’s my grandpa:, she said. So, most of the cast knew Jerry was related to Jerry, or had been in a show with him at some point.
Even though MOST of these kids are young (like I could be their mom, that’s how young they are), I grew to love them. At the end of the show, one of the cute 20 year old boys came up to me and gave me a huge hug. “You’re my mom crush,” he said. He tried to explain that by saying I was like a mom, or like the mom he would want, or something like that. I understand, though, because I grew to love that boy very much, as well.

One night at rehearsal, I brought some balloons and ended up making animals and swords for a bunch of people. I tried to teach a few people how to make things, and I made LOTS of swords, since this is a sword fighting show. But then I worried that I was making TOO much noise. Have you ever tried to twist balloons quietly?

When we moved to the outdoor stage, we started adding in the scenery, props, costumes, lighting and sound. IT went from just a bunch of people saying lines to telling the story. One Saturday we spent several hours just learning our scene changes. Every set piece had a name, and we were all assigned to move these pieces at different times in the show. It made things more complicated, because instead of just sitting backstage between our scenes, now we had to figure out when we were doing our costume changes, and when we had to be there for our scene changes.

I am happy to report that I never missed a scene change.

We really had to work together to make everything work. There are some pretty complicated costumes, and a lot of us needed help to tie corsets, get out of dresses, do hair, fix hair, fix skirts, etc. And few things bring people closer than helping each other change clothes. I mean, you’ve seen me in my underwear, so we must be pretty close, right? We would laugh in the dressing tents as we were all changing, laugh as we fixed our hair, but not right backstage, of course.

We started rehearsals June 17. We started performing August 2. We did ten performances at the Shell. A couple of them, we weren’t sure if we would actually have a show because it was rainy and windy right up until the show started. But we never had to cancel a show for rain. Then, once our run at the Scera was over, we moved everything over to BYU, and did four shows right in a row for BYU education week. Because the stage is different and things had to be changed to accommodate it, even though we had just done 10 shows, we had to have additional rehearsals to get things right. We ended on August 25. So, that’s 14 actual performances we did together. More than two months we spent a LOT of time together.

We formed some pretty good bonds. We performed through sickness and injury, jokes and laughter. It’s also a much more emotional show than I’ve ever done before. There’s love, hate, betrayal, deception, imprisonment, death, beheading (that usually leads to death), and joy. When you go through such a range of emotions, even if it’s just pretend, it really brings you closer together.

The cast had a few get togethers through the show. Many nights people would go out after rehearsal, and they even had a couple of parties. Because I do have a family and live 30 minutes away, I didn’t go to many of those, but I did go closing night out with some of the cast to Sonic. Sorry to the servers, it was late and we were loud.

Now that the show is over, it’s like a part of my life has ended. Well, a part of my life HAS ended. I have to go back to ‘normal’, and remember with fondness my time that I got to share the huge Scera Shell stage with so many friends.
I laugh at the pictures that friends post of backstage and rehearsals (thank you, facebook), sing “Falcon in the Dive” while I load the dishwasher, or hum “Madame Guillotine” while I’m doing laundry. I will never forget this experience. I may be crazy, I’ll admit, but I’m glad I am. I am so glad that I took that leap out of my comfort zone, that I was brave and tried something new and scary. It’s only when we try new things that we can have new experiences, meet new people, and have more joy.