It has been a while since my last blog entry. A lot has happened.
Here it goes - two action-packed assistantships in one blog entry.
Number 1. Toxic Avenger at George Street Playhouse.
Assisting John Rando on this show was a really exciting ride. The Toxic Avenger Musical (herein referred to as Toxie) is an incredibly offbeat musical with lot's of special effects and a huge 80's rock score by David Bryan (of Bon Jovi Fame). The show is based on Lloyd Kaufman's B-movie cult classic of the same name. The film is known for excessive gore and off-color jokes about the handicapped. Some people love the film and others can't stand it. I fall somewhere in between. The musical is a surprisingly touching and disarmingly funny love story between a mutant freak and a blind librarian (if you can imagine such a thing).
At the beginning of the process John made it very clear that he needed me to be on top of special effects. So each day I arrived at rehearsal ready to test exploding props, experiment with rip-away body parts, and play with glowing toxic ooze. The goal was to keep the special effects in the low-tech, B-movie realm, which proved to be an exciting challenge. In was sort of like playing the board game Mousetrap. You pull the string, which releases the ooze, which flows through the tube and out of the toxic waste barrel. The trick was to get these homemade effects to work consistently. There was a whole team of folks working on it and eventually we got things to work really well and the audience loved it.
Overall, it was a really rewarding experience. I did all the usual assisting stuff too (take notes, get coffee, relay messages), but it was really nice to have unique projects to work on. Watching the show, I especially enjoyed hearing the audience respond to Toxie tearing limbs off the bad guys and ooze bubbling out of barrels. I helped make those effects happen.
Number 2. Barnum at Asolo Rep.
Barnum directed by Gordon Greenberg was a particularly interesting show to work on. Gordon was out of town a bunch and I got to run rehearsals (great!). Only trouble was Barnum is a proper musical with long numbers, circus sequences, and lots of dancing; and I didn't have much experience with proper musicals or circus skills.
Barnum was the opener of Asolo Rep's 50th Anniversary season and it was really big deal for them. In addition to the production they also had a sideshow in the lobby that I directed. So needless to say, I was very busy. This show was sort of a crash course in big traditional musicals (and then some). It helped that we had a great choreographer and that I was assisting a director with wealth of musical theatre experience. I learned a great deal from both of them. I picked up the vocabulary quickly and realized the big musicals aren't that much different than other shows. You just have different tools to tell the story.
I directed the third-year conservatory students in the sideshow and I really enjoyed working with them. They made the process easy for me. We rehearsed the sideshow after regular rehearsals, but I had fun regardless of the long hours. The students brought a lot to the table and made me laugh. I think what we created really added to the audience's experience of the show.
Ultimately both assistantships were rewarding and educational in different ways. Going into this fellowship I did not imagine I would assist on two musicals, but now I couldn't imagine it differently. The two shows were on totally different ends of the musical theatre spectrum and I know infinitely more about the genre than I did a few months ago. And on top of that, I really like the directors I assisted and consider them friends. What more can you ask?
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