New Rep Studio- Chicago dance workshop

Hey everyone,

I forgot to mention on my last blog that we also had a dance workshop on Thursday afternoon. This guy came in and taught us a dance from Chicago, I forget the name of it but it was SOOOO SOO AMAZING. It was the funnest thing ever. The steps were pretty challenging and most of us broke a sweat but it was so worth it.

Anyway, just wanted to tell you guys we did that.
-Talia

New Rep Studio- Stage Managing workshop & Stumble through

Hey guys,

Sorry for posting so late, I had a really busy weekend. Anyway let me fill you in on what we did on Thursday and Friday. Thursday, we did a stumble through. For people who don't know what that is, a stumble through is when we run the whole show off book with mostly all the props. It went pretty well and even though we had to call for line a few times, we basically had our lines and songs memorized. Everyone did a really good job remembering all the blocking we did and remembering what props to set and how to build the barricade for the fight scene. It was really amazing watching the whole show come together after so much hard work and we were all pretty proud of ourselves.

On Friday, (my birthday!), Debra Rafson came in and did a stage managing workshop with us. We talked about all the responsibilities of a stage manager and let me tell you, they have a lot more stuff to do than I thought. One of their jobs is creating a relaxing environment for the actors and furnishing the rehearsal room so people feel relaxed. Besides working at New Rep, Debra is also one of the stage managers for Blue Man Group. For an activity, she brought in a tape of one of Blue Man Groups's performance numbers and also brought in the cue list. So what we did was we watched the tape so we became familiar with it and then we got to call the cues for the lights in the show. We read the cues off a piece of paper. (The cues coordinated with the words of the song so we knew when to call them). It was SO fun, although now I know that I definitely don't have a stage managing career ahead of me. Aside from my lack of talent, some of the girls were really good at calling the cues. It was a great workshop and we got a much better taste of what being a stage manager is like.

This coming week is our last week in camp. We're going to polish everything for the show and make sure we have everything down solid. It's going to be so sad to say goodbye-we've become so close!! It's really amazing being with 12 other talented girls around my age and putting on an extremely difficult show with minimal props and lighting. Seeing everything come together so far was such an incredible experience and we're not even done polishing things yet.

I'll make sure to keep reporting on how the show is coming along,
-Talia

New Rep Studio - Directing workshop with Bevin and Blocking

Hey everyone,

this morning Bevin came in and did a directing workshop with us. She assigned four of us the role of being the directors and the rest were actors (I was a director). We were given two person scenes that were very neutral in the sense that if you read them over, they would seem like pretty much emotionless. We had many, many jobs as a director. Some of them were to block a scene so we used as much of the stage as possible and set our props (if we decided to use them), set status between the two actors (aka which one had higher status than the other) and help the actors show that status, made a setting for the scene: where the scene took place and was it a specific time of day etc., and helped the actors think about the emotions they wanted to portray to the audience. We had 30 minutes to pull our scenes together and then we presented them to the group. Bevin then gave us feedback and gave us another 15 minutes to put the suggestions she gave us back into our scenes. Well I must say that the scenes were REALLY good. It was also really intersting to get to stand in the same shoes of Suzanne, our director for Les Mis and all of the other directors I'd worked with. It was alot tougher than I thought it was going to be and even directing a one minute scene took alot more time than I thought it was going to take. I'm a bossy person so it was hard for me to direct a scene where the actors also got to share their ideas and use them in the scene, even if it was different than what I had pictured it to be. But there were a couple of times where I was like, wow their idea is much better than what I thought of. It was also cool to see the same scene directed twice. Two of us were given the same scene to direct and the both came out really different. The ideas were so unique and they were in almost in no ways similar. Overall it was really fun and I learned alot about being the different aspects that go into creating a scene.

After the workshop, Suzanne came in and we blocked the fight scenes where all the students die (except for Marius). Although this may sound bizarre, it was awesome getting to fake our deaths. It's was hard reacting to being shot when there are no sound effects, nothing that actually hits you in place of the bullet and sometimes not even an actor that pretends to shoot you. In the part where I die, the person who shoots me is unseen so I have to make it clear to the audience that I'm being shot just by my reaction to the "bullet".

I think that pretty much every girl agrees with me in the fact that we love eachother and this camp so UNBELIEVABLY much. We all have gotten so close and it is soo fun getting to put on this show together, it's going to be AMAZING.

I'll tell you more later!!
-Talia

New Rep Studio- Stage Combat & read/sing through

Hey everyone,

Today we had a woman named Serah Rose come in and do a stage combat class. We learned how to do hair-pulls, slaps, punches and how to react to being shot. It was really fun!!! Serah Rose taught us how to position ourselves so it looked realistic from the audience and we didn't kill each other. After we learned the moves, we made scenes with partners that included the moves we learned and they were hysterically funny. After stage combat, we broke for lunch and when we returned we did a read/sing through of the play which means we sang all of the songs and read all of the lines in chronological order. I think it surprised us all how well it went. We had a great time going through everything. We had a very mixed range of emotions. We laughed when Dan, the assistant director, had to read the part of Bamatobois, a potential "customer" of Fantine, because a girl was absent and we cried when Emily (aka jean Valjean) sang (she has incredible passion for the music). Even though we stumbled through a bunch of the music, it was still awesome. We helped each other out if one of us forgot the key of the song accidentally or missed their cue and I know this sounds extremely corny but we kind of built a support system for each other.

That's all for today-more later!
-Talia

Side By Side Reviews

BroadwayWorld.com Review

Boston Globe Review

Boston Globe Feature

Boston Phoenix Review

Edge Boston Preview

Theater Mirror Reviews: Larry Stark - Beverly Creasy - Tony Annicone


Which SIDE are you on? Comment here or on the Globe Calendar.

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New Rep Studio - the first week in Les Mis

Sorry for posting so late, my email was down. Anyway, tuesday Brooke & Bevin came in and did an audition workshop with us before the auditions on Wednesday. We worked on creating the characters personalities in the scene, blocking choices, body language and other things that would help us to make the scene more interesting and generally more developed. It was really cool to watching the scenes be done in so many different ways by the different actresses.

On wednesday we started auditions. We prepared 16 bars of a song and read the scenes that we prepared. Although it was extremely nerve racking (no surprise there), it was not only a great bonding experience (we were all really supportive and encouraging towards eachother) but also a great acting experience. Suzanne would watch our scene and then tell us to try it another way.
Overall, we were all happy with how our auditions went. At the end of the day, we were DYING to know our parts, and Suzanne came out and told us that there would be yet another day of auditions. UGH. We went home that day apprehensive about what would happen thursday when more than half of us would have to sing again and all of us would have to read again.

The auditions went really well on thursday and after about 20 minutes of deliberation, Suzanne and Kevin finally cast the parts. I think we were all happy with the results, I know I was.

On Friday we worked with Kevin on solos and did character work with Suzanne. We also did this really fun exercise where we went into Panera Bread and observed a person for 10 or 20 minutes and took notes on their character traits and then based on the traits, made an actual character. Although most of it was from our imagination, it was a lot of fun to share our characters with the group.

It was an amazing first week and we were all really sad to say goodbye friday afternoon. We all have gotten so close in the span of five days and plenty of hugs went around before we left New Rep.


I think it's going to be a really fun process of putting together Les Miserable with such a small, talented group of girls. I'll keep you posted!!
--Talia

New Rep Studio - Les Mis Auditions

New Rep Studio's Musical Theatre For High School Actors! began on Monday.

After meeting Suzanne, the director and Kevin, the musical director, the girls had their first workshop all about auditions and résumés taught by Bevin O'Gara and Brooke M. Haney. The workshop was a crash course in how to present theatre experience, and most importantly, how to prepare for and give an audition. The two-day workshop prepared them to audition for their roles this afternoon.

More info on New Rep Studio

"Side by Side" - Pre-Press Night

So........in preparation for press night this evening, I decided it would be a nice little stress relief to bike from my apartment in the North End of Boston to the theatre here in lovely Watertown. I left myself a good 2 hours to get there, expecting I would get lost and get a flat tire, etc. (don't i sound like an optimist). Plus, I figured that I should probably shower before I suitted up for the performance this evening. LITTLE DID I KNOW that it would take me 15 minutes to make the trip, with absolutely no hitch (except for a serious car accident on the corner of Brighton Ave. and N Beacon Street). So, here I am in the administrative offices of the Arsenal Center for the Arts posting on this lovely blog for all you bloggers.

So, yes, I touched on it briefly before, but this is press evening. what that means is...absolutely nothing. honestly, I could care less. reviewers...do your thing. i won't read them, though I am sure that you are all fantastic literary scholars. its just not my thing. however, i am a reviewer sometimes, on air. i kind of hate myself when i do it. i find myself saying mea culpa. i will say, what i am excited about for this evening, is that according to the lovely box office personnel who are sitting to my left, we have a FULL house tonight. regardless, I am looking forward to the smiling, laughing, and crying faces that will be in front of us this evening. I heard a very funny Mitch Hedberg joke today that said something along the lines of "performing in front of an audience is as if you were being chased by a mob and then they all got tired and sat down." i think thats funny. do you? post a damn comment and tell me. i am quite offended that there have been no comments as of late.

during yesterday's show, somebody came up and left me a note saying "We Love Standing Room Only...You do a great job! Thanks for a wonderful show" and left their seat number. thanks again to the lovely box office staff at New Rep, I found out who they are. Aren't computers creepy?

during yesterdays show, Maryann jumped 50 bars of "I'm Still Here." Frankly, I didn't notice. Where was I? I have no idea. She's still the shit, though. the audience yesterday was so old that they didn't notice either, I'm sure. Actually, Maryann is ridiculously sexy. Her entendre song is pretty thrilling. i reccomend it to all. and after yesterdays slip up, she's still here.

tonight there will be a party. there will be wine and food. this shall be a good night. peace out all you bloggers. see you at the theatre.

Jonathan

P.S. leave me comments about how you love/hate me, or whatever. i like comments.

"Side by Side" - First Preview

phew...well thats done with. opening performance nerves were very present last night, but thats to be expected and even hoped for i suppose. the whole cast kicked it last night, and kicked it hard.

it felt so much more comfortable to get up there and do the show with a live audience. performance instincts kicked in instantly, and it just felt like a conversation with the audience. i can't wait to do the show again today, to get that relationship back.

i have to say that I am in love with watching these people sing. i am in quite a priviledged position, being able to sit onstage and watch these artists work. its kind of like if a huge rolling stones fan got to sit on the stage and watch keith richards and mick jagger do their thing. how did i get so lucky?

anyhow, hope to see you at the theatre.

Side by Side by Sondheim...first post

My fellow blog people...

To begin...my apologies for the late start on this blog. Working full time as a bartender, hosting a radio show, and doing a little show miles away from where I live (without the access to a vehicle), has made my schedule very full. but, anywho, who am I to complain...look at the people I get to share the stage with.

Brendan Mcnab. there's my first paragraph. if you haven't heard already, he has replaced Andrew Giordano in the show. Andrew exited the show at the start of the second rehearsal, and brendan was at the theatre...ready to rehearse by 2 PM. what a trooper! stand up guy! all the above, and MORE! If you don't know Brendan personally, perhaps you have seen him on every Boston stage in the past few years, including this seasons "See What I Wanna See" at the lyric, and the lead role of Leo Frank in "Parade" at Speakeasy Stage Company, and at the same company, last fall's "Kiss of the Spiderwoman." I had the opportunity to have him in the studio at WERS for each of those shows, and always knew that he was a guy id like to get to know. side by side has given me that chance, and his level of preparedness and dedication to putting this show up in 2 weeks has been very, very refreshing. props to you Brendan. mad props...

Leigh Barrett. paragraph number 2. Leigh and i have been friends for a while now, and we've been wondering when exactly we'd get to do a show together. if there's one thing you need to come to the show to see, its to see leigh sing "losing my mind." it is a religious experience every time.

Maryann. paragraph number 3. strangely...we'd never met before the show. I'd seen her onstage...she rocks.

paragraph number 4....the play itself. this show is weird. its so British. i will be the very first person to tell you that I don't think that the brits understand the American musical theatre. that being said, nobody or nothing can take away from these songs. i'll give credits to the brits back in the 70's for taking some of Sondheim's most interesting material, and putting it into an evening. the songs are very naked in this context, utilizing only a kick-ass actor and 2 baby grand pianos. that's all you need. the songs are fleshed out. you can hear, see, and feel exactly what Sondheim was thinking as he was writing them. its beautiful. i find myself shaking my head in disbelief in rehearsal a lot. i imagine my fellow actors think I'm disapproving of something they're doing, but what i'm really doing is shaking my head in disbelief at how masterful Sondheim truly is.

Rick Lombardo and i both are obsessed with a song called "I remember." Its from Sondheim's television musical "evening primrose." if you don't know the song, come to the show and take a listen. its so good.

p.s. whatever they think, all three of my fellow actors are kick ass dancers...they can really get down to the groovy Sondheim tunes.

i suppose I'll just post later about some other stuff. my boss gave me the night off, and i plan to make good use of it. any suggestions?

Jonathan Colby and the Cast of Side by Side

Listen this Saturday, July 7, 2007 to Standing Room Only on WERS as host Jonathan Colby, narrator of Side By Side By Sondheim is joined by director Rick Lombardo, music director Todd C. Gordon, and Boston Favorites: Leigh Barrett, Brendan McNab, and Maryann Zschau for a very special show.

Side By Side runs July 7-22, 2007

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