Author Topic: The Holiday Season -- what are you working on?  (Read 8731 times)

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BalletPSM

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The Holiday Season -- what are you working on?
« on: Dec 05, 2005, 07:01 am »
Who's working on a holiday production right now?  What are you working on?   Every theatre has its Christmas Carol, Nutcracker, Scrooge (insert clever holiday production here).  

For me -- its (what else?) "The Nutcracker." I'm (literally) about to go to the theatre for load in today...and then its a solid month of performances!  

And doesn't it always seem for some reason that holiday productions have more disasters and horror stories than any other time of year?  Let's take this opportunity to unite and share memories of holiday productions past...stories of holiday productions present...and hopes for holiday productions future. =)
Stage managing is getting to do everything your mom told you not to do - read in the dark, sit too close to the TV, and play with the light switches!

amylee

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go-go-go-JOSEPH
« Reply #1 on: Dec 05, 2005, 01:23 pm »
I was called in to manage the backstage traffic for the annual youth production of JOSEPH....DREAMCOAT (year 7). The call came on Tuesday of show week LOL. (I've SM'd for this theatre a few times and have developed a reputation as an instant-organizer)

I finally have it organized - all it took was making the props plot myself (since the darling girl who was given the props job was never properly trained).

Lots o' moms around - and about half of them are great - can-do attitude, and their only concern is making the show run smoothly. The other half - well, they're either in the way or nowhere to be found, and they only want to do the "fun" jobs and they bitch incessently unless they are profusely thanked every time they move a muscle (which i am not inclined to do LOL).
amy lee
:)  :(

Sarah

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Holiday Cheer
« Reply #2 on: Dec 05, 2005, 01:26 pm »
Sigh...I miss the wistful days of A Christmas Carol. How's this for holiday fare: I'm about to enter rehearsals for Frozen!

isha

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The Holiday Season -- what are you working on?
« Reply #3 on: Dec 05, 2005, 02:12 pm »
Broadway Christmas Returns!!!!
it's a cabaret type thing, with a cast of 16.
The show is made up of various Broadway songs, some christmas oriented, some not, and a few random songs. The actors also sing the song from a muppet christmas carol. It's a great family type show and it runs this weekend, weds. to sat (with a matinee on saturday) at EOU(eastern oregon university) it's going to be great.
-isha
~isha

ERK

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The Holiday Season -- what are you working on?
« Reply #4 on: Dec 05, 2005, 08:31 pm »
This year it's The Nutcracker for me, for the first time.  I'm also about to go in for load-in.  This time last year, I'd been doing Plaid Tidings for a month already and didn't close for another month.  That was a lot of Christmas, lemme tell ya!  I'm lookin forward to 15 more days of Nutcracker, though.

smejs

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Current holiday show
« Reply #5 on: Dec 05, 2005, 09:59 pm »
Without actually naming the show I work on - though let's just say it's got a lot of dancing and three very important words: "Live Nativity Onstage".  Yup, 3 camels, 5 sheep, and a donkey.  There's a reason it's the last scene of the show....

Well, you never know quite what animals will decide to do....for several years it appeared that at least once a run a sheep would get loose.  One of the funniest moments I've ever had was back when we only had walkie-talkies (not wireless headsets yet), you heard broadcasted in the quiet section of the show, "A sheep got loose and is headed toward [shopping complex across the street]....repeat...a sheep is on the LAM!"  And sometimes the animal handlers would give out awards...one year I got "Honorary Animal Handler" for all my help... and another I got the "Best Sheep Wrestler" award for tackling a different runaway sheep.  

But most of the time, the camels are adorable.  Inquisitive and herd animals, which can be serious problems onstage especially when cast and crew have forgotten how to act around the animals, but mostly adorable.

Totally different - I've done 3 different productions of A CHRISTMAS CAROL and am sure I'll do more eventually.  When I was 8 years old and IN it, my parents bought me the annotated version and I had cast members autograph it near either their section of the book or near one of the many illustrations.  It's great now to have 3 different cast-worths of names signed...and since most productions include slightly different scenes, it's fun to re-read and remember which productions did which sections onstage.

Erin

YesItsKat

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The Holiday Season -- what are you working on?
« Reply #6 on: Dec 07, 2005, 06:23 pm »
I'm orgainizing business reciepts for Hall Associates Flying Effects....~sigh~.  No show, no fun.

prizm

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The Holiday Season -- what are you working on?
« Reply #7 on: Dec 08, 2005, 12:43 am »
Ive got two right now, A Christmas Carol And and OHenry Christmas ... We cant get enough

linka

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The Holiday Season -- what are you working on?
« Reply #8 on: Dec 09, 2005, 02:29 pm »
I have yet to experience working a Nutcracker or Christmas Carol during the traditional month of December. Instead, I'm working on 2 of 4 chapters of THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG. But next year, I hope I'll finally get hired on a show where I can be un-pc and sing christmas carols.

giabow

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The Holiday Season -- what are you working on?
« Reply #9 on: Dec 10, 2005, 10:57 pm »
Bah.  Humbug.

Christmas Carol again for me.  The guy who started the theatre wrote this version.  There are bits of it that are SO different from the Dickens that it just drives me crazy.  Future speaking for one.  Lydia (Dickens' Belle) returning to Scrooge at the end.  
Every year, I say "This is my LAST Christmas Carol."  And yet somehow, I always find myself doing it again.


Oh, and also in rehearsal for The Mandrake, which doesn't open till mid-January.

Mac Calder

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Re: Current holiday show
« Reply #10 on: Dec 11, 2005, 03:57 pm »
Quote from: "smejs"
Without actually naming the show I work on - though let's just say it's got a lot of dancing and three very important words: "Live Nativity Onstage".  Yup, 3 camels, 5 sheep, and a donkey.  There's a reason it's the last scene of the show....


My parents breed alpacas, and we lived in a farming town - so when I had the joy of the local church wanting to do a large nativity at the local (rarely visited) coal creek village (a supposed tourist attraction, see the stage here - the image second from the bottom, the paddoc, that was our theatre), we used coal creeks horse, 5 alpacas and 3 llamas. It was hilarious.

Quote

Well, you never know quite what animals will decide to do....
....
And sometimes the animal handlers would give out awards...


You had animal handlers! Luxury! I had the honor... no, the privielage, of doing that myself, as well as 99.932% of the other jobs - I think I did almost everything short of playing baby jesus - and not for lack of trying.  I even played Joseph (food poisoning) and Mary (God knows what happened to her). And whilst I do not mind playing male roles when absolutely necessary, after all, I am one, I did not appreciate the fact that I was told I made a great Mary (and I do think I did a good job), it's just the principal of the thing.... It also happened to be the one night that ALL my friends were in the audience, as well as my principal, english teacher and maths teacher.

centaura

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goat
« Reply #11 on: Dec 11, 2005, 11:00 pm »
While the best story about a live nativity scene onstage that I've heard involved a goat giving birth, I alas have had few holiday shows that I've worked on.  The only Carol that I did, I did as a replacement SM for a tour, and all the fun happened before I arrived.  Such is the holiday season.  Though, I will say that flying home late at night on xmas eve is probably the best time of year to fly - the airport is practically empty.

This year its production company - I've been up to my eyeballs in xmas since before Thanksgiving.


-Centaura

BalletPSM

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The Holiday Season -- what are you working on?
« Reply #12 on: Dec 21, 2005, 02:03 am »
I am now on THE LAST PAGE of my Nutcracker production schedule!  The end is in sight....

So far no big disasters...during our final dress rehearsal one of the big mice (played by a professional) got clotheslined with a drop going out during the Transformation scene.  (now, please know that the drop had gone out AT THE SAME TIME every single night...its not like that particular night it went out sooner than it had been going out).  We all thought that he wasn't going to get up -- I mean, literally, bottom pipe caught under the chin, feet flipped up over his head, landed on his back...it was bad (but at the same time, a classic!)

After I made sure he was okay when he came off stage, he said, "well, I guess I know not to be there at that time anymore...learned my lesson on that one!"

Hmmm...Clara hasn't thrown a pointe shoe into the pit yet (when she throws her shoe at the mouse king).  Usually that happens at least once a Nutcracker!
Stage managing is getting to do everything your mom told you not to do - read in the dark, sit too close to the TV, and play with the light switches!

 

riotous