Gee, those Plane Crazy alumni just keep on doing cool things!

I recently got an e-mail from Chris Guilmet, who played Larry Stevens in the NYMF 2005 production of Plane Crazy. Now he is making his directorial debut!

I would like to invite you all to my latest theatrical endeavor -- and my NYC directorial debut -- "You Must Take The A Train", a solo performance by Lindsay Hunter. The play chronicles Lindsay's time working as a "drama counselor" at a public middle school in Harlem, complete with broken bathrooms, twelve-year-old poets, and roving drill sergeants. Performances are every Thursday in March at 9:30PM at The People's Improv Theatre (154 W. 29th St). Tickets are a measly $8. I hope you all can make it! For tickets call 1.800.838.3006 or visit www.thepit-nyc.com.

I guess it's true...what everyone really wants to do is direct!

Break a leg Chris!

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Well, we had our final show on Saturday February 25! And what a great run it was. We didn't do any marketing of the show (other than me constantly mentioning it on my blog...heehee) so when it started selling out after the first few shows, we knew word-of-mouth was really strong.

By the last show they were bringing in extra chairs, and some people even sat in the aisles!

Theatre Sheridan has quite the reputation for putting on great shows. Since I saw every showing of Plane Crazy, I was always running into people who subscribed to the entire Theatre Sheridan season because "there's not much going on in Toronto, it's closer, less expensive and the shows are better" to quote one happy patron I sat beside.

During one show I even ended up sitting next to the father of the trombone player in Michael Buble's band! (He loved Plane Crazy and gave it a standing ovation, incidentally...)

Another highlight was meeting and sitting next to Diane Nyland Proctor, a well-known director, who just happens to have starred as Tracy in The Trouble With Tracy, one of my favorite Canadian shows back in the early '70s! I missed way too much school to watch way too much TV...

Once again, I learned tons seeing it up, and the cast just got better and better every show and I was so sad to see it end. And a special thanks to the crew who had to deal with 85 costumes and 248 props! I think my favorite was the pyramid of hot dogs made out of sponge foam that appeared on the catering table in the "Venus Flytrap" commercial shoot!

Thankfully, I was able to tape this show, so now I can go back and watch it and continue the creative evolution of Plane Crazy!

Thank you Sheridan!

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OK, this last week got the better of me...sorry for the paucity of posts.

The combo of our Sheridan workshop, a trip to New York for the Best of Fest Bash! and the usual suspects was not a good combo for the blogging discipline.

Anyway, I'm back on track, so here we go...

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OK, here's something I didn't know...

There's a program on Broadway called "Tuesdays at Seven", which means that many shows start earlier on Tuesday...at, uh, well, seven...

So, two things I didn't know here:

1. I knew that shows start earlier on Tuesdays, but I didn't know that it was an organized pan-Broadway initiative. More importantly, I had no idea that the brilliant Susan Lee was the mastermind. Susan: You rock!

2. I didn't know that the clock in Times Square chimes at 7:45 pm Wednesday to Sunday to announce curtain (probably because I'm already well-ensconced in my seat by then: People...GET TO THE THEATRE ON TIME...). I also didn't know that the the clock in Times Square chimes at 6:45 pm on Tuesdays...

Apparently, Tuesdays have traditionally been a weak night (hehe...get it...weak night...man, sometimes I kill myself) and after doing some research it was discovered that one point of resistance to theatre on Tuesday is that it made for a very late night near the beginning of the week.

So, Susan moved the clock back an hour. I love stuff like that!

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You know you've made it when...

Acording to this article in Playbill:

John Lloyd Young, who plays Four Seasons singer Frankie Valli in the Broadway hit Jersey Boys, will be honored at Sardi's Restaurant with his own caricature.

The presentation will take place at the storied theatre district eatery at 5 PM Feb. 23.

One of my favorite things to do in New York is to go to Sardi's after a show and have cheesecake and coffee (I love the fact they give you your own pot for refills!) and looks at the caricatures on the wall. The whole room has such a great sense of history and magic!

Congrats!

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HOW COOL IS THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Karen Ziemba, one of Broadway's most versatile performers, won the 2000 Tony Award for her performance in Susan Stroman and John Weidman's hit musical, CONTACT, at Lincoln Center Theater.

Karen has long been associated with the work of director-choreographer Susan Stroman, with whom she has formed an ongoing collaboration.

For CONTACT, Karen also took home the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards. Off-Broadway, she won the Drama Desk Award for her performance in the Kander and Ebb revue AND THE WORLD GOES 'ROUND, as well as a Drama Desk nomination for the revival of Jones and Schmidt's I DO! I DO!.

Her Broadway career began with A CHORUS LINE, including Michael Bennett's legendary celebration of its record-breaking performance. She appeared as Alice Roosevelt in TEDDY & ALICE, starred as Peggy Sawyer in 42nd STREET, opposite Jerry Orbach, as Polly Baker in CRAZY FOR YOU, as Roxie Hart in CHICAGO, and as Rita Racine in STEEL PIER, for which she received Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations.

The New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF), whose annual three-week celebration has premiered more than 70 new musicals in the past two years, will present a one-night only benefit concert, "The Best of Fest Bash!," on Monday, February 27 at Dodger Stages (340 W. 50th St.). Showtime is 7 pm.

Directed by Joe Calarco, "The Best of Fest Bash!" will feature highlights from the diverse array of works the company has introduced, including the Off-Broadway hit Altar Boyz and the upcoming [title of show]. Toasting NYMF's contributions to the field, the benefit concert will include performances by Euan Morton, Kerry Butler, Sherrie Austin, Deven May, Jeffry Denman, Curtis Holbrook and more, with special appearances by Jim Dale, Roger Rees and John Lloyd Young. Additional Broadway favorites will be announced shortly.

For tickets and more information on the NYMF Best of Fest Bash! click on this link.

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Hey, this is cool!

Robert Diamond, Founder and CEO of Broadwayworld.com has put up this article I wrote about my NYMF experience with Plane Crazy.

I have to admit that I have enjoyed realizing this very personal and focused vision for PLANE CRAZY. I am proud of the work I've done on the show since NYMF, and watching the Sheridan rehearsals I know the show has improved. I know these characters so well that I know how they would react to a change in storyline, pacing, or dialogue. I know that while a song may be a cool song, it might not really be right for the character in the show at that point in time.

I also know that I need a collaborator if I am going to take PLANE CRAZY to the next level, and ultimately to Broadway.

But how do you find the right person? Someone who has a lot in common with you but is also different enough to bring that missing ingredient to the table? (Darn, and I promised myself I wouldn't use kitchen imagery!)

Should I place a classified ad: FOW seeks MWC (Freaked-out Writer seeks Miracle Working Collaborator)?

Ask if they know all the verses to "Jubilation T. Cornpone"?

Ask them if they own both the fullscreen and widescreen DVDs of DOWN WITH LOVE?

Or just ask them if they know where I got the name Webster Ramsey Templeton Advertising from?

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Early reviews are starting to come in on Lord of the Rings and they're...positive...

What I'm hearing is that it's "spectacular" and "definitely worth seeing". It sounds like the production team has pulled off a real event.

What I'm also hearing is that it's LOOOOOOOOOOONG (stuck at around 3.75 hours) and that people are saying "I'm really glad I saw it, but I don't think I'll see it again...

I like the "spectacle" component: Should be great for Toronto tourism!

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The Ice Storm!

No, not the movie, the weather! We had a good old-fashioned opening night bout of bad weather. However, that only kept a couple of people away from the sunny skies of Venus Airlines last night as Plane Crazy had it's second official opening (first in New York).

The cast was in fine form, as was the tech crew, and luckily we didn't experience any power outages! All the dress rehearsals have been in front of student audiences and last night was almost completely adults. So of course they laughed at different things and responded to different numbers etc., but the cast was fast on their feet adapting and changing with the times!

The show has come a long way since NYMF -- new material, new songs, and it's better paced, funnier, and really knows who it is (hey, but don't take my opinion...go see it! But see it soon: TICKETS ARE SELLING OUT QUICKLY...)

Out in the lobby, in addition to the cast photos, and the beautiful Plane Crazy poster (courtesy of Michael Karst) Theatre Sheridan had put blow ups of advertising from the sixties! How cool is that!

Thanks to the Plane Crazy cast, crew and creative team, and to everyone at Sheridan (especially Mary-Lu Zahalan, and Greg Peterson) for all their support and hard work. And a special thanks to the director Marc Richard, and the musical director, Chris Mounteer, for helping me take Plane Crazy "to new heights"!

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We had our first dress rehearsal last night. Lights! Sets! Costumes! Make up! And...action! The audience was full of Sheridan students so the cast was really on and did a great job!

The lighting and the costumes rock! I know the heavily made up '60s look (hair and makeup and clothes) is a bit of a "not-so-natural" look, but boy it is flattering to women (is that a sexist comment?)

And the guys look really handsome in their '60s haircuts. I think it was just a really flattering decade all round!

Some technical glitches, missed lines etc. but that's what rehearsals are for! But I could see it had become "a show", a cohesive whole.

Very exciting. And the crew was really hustling, whether it was sweeping and washing the stage floor, or venturing up on a high ladder to change a bulb. Also very exciting. Gosh, I love this stuff. See you opening night on Thursday!

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I was so busy getting ready for Plane Crazy's opening on Thursday I almost forgot about another NYMF alumnus, [title of show], starting previews tonight! How exciting! Break a leg guys (and gals!).

From this article on Playbill:

Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell's musical [title of show] begins its Off-Broadway run Feb. 15 at the Vineyard Theatre. The show opens Feb. 26 for a scheduled run through March 26.

Previously seen at the 2004 New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF), the uniquely titled musical reunites the original cast and creative team.

[title of show] -- which follows two young writers (Jeff and Hunter) as they "race to write and submit a show to the theatre festival" weeks before the deadline -- was born out of just that: Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell's race to complete an entry for the aforementioned festival. The musical also includes two of the scribe's friends who were enlisted for this journey. Bowen (The Who's Tommy) and Bell (Oh, Boy!) star with Susan Blackwell (The Heidi Chronicles) and Heidi Blickenstaff (The Full Monty).

The original creative team also returns with Tony Award nominee Michael Berresse (The Light in the Piazza, Kiss Me Kate) as the director-choreographer and Larry Pressgrove (Cats, Children's Letters To God) who provides musical arrangements and direction.

They are joined by the design team which features Neil Patel (set), Chase Tyler (costume), Ken Billington and Jason Kantrowitz (lighting), and ACME Sound Partners (sound).

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From this post on Boing Boing: a 1967 prospectus for potential members of Disneyland's "Club 33", located in New Orleans Square.

My husband spent a year in which he visited Disneyland on a daily basis (recovering from a start-up adventure), and he was a frequent visitor to Club 33 -- courtesy of a company he was consulting with. The last time I was there we sat next to Brian Grazer (Ron Howard's producing partner). Kewl!

Here's my favorite quote: So get ready to go back in time to the age of three martini lunches, crew cuts, and pill box hats.

Enjoy!

No British men's club ever enjoyed a more masculine atmosphere than the Trophy Room. And the stories spun here are likely to be taller by far than those that fill a big game hunter's den.

The walls of the Trophy Room (the rich wood look and touch of natural finish cypress) are lined with samples of the hunter's skill. Over a period of years, friends of Walt Disney had given him a prize collection of princely value: African antelope, mountain goat, native spears, masks and plumes. And the room's most valuable decorative showpiece, a nine-foot long, solid ivory mammoth tusk.

Forty-two guests dining at pub-like, natural oak tables will find their attention drawn not only to these treasures, but to several other seemingly passive birds and animals around the room. Above the fireplace, an owl and two magpies. Nearby, a raccoon. Across the room, a leering, hungry vulture.

This is no ordinary menagerie. For when the feathers begin to fly, and the tall tales are spun back and forth across the Trophy Room, the voices may not be those of your luncheon companions alone. To the contrary: these Audio-Animatronic performers are as talented as the marvelous Macaws in the Enchanted Tiki Room, and as talkative as "mother" in the General Electric Carousel of Progress. And the wise old owl on his fireplace perch has one more extraordinary talent; for a tuppence or two, he can talk directly for you. He may even know your guests by name!

Link

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My youngest daughter, Trinity, is named after the first fission explosion. Now this post on Boing Boing has a picture of that first explosion. This one's for you, Trinity:

Photo of the Trinity Test explosion
This Harold Edgerton photo of an H-bomb test explosion looks almost like a Virgil Finlay illustration.

Err...the first nuclear bomb was a fission explosion, which is an A-bomb, not a fusion explosion, which is an H-bomb...fission...fusion...whatever, it was a long time ago and the Boing Boing editors are young...

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PLANE CRAZY's song "Turbulence" will be featured in NYMF's "Best of Fest Bash!" event. We have purchased a block of tickets, and if you're interested in attending, please let me know. And if you want to buy a ticket, that'd be good too ;-)

The event will be in mid-town on Monday, February 27.

This will be SO MUCH FUN!

And the Honorary Chairs are Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman -- Tony Award winners for the smash hit Hairspray

Here are more details:

The New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF), whose annual three-week celebration has premiered more than 70 new musicals in the past two years, will present a one-night only benefit concert, "The Best of Fest Bash!," on Monday, February 27 at Dodger Stages (340 W. 50th St.). Showtime is 7 pm.

Directed by Joe Calarco, "The Best of Fest Bash!" will feature highlights from the diverse array of works the company has introduced, including the Off-Broadway hit Altar Boyz and the upcoming [title of show]. Toasting NYMF's contributions to the field, the benefit concert will include performances by Euan Morton, Kerry Butler, Sherrie Austin, Deven May, Jeffry Denman, Curtis Holbrook and more, with special appearances by Jim Dale, Roger Rees and John Lloyd Young. Additional Broadway favorites will be announced shortly.

"We've seen such amazing growth happen in our first two years," said Kris Stewart, NYMF Founder and Executive Director. "What better way to celebrate our successes -- and raise money for an even more wonderful year three -- than by highlighting the writers and artists who have made up the NYMF community?"

Tickets for the extravaganza, which include a post-show party at Dodger Stages, are $150 and $200. The $200 tickets also include VIP seating and a 6 p.m. pre-show cocktail reception with some of the artists. Seating is limited, and tickets are now on sale at www.nymf.org or by calling 212-352-3101.

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My husband just finished doing some pro-bono work (with the amazingly talented Michael Karst) for the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers' Workshop, and they're looking for folks to carry their animated .gif.

Here's the post from Boing Boing:

The Clarion Foundation is the charitable organization that oversees the legendary Clarion science fiction writers' workshop, and it's seeking your help in the form of donated banner-space on your site.

I'm on the Board of the Foundation, a new nonprofit, and we've just produced our first-ever marketing campaign with the generous volunteer assistance of Grad Conn, my friend and old business-partner. The campaign consists (modestly) of the badges you see below, and a landing-page with some information on signing up to the workshop, which runs for six weeks every summer -- it's going to be in East Lansing, Michigan again this year.

We're looking for websites that are willing to help us run the campaign by donating some space to host one of these badges (they're in two standard sizes, 150x150 and 150x58) in a prominent place between now and the application deadline on April 1. Even if you can only run it for part of the time, or in rotation, we'd appreciate your help.

Clarion has trained hordes of talented writers, from Bruce Sterling to Octavia Butler, from Kelly Link to Nalo Hopkinson. I'm a graduate and had the good fortune to teach the program last year as well. Attending Clarion is a life-changing experience for many, a watershed moment that helps writers understand what is needed if they are to succeed, and that gives them the tools to achieve success.

Help us out if you can: inline one of the images below and link it to http://www.theclarionfoundation.org/ads/landing/. You'll be helping to guide the careers of the writers who'll be entertaining you in a year or two.

Thanks!

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OK, here we go again!

Great news: My musical based on the Beatrix Potter stories, called THE TALE OF PIGLING BLAND (which I co-wrote with my wonderful collaborator Mitchell Kitz) has been accepted into the Toronto Fringe Festival.

w00h00

Mitchell is the composer, and I did the lyrics and the book (adapted from Beatrix Potter).

This musical almost wrote itself...it was a ton of fun to write and I can't wait to see it on the stage!

I think you can count on more updates as we get closer ;-)

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I've been following the progress of this show for a while so I am excited to say it will be opening at the wonderful Nederlander Marquis Theatre (due to the early demise of The Woman In White) in New York in May!

According to this article in Playbill:

Broadway's Marquis Theatre will be home to the musical comedy The Drowsy Chaperone -- to be one of the 2005-06 season's only musicals not based on existing source material or real characters. It starts previews April 3 toward a May 1 opening.

The recent announcement of the closing of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White (exiting Feb. 19) opened the door for Drowsy, about a rabid musical theatre maven (named "Man in Chair") who introduces the audience to his favorite period musical -- 1928's The Drowsy Chaperone, by the fictive writers Gable & Stein.

Audiences who saw earlier versions of the work in Toronto and Los Angeles howled at the experience, which is both parody of, and valentine to, musical theatre.

Bob Martin, who co-wrote the libretto of the new musical, plays the recumbent Man in Chair, who turns on a phonograph of the vintage work's rare cast album. The world of the old musical comes alive around him, in living color.

Directed and choreographed by Tony Award nominee Casey Nicholaw (Spamalot), The Drowsy Chaperone has music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison and a book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar.

Congratulations guys!

Some of my favorite musical theater memories are in the Marquis (Damn Yankees with Jerry Lewis, Victor/Victoria with both Julie Andrews and Liza Minelli, Annie Get Your Gun with Bernadette Peters and even a very fun evening with the entire original cast of The Woman in White) and I'm looking forward to another great memory with The Drowsy Chaperone!

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Just the other day I was telling somebody that Marc Richard (the director of the Theatre Sheridan production of Plane Crazy) is good friends with actress/choreographer Jane Johanson.

What's cool about that is I saw Jane Johanson performing "Steam Heat" as part of a high school production of The Pajama Game back in the 1970s.

And that is what sparked my love of musical theater and my interest in that show. I went on to play Gladys and dance "Steam Heat" in the Queen's Musical Theatre production of The Pajama Game in the 1980s and it has remained my favorite musical.

So I smiled when I read an article by Lillian Ross in the latest The New Yorker magazine (Feb. 13 & 20, 2006) called "Pajama Connection". The article is a conversation with Harry Connick Jr. (who plays Sid), Michael McKean (who plays Hines) and Kathleen Marshall (director/choreographer) that talks about the numerous connections to past productions of the show.

For example, the company's managing director, Harold Wolpert, is quoted:

"Our subscribers are very excited," he said. "It turns out everybody you talk to has a "Pajama Game" connection. They know George Abbott directed the original, with Bob fosse choreography. Then they saw it in schools. In the past ten years alone, it's been produced in more than eleven hundred schools and in four hundred and fifty community-theatre productions."

He goes on to say:

"Well, a guy in my office, who comes from Pepper Pike, Ohio, saw it when he was in eighth grade, at a local high school," Wolpert said. "It made him dtermine, then and there, that he was going to come to New York to be in the theatre."

Sound familiar?

In the article McKean says of his connection:

"I did the show in school, Long Island's North Shore High, in 1964...Mr. Mooney, our North Shore English teacher, was both the director and the choreographer," McKean said. "I auditioned for the part of Hines then. But Mr. Mooney wouldn't give it to me."

Kathleen Marshall offered up a connection as well:

"Our leading lady, Kelli O'Hara, auditioned in 1996 for The Pajama Game put on by her university in Oklahoma City, but she didn't get anything".

Turns out you never really get over those early rejections:

"Mr. Mooney is now living in North Carolina," McKean said, "I'm going to call him and tell him I finally got the part of Hines."

You can take the actor out of The Pajama Game, but you can't take The Pajama Game out of the actor!

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Betty Friedan, author and activist, died at the age of 85 on her birthday, Saturday February 4, 2006.

From this article on CBS News online:

She irritated both the right and the left as she helped launch the women's movement: asserting a woman's right to personal goals, while rejecting bra-burning and the view of men as the enemy.

But most of all, she shook the world.

Funeral services are being held Monday in New York for free-thinking Betty Friedan, whose book "The Feminine Mystique" became a best seller in the 1960s and helped lay the groundwork for the modern feminist movement, died Saturday on her 85th birthday.

Friedan's assertion in her 1963 best seller that having a husband and babies was not everything and that women should aspire to separate identities as individuals, was highly unusual, if not revolutionary, just after the baby and suburban booms of the Eisenhower era.

The feminine mystique, she said, was a phony bill of goods society sold to women that left them unfulfilled, suffering from "the problem that has no name" and seeking a solution in tranquilizers and psychoanalysis.

"A woman has got to be able to say, and not feel guilty, 'Who am I, and what do I want out of life?' She mustn't feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own, outside of husband and children," Friedan said.

In the racial, political and sexual conflicts of the 1960s and '70s, Friedan's was one of the most commanding voices and recognizable presences in the women's movement.

As a founder and first president of the National Organization for Women in 1966, she staked out positions that seemed extreme at the time on such issues as abortion, gender-neutral help-wanted ads, equal pay, promotion opportunities and maternity leave.

Friedan also insisted that the women's movement had to remain in the American mainstream, that men had to be accepted as allies and that the family should not be rejected.

I have to say, personally, I have really identified with this view of feminism. The Feminine Mystique has inspired me over the years, and I pay tribute to it and to Betty Friedan in Plane Crazy.

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Mmm...this is Googie-licious, from this post on Boing Boing:

How could drive by the DineAville Motel & Cafe, in Vernal, UT, and not check in for the night? (Besides the fact that it's no longer there, of course.) Link

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Two weeks before opening night and we did our first run through of Theatre Sheridan's production of Plane Crazy.

Over the past couple of weeks the set and props and set pieces have been slowly accumulating so we had a pretty good idea of what the show will look like. The actors are getting a better feel for the flow of the piece and are starting to relax into their roles and find bits of business on their own.

Lots of musical and choreography needs cleaning, but hey, we've got 2 weeks! The cast is almost completely off book now, but still at that stage where they are paraphrasing all over the place.

As a writer, I sweat over every little word and punctuation so I was intrigued to hear that they were going to have an "Italian Run", lead by the stage manager, to solve the problem. I'd never heard that term before, so I found this definition of the "Italian Run" on the Web:

Italian Run. When you have a solid handle on the lines, you can practice an Italian Run, or speak the lines out loud as fast as you can, in order, word perfect. As soon as you can do an Italian Run without stumbling, you've pretty much got it made. You can also do an Italian Run involving your practice partner or the rest of the cast.

I wonder where it got that name? Ah theater, la dolce vita!

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Mmm...this is a beautiful, user-configurable lamp from Frank Gehry, based on paper cup bottoms. From the Design Within Reach site:

Renowned for buildings that boast monumental volumes dressed in shimmering skins, Frank Gehry recently turned his inventive eye to packing paper cups. Stapling them together, the architect discovered he had the inspiration for a light fixture—the Cloud Lamp. To transform the shade from a found-object construct to a prototype for mass production, Gehry developed a "skin" made of polyester that feels and looks like fiber and is flexible, tear-resistant, easy to clean and fire-retardant. The result is a whimsical puff of a shade exclusive to Design Within Reach. What one can't do with his buildings one is able do here: the Cloud Lamp can morph in the user's hands, becoming a very round cumulus or a flatter stratus shape.

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So who exactly are these people who are mild mannered students-by-day and wild and woolly stews and pilots by night? I'm glad you asked:

Faith Hope is played by Tiffany Low

Janet Jones is played by Alex Saslove

Holly Banks is played by Melissa Wand

Brett Mansford is played by Jeff Moulton

Sam Crenshaw is played by Daniel Brenner

Clive Miller is played by Dustin Redshaw

Larry Stevens is played by Nick Watson (also the assistant director)

The female chorus: Brittany Allen, Kait Gray, Katie Hicks, Michelle Nakamura, Becky Johnson, Lana Sugarman and Becky Hachey.

The male chorus: Stuart Constable, Ali Momen, Louie Rossetti, Evan Sapach, Matt Selby and Kelly Wong.

One note of trivia: Matt Selby helped out producing the original Toronto workshop of Plane Crazy back in March 2004!

As I mentioned before, the director is Marc Richard and the music director is Chris Mounteer. Costumes (apparently there are a total of 82 different costumes!) are being designed by Nina Okens and the assistant choreographer is Rebecca Stewart.

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My husband and I have started to develop our own programming schedule, creating our ultimate TV schedule.

That's right, we're officially quasi-opting out of the present, and we're "Quantum Leaping" it...watching TV shows from different years, but all made within our lifetime (well...mostly). Here's the highlights of our schedule:

Sunday: OK, we stay in 2006 and watch Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy. Not much interesting here...

Monday: Musical Theater night...'nuff said...we pick something from our jaw-dropping massive collection of movie musicals. Most recent viewing: How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. Pure magic...

Tuesday: Mary Tyler Moore Show, Bob Newhart Show, Partridge Family, Laugh-in. I love Tuesdays!

Wednesday: I Love Lucy, Dick van Dyke Show, Get Smart, The David Steinberg Show, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie. This is a big night, but hey, it's hump day...

Thursday: Sliders, Star Trek the Next Generation. Mmm...TNG...

Friday: Star Trek Enterprise, Quantum Leap. Mmm...Bakulicious...

Saturday: Sonny & Cher, current movie night (who knows?)

My favorite night is Friday, where we enjoy Star Trek Enterprise and Quantum Leap...sort of a Scott Bakula-palooza.

My other favorite night is Saturday, which is highlighted with the Sonny & Cher Show. Man, do I ever love that show!

Quick bit of trivia: My first TV show song was co-written with Jimmy Dale, who was the music director for the Sonny & Cher Show.

How cool is that?

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Well it's still two weeks to dress rehearsal for our Sheridan workshop (February 15) and we've already completely run through Act 1 and Act 2.

Not too shabby. Especially when you consider the students go to classes all day and then rehearse all night!

One of the really cool things about this process is how different (and yet the same) things are from the show we did at the New York Musical Theatre Festival.

In New York, the scene changes were done by stage hands in black, as quickly and quietly as possible. Part of the reason for that was we had very limited rehearsal time. Marc Richard, our director at Sheridan, has taken a different approach. He has choreographed the movement of set pieces and people. People move about in character, sometimes acting out little scenes downstage, sometimes moving a set piece with a little flourish (Marc refers to that as Jeujing (both j's are soft)), and sometimes and out and out bit of choreography gets the job done.

It's really cool because you can impart extra information, or reinforce character development in these little montages/scenes. The audience is meant to enjoy them for what they are, not pretend they aren't really happening. It's sort of a highly choreographed ballet with lots of moving parts!

Oh and the other big difference -- at Sheridan we have a week to do tech, and at NYMF we had...um...something like four hours!

And, general seating tickets are on sale now for the Plane Crazy "Bold Strokes" production!

Here are the details from the Theatre Sheridan Box Office Web site:

PLANE CRAZY ("Bold Strokes" Studio Production/General Seating)

February 16 @ 7:30 pm
February 17 @ 7:30 pm
February 18 @ 2:30 and 7:30 pm
February 21 @ 7:30 pm
February 22 @ 7:30 pm
February 23 @ 7:30 pm
February 24 @ 7:30 pm
February 25 @ 2:30 pm and 7:30 pm

The Box Office is currently open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11:00am to 3:00pm. Two weeks prior to show openings and during the run of the performance, the Box Office is open Tuesday to Friday, 11:00 am to 3:00 pm. On performance days the Box Office is open one hour prior to performance times.

Tickets are:

$19 for Saturday matinees;
$22 for Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday evenings; and
$25 for Friday/Saturday evenings.

Group Sales -- Theatre Sheridan offers discounts for groups of 15 or more. Some conditions apply. Please call the Box Office for details.

Box Office Telephone: 905-815-4049
Box Office Fax: 905-815-4082

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