A New Dress: Little Theatre name change aims to help build audience

By Ken Keuffel
JOURNAL REPORTER
Published: January 30, 2009

The "Twin City" moniker is popular in Winston-Salem. It identifies a restaurant, a chorus and a minor-league hockey team.

And in September, it will figure prominently in the new name of an old theater company -- when the Little Theatre of Winston-Salem officially becomes Twin City Stage.

Norman Ussery, the Little Theatre's executive director, said he will announce the name change tonight at the Arts Council Theatre before the Little Theatre begins its run of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change. The new name will coincide with Little Theatre's 75th-anniversary season.

The name change is being introduced gradually. Current patrons will be reminded of it during I Love You and two other shows this season. And when the 2009-2010 season brochure goes out in May, it will feature the new name as well, along with the original one to avoid confusion.

Ussery said last week that the Little Theatre has 1,500 subscribers and 500 "frequent" patrons.

"They know who we are and what we do, but we discovered that there are more than (these) 2,000 people living in Winston-Salem," Ussery said with a smile. "They don't know what we do. They don't know where we are.… If we're going to get a new audience, then we have to do some new things."

One of those "things" is a new name and a logo to go along with it.

Ussery said that the decision followed both extensive study -- several focus groups with different constituents were consulted -- and hiring the Russell Agency to develop a marketing and branding strategy. A $30,000 grant from the Winston-Salem Foundation underwrote the cost of hiring the agency.

The new name will help clear up confusion among people who have mistaken the Little Theatre for the Children's Theatre of Winston-Salem, Ussery said, and it will better describe what the company does, namely offer a "professional, contemporary product." The theater operates on a yearly budget of about $800,000. It offers plays, musicals, education programs, a second-stage series and collaborative efforts with other organizations.

"We truly feel that the name that has been selected is representative of the theater and everything it offers," said Carrie Collins, who chairs the theater's board.

The term "Little Theatre" won't disappear from the theater's publicity entirely. The new logo has a tagline that reads: "Put a Little Theatre in Your Life."

"It not only pays homage to the Little Theatre name but it's also a call to action to try it," Ussery said.

Theater officials say that the adoption of "Twin City Stage" is part of a larger strategy to increase awareness, increase ticket sales, attract more people to auditions and sign up more volunteers.

To get an idea of what the theater company hopes to achieve by changing its name, consider that the Arts Council Theatre has 540 seats. The Little Theatre generally performs a musical 11 times, a play seven times.

Ussery said that he would love to sell out each show and add two more performances to each run. He called such a scenario realistic because research indicates that the new name will help change audience perceptions of the Little Theatre and lead to greater ticket sales. If two performances are added to each run, the Little Theatre will realize a 15 percent gain in yearly ticket revenue on its current sales of $300,000, assuming that the performances sell out.

Danny Alvarez, a local theater fan, attends shows in New York and has served the Little Theatre as a stage manager. He said he believes that the name change is necessary, pointing out that community theater often comes with a stigma.

"You think glorified high-school productions," he said. This statement goes along with what Ussery believes, namely that several misconceptions are associated with the word "Little."

"People assume that either it's a small room with about 100 seats in it and a bunch of amateurs running around in grandma's bed sheets for costumes, or that it's really geared for children," he said.

In 2000, Alvarez started working across the street from the Arts Council Theatre, where the Little Theatre also has its offices. Until 2003 -- when some friends persuaded him to approach the Little Theatre about getting involved -- he didn't believe the company put on high-quality shows and stayed away from it. His perceptions changed dramatically when he started participating in shows.

"Yes, it is community theater, but it's as high-end community theater that you're able to produce," he said. "People need to know it's close to professional theater."

■ Ken Keuffel can be reached at 727-7337 or at kkeuffel@wsjournal.com.

The Journal Review......

What Fun: A lot to take away with this
By Ken Keuffel
JOURNAL REPORTER
Published: September 20, 2008

The Little Theatre of Winston-Salem's current production of You Can't Take It With You is very funny.

But it manages to get a serious message across about values and priorities -- and one worth pondering as the show's many cast members astonish us with their eccentricities on the Reynolds Auditorium stage.

You Can't Take It With You was written by the famed team of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.

It conquered Broadway in the middle 1930s, running there for more than 800 performances before being made into an Academy Award-winning film. It's of another time but remains remarkably relevant to ours.

The plot revolves around the Sycamores and the Kirbys, two radically different families that are brought together because Alice Sycamore (Ashley Davis) and Tony Kirby (Ben Palombo) have fallen in love.

The Kirbys are strait-laced, normal and consumed by the Wall Street culture of building wealth.

The Sycamores are just the opposite. Each real or adopted member of that clan zealously pursues his or her own interests.

Some of their hobbies are mundane, but many others are truly bizarre and include evading the taxman for years, making fireworks in a basement, writing plays about war and sex and circulating candies wrapped in paper on which incendiary messages are printed.

The contrasts between the happy Sycamores and the (initially) unhappy Kirbys are vividly drawn in director Stan Bernstein's attractive staging. We get a palpable sense of the wacky disharmony into which the two families fall.

There are a number of fine individual performances. I found that of Mikey Wiseman particularly memorable; he plays Kolenkhov, the ballet instructor who wears his Russianness on his sleeve in exaggerated-but-endearing fashion.

And David Westfall plays Grandpa Vanderhof quite convincingly, teaching us why it's sometimes important to quit the rat race, relax and live a little.

■ The Little Theatre of Winston-Salem will present You Can't Take It With You through Sept. 28 in Reynolds Auditorium. Evening shows will be at 8 p.m. tonight, Thursday, Friday and next Saturday, with a 2 p.m. matinee Sept. 28. Tickets are $18, $16 for seniors and $14 for students. Call 725-4001.

Aside from the physical toll the role of Essie took (constantly dancing around on tippy-toes is exhausting!) I had a great time!

An Evening at the Theatre

Mikey, Mallorie and I worked concessions last night for The Little Theatre of Winston-Salem's production of Jekyll and Hyde. Selling "death by chocolate", "killer key lime pie" and "slasher strawberry" ice cream was a small price to pay for getting to see the musical for free. The show was, overall, amazing.

I was very impressed with the set, as it was the first time LTWS used mechanical tracking to change the scenes. Usually you only see these kinds of scene changes in professional theatre, and it's done using computer technology. But with the help of NCSA design and volunteer stagehands cranking the wenches, Jekyll's laboratory, Lucy's bedroom, etc. were moved into and out of place effortlessly. Add some red light, lots of fog and London backdrops - perfect.

The review was spot on regarding David Joy as Jekyll/Hyde. I've had the pleasure of working with him, and of listening to him perform in several other musicals. Still, I was unprepared by the range of his voice. I have never heard him sing like he did. He was absolutely outstanding!

Courtney Willis played Emma, Jekyll's fiancee. She had a gorgeous voice and I thoroughly enjoyed watching her onstage. Hyde's prostitute girlfriend, Lucy, was played by Lauren Stephenson. While Lauren was capable in her role, the "In His Eyes" duet by Lucy and Emma was owned by Courtney.

The ensemble cast was equally as talented. Michael Hoch stood out (as Spider), as did Miriam Davie and Michele Groneck. I was a bit disappointed in the choreography, which, at times was sloppily delivered. Once of my favorite numbers is "Murder, Murder" and it was a bit lackluster.

Bravos to everyone in the cast and the crew. The show was wonderful. If you haven't seen it yet, and you really should, you've only one weekend left. Go ahead and get your tickets, you don't want to miss out seeing David Joy in his finest role.

Make Plans to See This!

IN COMMAND: Lead actor makes Jekyll & Hyde a winner
By Ken Keuffel, JOURNAL REPORTER

With its current production of Jekyll & Hyde, The Little Theatre of Winston-Salem is taking on quite a challenge, one that proved worthwhile during last night’s sneak-preview performance.

The show, which will open tonight at the Arts Council Theatre, proves a solid winner for lots of reasons. One of the most important is the man who plays the title role(s): David Joy.

Joy plays Dr. Henry Jekyll, a London physician who hopes to find a cure for his father who is suffering in a mental institution. He experiments on himself in an attempt to separate the evil and good, and in so doing, the evil begins to take over in the form of a new persona named Edward Hyde.

This transformation, of course, underscores the show’s exploration of good and evil warring with one another. It goes back and forth, calling on Joy to play two different characters over the course of a fairly long night (the show lasts more than 2 hours and 30 minutes).

Joy remains in command of the diverse material from beginning to end, proving particularly compelling during his transformations. He is the affable, idealist and workaholic Jekyll one moment and someone completely different in Hyde the next. And each part of the Jekyll/Hyde character is drawn to a different woman: Emma (Courtney Willis) and Lucy (Lauren Stephenson).

In musical terms, some of the soloists are not on top of every note in their parts. But they conquer enough of Frank Wildhorn’s almost-operatic music, and in convincing-enough fashion, to make us overlook the occasional deficiency here and there.

The chorus sounds powerful and, setting an example for many other groups to follow, enunciates each and every word clearly — which is so important in Jekyll, in which music dominates. Margaret Gallagher proves an adept music director.

The imaginative stage direction of Bobby Bodford and the choreography of Benji Starcher are impressive. Scenes that would otherwise look crowded and/or static come alive in visually inventive ways.

What scenic designer Bland Wade has done with the sets is noteworthy, too, proving that a lot of interesting looks can be achieved with just a few materials — which include a couple of red frames and backdrops of drawings that evoke Victorian England.

Another Evening at the Theatre

Still supporting The Little Theatre's North Carolina Voices Staged Reading series, I attended their final production tonight, Green, by Bekah Brunstetter.

When Clint returns from Iraq to his strangely liberal bible belt college community, Alex, his Bush-trash talking best friend, and Rhea, Alex’s confused and beautiful girlfriend await him with baited breath. Clint wants to settle back down into normal life, but his memories of his experiences at war make this adjustment harder for him than he ever anticipated. Green is a fresh look at the high price of service, using magical realism and an amorous anthropomorphized fire-arm.

Collin Norris, as Clint, was very good, as was Ken Ashford as Clint's best friend Alex. Lan Holtsclaw did a fine job bringing Clint's gun and cigarette to life. Kevin and Spencer Owen were okay in their respective roles. The rest of the cast sucked the life right out of the play.

Final Performance, The Velveteen Rabbit

Our final performance was this afternoon at the Main Library. As you can see from the pictures, they have a very nice stage, and our 'set' worked very well in the space.

While we performed for another full house, this afternoon's house wasn't overcrowded. There were enough chairs for everyone and some of the kids sat on the floor directly in front of the stage. Most of the kids got over their nervousness from last night and today they really seemed to have fun. I know that I had a blast!

A Night at the Theatre

Mikey and I continued our support of The Little Theatre of Winston-Salem's NC Voices Staged Reading Series. Tonight's offering was Raney. John Justice adapted the script from the book by Clyde Edgerton. The staged reading was directed by Mark Pirolo.

The play follows the early days of the marriage of Raney, an innocent, Southern Baptist, and Charles, who is considerably more liberal and sophisticated than Raney. Jackie Hansen and Brian Joyce brought Raney and Charles to life beautifully. Jim McKeny and Kelly Wallace were superb as Thurman and Doris Bell, Raney's parents. I especially loved Jim's tobacco spitting. Kelly is always a pleasure to watch. Karen Robertson was wonderful as Naomi Purvis, Raney's aunt. Like Kelly, Karen is facinating to see. Both women truly embody their characters.

Peter Juran was great as Dr. Bridges. His voice was as soothing as a therapist's, although he is a lawyer in real life. Roberts Bass played Mr. Simmons and came off exactly as Mr. Simmons should- a jerk.

Mark March, as Nate Purvis (Raney's uncle) was outstanding. I've had the pleasure of seeing several of Mark's shows and of sharing the stage with him. As such, I believe Mark to be one of the most talented actors in our area. His final scene made me teary eyed, and this was only a "staged reading".

Opening Night, The Velveteen Rabbit

Who would have thought our little "staged reading" of the popular children's book would be so popular? I figured the audience would be rather small. With a 6p curtain time, I didn't think some of the parents would be able to make the show. But, boy, was I wrong!

The rehearsal hall was overflowing with folks! There weren't enough chairs set up, so most of the audience was standing. This made it a bit difficult to make our entrances from the house, as we had to weave through the crowd. Still the kids were troopers and managed to adapt without getting thrown.

We did have some problems hearing some of the kids. Charlie started out a bit quiet, but did increase her volume as she fought her nerves. Jasmin, our little fairy, was so cute you didn't care that you couldn't hear what she said!

Most of the kids were nervous and dealt with it in different ways. Adam was actually pretty sedate backstage, which was a welcome change! Caroline became famished and downed a small bag of Oreos (sans water - it was not pretty).

Overall, opening "night" was a success. There were only a few dropped lines. I did end up using the prop book, and the audience didn't seem to mind. The kids were great and I was so proud of them!

Our final performance is tomorrow at 2p. We will be performing in the auditorium of the main library, downtown. Remember, it's a free performance so come early for seats!

New Horizons Continues

Mallorie, Mikey and I decided to head to Krankie's Coffee to see Rubber Doves, a brand new, two-man magic comedy and the 2008 Winner of the New Horizons Playwriting Competition. Matt Gutschick and Ben Whiting star. During rehearsals, Ben wrote:

Combining magic and theatre is always touchy business and you never know until the last minute whether or not it's going to play out the way you hoped. You have to consider the multiple possibilities of how each illusion could play out and know how your character would handle each of them. There are a lot of things that could happen. But I'll tell ya what, no matter what happens I can promise that who ever is in the audience will be THOROUGHLY entertained! hahaha!

He was correct. The show was funny and the magic tricks worked perfectly. Matt and Ben work very well together.

As an added bonus, they also performed Alan Arkin's Virtual Reality. There are only two props in the show, a piece of paper and a pencil. The rest of the props are imaginary. It was a very interesting show, to say the least, especially having to pantomime the props. Matt and Ben did an excellent job and kept up the pacing. I enjoyed the avant-garde production; Mikey and Mallorie were less than impressed.

A Night at the Theatre

Last night, I attended The Battle of Shallowford, The Little Theatre of Winston-Salem's second entry in their New Horizons Series (staged readings of original or adpated plays by NC authors). The reading was held in the rehearsal hall, and there was a nice sized crowd in attendance. Ed Simpson, the playwright, also attended the reading.

The Battle of Shallowford is an endearing story about what happens when the residents of Shallowford (based on Lewisville, NC) believe Orson Welles' radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds". They grab their pitchforks and hunting rifles, and run out to do battle with the invading Martians and save the world.

David Bowen, who played Burton Mock, and Grace Lineberry, as Ruthie, were wonderful as father and daughter. Jere Dailey was perfectly cast as Ray Sprinkles, as was Jeremy Byrd as Fred Martin. John Schwabe played two very different roles, Dewey Sowers (football hero) and Doodad Jarvis (slow witted), and transitioned well between the two. Stan Berstein, who also "directed" the reading, played Newsome Jarvis, a man of very few words.

Because it is a staged reading with a reduced rehearsal period (one night!) you usually don't see much movement and even less characterization. Two actors deserve a special shout out for this very reason. Mikey Wiseman actually brought to life the very crusty Clunette Campbell. If the audience's reaction was an indication, he was the favorite. Elliot Lerner also breathed life into Lonny Hutchins, a shy teenage dreamer. Both men gave outstanding performances.

The staged reading of The Battle of Shallowford was one night only. But keep checking your local listings. You will definitely want to see this show as a full scale production!

Pictures, The Foreigner

A Review for The Foreigner

Sight Gags: Laughs are guaranteed in The Foreigner
By Mary Martin Niepold
SPECIAL TO THE JOURNAL

It’s a crazy mix of zany characters. Some are Southern, some are British, and all of them have eccentricities that spread laughter through the audience like buckshot.

The Foreigner, which opened Friday night at the Little Theatre, is one of playwright Larry Shue’s best known works.

Laughs are guaranteed.

This is a farce, and as such, relies on sight gags, exaggerated gestures and an array of caricatures. The characters all show up at the same small rural hunting lodge in Georgia, flaunting their particular version of what life is all about.

Most of them are looking for their own identities. Two of them are trying to conceal who they really are.

What a cast of characters. Just look at their bios:

Betty is an older widow who owns the lodge and needs to feel young again. Froggie hails from England and is a bomb specialist who has come to the area once again to teach bomb tactics at a nearby military base. Charlie is his friend from England who is so bashful that he invents a language (and persona) to be able to deal with the other guests while Froggie is away. David, a guest, is a minister whose niceness is a front for theft. Catharine, a debutante, is pregnant, wealthy and set to marry David, but naturally they stay in separate rooms. Ellard is her slow-witted brother, and Owen is a local whose hood-wearing buddies back his shenanigans with David.

What results can’t adequately be translated to print.

When Betty says she sees “a tractor” in the story that Charlie has just made up and spouted off in gibberish, the audience falls apart.

When Charlie re-enacts Frankenstein to scare the bully, Owen, he can - because in real life Charlie’s a proofreader for a science-fiction magazine.

Both scenes bring on laughs because the play evolves around a tight plot.

Characters are so fully drawn by the actors that when any of them does deliver a line, it makes perfect sense.

The Foreigner is an enormously popular work by Shue.

Having premiered in the early ’80s, its reception recalled his earlier work, The Nerd.

But this play at the Little Theatre wouldn’t necessarily come off without the slapstick acuity of director Stan Bernstein.

Bernstein, a prolific local actor and director, seems to have found his own passion for theater. He knows how to deliver lines, he knows pacing, and fortunately, with his guidance, his actors do, too.

Good ensemble acting keeps the whole show going, but special bows go to Charlie, Froggie, Betty and Ellard.

Chad Edwards, who teaches theater arts at Mount Tabor High School, almost steals the show. His rendition of the hapless hero who eventually finds his own voice relies on a full array of body movements, facial expressions and timing. Edwards delivers on all counts.

Pat Shumate as Betty is as close to the real thing as the lovable Southern woman who wants to believe and has an active imagination to make just about anything plausible.

Mikey Wiseman as Froggie is a swaggering foil to Charlie’s ineptness, and Mark March as the slow-witted Ellard makes floundering look delightful.

Read-Thru, The Velveteen Rabbit

This afternoon, we all got together to discuss The Velveteen Rabbit. This production is part of The Little Theatre of Winston-Salem's New Horizon Series, which is a two week festival of stage readings of shows by NC playwrights. Because it is such a wonderful story, we all agreed that we'd like to breathe more life into it than just reading the story on a stage.

After reading through the script, we discussed that even though the Narrators have the majority of lines, the other actors must create their characters physically. They will have to use their body and movement, action, instead of dialogue. So, of course, we had to play some theatre games. How would you walk if you were a rabbit, a horse, a mechanical toy, etc. I am not a fan of these games, but I participate for the kids.

Already, there is one kid who is going to annoy the bejesus out of me. He's the kind of kid who announces to everyone, often while someone else is speaking, that he has no problem learning lines, can speak in a multitude of dialects and voices, and corrects others who have made a mistake. He's also full of ideas. I will admit that he is talented. I just don't think courtesy was part of his upbringing. Maybe I can help him with that?

Mark your calendars now. We will perform March 7 and 8. Performances will be in the lobby of the Arts Council and at the main library.

Article in the Go Triad

From bayou to off-Broadway
By Leslie Mizell, Special to Go Triad

WINSTON-SALEM -- It's a long way from Louisiana to New York, but two bayou playwrights with shows opening in Winston-Salem next week found success there at a very early age.

The Little Theatre of Winston-Salem is staging Larry Shue's "The Foreigner," a modern-day classic comedy, opening Feb. 1. That same night, the Stained Glass Playhouse will debut Judi Ann Mason's "Livin' Fat" for Piedmont audiences.

Actor-playwright Shue, a New Orleans native, debuted "My Emperor's New Clothes" off-Broadway in 1968 when he was just 22 years old. However, he wouldn't find real accolades until nearly 15 years later when he wrote a pair of comedies, "The Nerd" and "The Foreigner," as a playwright in residence at Milwaukee Repertory Theater .

"The Nerd" premiered in London in 1981 and had a successful Broadway run in 1987; "The Foreigner" spent 18 months off-Broadway and won the Outer Critics Circle award for best play.

"The Foreigner" of the title is Charlie Baker, a painfully shy Englishman who is vacationing with his friend "Froggy" LaSeur at a Georgia hunting lodge when soldier Froggy is unexpectedly called up for maneuvers.

Stranded with a bunch of strangers, Charlie pretends to be a foreigner who doesn't understand English. But far from isolating him from the lodge owners and guests, his inability to communicate means he finds himself taken into their confidences and becomes the unwitting witness to their secrets.
One secret becomes particularly volatile, and Charlie suddenly finds himself helping his new friends protect themselves from the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.

Sadly, "Wenceslas Square " (1988) would be Shue's fifth and final produced comedy. The playwright died in a plane crash in 1985. He was 39.

Mason was born 10 years after Shue in Shreveport, La. Her writing career was off to an auspicious start when she received the Norman Lear Award for Comedy from the Kennedy Center while a student at Grambling State University.

Like Shue, she first found professional success at 22, selling a script to the long-running TV comedy "Good Times" in 1978. Since then, she has worked as easily in comedy as drama, and for television, stage and movies alike.

She also wrote scripts for "Sanford and Son," "A Different World," "Beverly Hills, 90210," and "I'll Fly Away."

She penned films "Sophie & the Moonhanger" for television and the Whoopi Goldberg vehicle "Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit" for the silver screen. In between, she found time to write three dozen plays and youth musicals, including "Eddie Lee Baker Is Dead" and "A Star Ain't Nothin' But a Hole in Heaven."

"Livin' Fat," which the prestigious Negro Ensemble Company debuted off-Broadway in 1976, is set in that recession-ridden era. Times are tough for the Cooper family. Although money is tight, their affection for each other is limitless.

Everything changes, however, when son David Lee, a college graduate forced by the economy to work as a bank janitor, interrupts a robbery. In their haste to get away, the thieves drop a $50,000 bundle of money, which David Lee grabs and hides from his employers and the police.

Now the religious and law-abiding Coopers are faced with a dilemma: The money would allow David Lee's father to quit one of his jobs, his mother to stop cleaning other people's houses, his grandmother to enjoy her golden years, his sister to go to college, and himself to get a fresh start and marry his girlfriend. But can they sacrifice their scruples enough to benefit from ill-gotten gains?

Contact Leslie Mizell at LAMizell@aol.com

The Cast of The Velveteen Rabbit

The "no news is good news" philosophy is a double-edged sword for actors. Sometimes you never hear anything, find out by checking an online cast list, or you hear from other actors.

The Velveteen Rabbit auditions were Saturday morning. Not hearing for four days after an audition is usually not a good sign. I just figured that Reed decided to cast kids only. So, imagine my surprise when I got an email announcing the cast:

Boy - Gerrit
Rabbit - Elizabeth Wallace
Narrator 1 - Charli
Narrator 2/Mechanical Toy - Adam
Narrator 3/Uncle- Jeremy
Narrator 4/Aunt- Cheryl Ann Roberts
Nana/Boat Toy - Katlyn
Fairy - Jasmyn
Horse/Doctor - Sam
Bunny - Annemarie
Bunny - Britton

I can't tell you how thrilled I am to be a part of this production! And yes, I am the oldest cast member!

Auditions, The Velveteen Rabbit

If you've ever visited my Myspace page then you know that The Velveteen Rabbit is my favorite book of all time. As part of this year's New Horizon Series, and in conjunction with the ACT program, The Little Theatre of Winston-Salem will be staging an adaptation of Margery Williams' book. Auditions were this morning, and I was there. As a matter of fact, I was the oldest person there! (Well, except for some of the parents waiting for their kids.) I was amazed by the turn-out. There were small kids up to high school ages. And there were several boys auditioning.

I knew I wouldn't be asked to read for the Rabbit or Skinhorse; those parts would go to the kids. The script calls for 4 narrators who "age" during the course of the show, so I figured I could play Narrator 3 or 4. There's also a Nana.

After playing some "theatre" games to warm up the kids, Ryan grouped us together and we began to read. He hadn't picked a side for Nana, so I mostly read for Narrator 3 and 4. I really was amazed by the talent of some of the kids! Which might mean that I won't get cast at all. There was certainly enough talent to cast the show completely with kids.

It really doesn't matter if I get cast or not. I love working with kids, and I love the story so I thought it would be really fun. Even if I'm not cast, I will see the show.

Rehearsals, The Foreigner

We were supposed to be completely off book today. You would think that having two weeks off would provide enough time to learn lines. Not during the Christmas and New Year holidays. I studied as much as I could, but it was still not enough. Thankfully Stan is an actor himself, so he understood the tall order to be completely off book during the holiday season. He even gave us permission to use scripts if really necessary. I was able to go scriptless for Act One, Scene One. I had to call lines in Act One, Scene Two and ended up picking up my script for my big monologue. I didn't put it down the rest of the night, although I tried not to glance at it if I knew the lines.

Getting off book and stumble-throughs are my most despised part of rehearsal. I'm either forgetting my blocking because I'm too busy concentrating on my lines, or blocking is fine and I can't remember the words. I just feel so inadequate.

Good news, though. For the next several days we will only be rehearsing specific scenes. That means I can spend some quality time reviewing a section at a time. Yikes, tomorrow's rehearsal is the longest scene in the show. I'd better get cracking. If I sleep with my script under my pillow will I be able to magically absorb Catherine's lines?

The Cast of The Foreigner

Pat Shumate is Betty
Mikey Wiseman is Froggie
Chad Edward is Charlie
Cheryl Ann Roberts is Catherine
Mark March is Ellard
Don Gunther is Rev. David Lee
Ken Ashford is Owen

While I'm not surprised that Ken got cast, I'm so glad he decided to do the role. And since Kelly Wallace will be doing costumes, the entire cast of Bug will be involved with this show. The cast of Grace and Glorie is also reunited.

I am absolutely beyond myself. I am so uttely excited over this cast. And the fact that I (finally!) get to work with Stan. Mission, indeed missions, accomplished.

Callbacks, The Foreigner

After Ken and I finally worked out who would run The Best Christmas Pageant Ever brush-up, I headed over to the ACT trailers for callbacks. This time I arrived early. Mark and Don were there, as was Chad. As we were ushered into the other room, I was pleasantly surprised to see Michael and Pat come in. Looking around, I quickly sized up my competition. There were two other girls that I didn't know.

Pat and another lady were up for Betty. While the other lady read well, Pat was very attuned to the comedy. Since Ken decided not to come to callbacks, and he mentioned he really didn't want to do Owen, David will probably get that part. Michael and Don were vying for the role of Rev. David Lee. Michael auditioned better, but Don is a very good tood. Kevin and Chad were up for the role of Charlie. Either one would be great. There was one young man there for the role of Ellard. And Mark read for a variety of roles.

I don't like to read first at callbacks. I'd much rather study the competition, and make changes/choices accordingly. Thankfully Stan had the other two girls read first. Neither of them were bad; they were just a bit bland. Clearly they weren't as familiar with the script as I was. As good as I felt about my audition, I felt even better about my callback reading.

Callbacks were over by 8:10pm, and once again I chatted with Michael in the parking lot. My phone rang and I almost had a heart attack trying to locate it in my purse. It was Ken on his way back from brush-up. I told him I'd call him later and continued casting the show with Michael. My phone rang again and I recognized the number as that of The Little Theatre. I held my breath.

I GOT THE PART!