Monday, February 27, 2012

Monday Musings

I miss auditioning. I must be deranged but I really do miss it. Perhaps its the possibility of every call. Or just the pure insanity of it. I don't have any crazy stories- just sunshine and cockneys.
The weekend was eventful enough. I had a peticoat malfunction and lost it front and center in the middle of a cockney dance break. Oh well. It makes for a funny story and no one got hurt. If only I had received tips.
Some of the local reviewers have been around. The locals are hugely concerned with the critics and their local theatre awards. They reviewers don't like our tracks and are scared by our acrobatics. One didn't care for us being a messy chorus and another thought it was busy. (Oh wait. Let's have the cockney rockettes out instead. That would work well.) Meh. I could care less. There are definitely problems and weak spots in the show, but for our audience it works well enough.
My Fair Lady is one of the classic warhorses, but it did it ever really need to be a musical? It certainly gave someone a chance to edit Shaw's prosier moments, but is it really an improvement on Pygmalion? As with most golden age shows, community, high school, and even many regional theatre productions have proceeded to paint over the grit and balls in the show with a coats of pink sparkles. There is something nice and meaty to these shows that is quite often forgotten. They can work with the original thematic material and still be crowd pleasers. They just normally aren't anything but crowd pleasers when done today. As theatre folk, why wouldn't we do both when we could? We might be poor gypsies, but we should have some pride in our work. Focusing our energy and creativity a little bit more could help so much. The wheel doesn't need to be reinvented. It just needs to seen from another angle. Will it look different from that angle? What can we find that we didn't find before?
The Stage Door's simple minded cockney fun falls under the glitter category. But for our audience of seniors, pretty is what they want to see. They want an evenings entertainment, and more of them can follow the scenes that mimic the movie. There was an ancient couple in the front row last night whose daughter had brought them to the show. Busking my beans at the at the beginning of the show, I was beyond their comprehension. The daughter translated my cockney cackling in a loud voice for her mother. Then the teeny tiny old woman beamed up at me. That is what we are doing at the Broward Stage Door. It makes it all worth while, even if some little man who critiques what he cannot do didn't care for it. The only fans we need are smiling up at us from our house. Even if they forgot to turn their hearing aids on and leave for the bathroom before the first act is over. :-)

My personal favorite Oscar look from last night. I love her!

3 comments:

  1. If you're really missing the audition insanity, you can read a little about if you like. In the meantime, enjoy the standing O's, sun, and fun. Keep up the great writing!

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  2. It's funny that all we do when auditioning is complain about it and yet, as soon as we get a job, we have that itching feeling that there are so many more opportunities we are missing by not being in NY!

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  3. Yeah Penelope Cruz was on my top 3 for favorite dresses. Jessica Chastain was my top favorite of the night though.

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