Bill Roper's Journal

The last performance of "Mean Girls" over at the high school came off today without any noticeable glitches, which was a fine thing. Tomorrow, it's time to strike the sets.

K asked me to buy some of the raffle tickets that the Fine Arts Boosters were selling and we ended up winning a nice prize, which we now need to find a suitable occasion to use. I was surprised, but we do win these occasionally.

I've taken my car in for an oil change ahead of Dorsai Thing next weekend.

And I am very, very tired. :)

I went to the second performance of "Mean Girls" over at the high school tonight. The sound was much, *much* better. I'm told that one of the parents is a professional sound engineer (as opposed to my amateur status) and helped them straighten things out. Observationally, it looks like they solved the problem by doing one of the things that I had suggested, which was reducing the number of hot mics on stage at any given time so that they could push the mics of whoever had the ball at the moment without setting off a storm of feedback.

(You could tell that was what was happening, because occasionally a mic would get pulled up late for a particular performer. Not *any* particular performer, just a random "Oh!" and a grab for the fader or mute button for someone's mic.)

The musical is substantially improved by being able to parse the lyrics for the songs. :)

We are getting ominously close to the opening next Thursday of "Mean Girls", the winter musical over at the high school. Reports from the household's cast member are that things are going pretty well, which I find encouraging.

I suppose I should go buy tickets. :)

Tonight was the second performance of the play over at Maine West. Other than the ginormous number of people arriving after the show started, it went really well.

Today was the fourth and final performance of "Young Frankenstein" over at Maine West in a Sunday matinee. This turns out to have been an excellent selection for the spring musical, as it was a lot of fun and the kids looked and sounded great. I admit that it's also more to my taste than last year's musical, Disney's "Beauty and the Beast". It's simply got a lot of livelier numbers in it, which suits me. :)

Tomorrow, the kids (and I!) are off for Presidents' Day, which is good, because it gives everyone a chance to rest up before striking the sets and props.

Sleep. Sleep is very important.

Saw the second performance of "Young Frankenstein" tonight. Two more to go!

And, happily, this is a long weekend for me, which is good, because I am tired and need some time to catch up. :)

Tonight was the third and final performance for the play K was in at the high school, "Drop Dead". It was a lot of fun.

Gretchen is not sure if K will wake up tomorrow...

The high school play that K is in opens tomorrow. I am looking forward to it.

As you might not be surprised to hear, K is still at rehearsal. :)

I had to get K and one of her friends in to school early today, because a day off from school means a full day spent rehearsing the musical that opens on Thursday. Of course, I've been doing theater for a long time, which meant that I had a story I could tell them.

Many years ago, we were doing a Moebius Theatre show -- for multiple weeks! -- in an actual theater. The offstage space was in the basement, down a full flight of stairs, so we'd wait on the staircase to make our entrance. One of the sketches was a series of short bits about the planets of the Solar System. I was, as I recall, Jupiter, and would enter onto a mostly empty stage and start talking. My scene mate would follow me on stage and there would be dialogue.

The problem was that as the shows went on, she would be further and further down the stairs whispering to someone else in the basement and I would have to remind her that our cue had arrived and we needed to go. This gets tiresome after a while and I decided one evening that I was going to skip the reminder.

Our cue arrived and I hit the stage solo and started delivering my lines. When it got to the point where she was supposed to respond, I turned around, saw no one there and said loudly, "Here I am pouring out my life's story to you and you're not even listening!"

There was a clatter on the stairs and she hit the stage running to deliver her line.

She never missed that entrance again. Nor did I have to remind her. :)

So by the good offices of samwinolj who was kind enough to babysit Katie and Julie, daisy_knotwise and I were able to get downtown to see the Chicago company of Jersey Boys before the show closes. And it turns out that this is a really good musical.

Well, yes, I suppose I should have guessed that, but there occasionally is no accounting for the taste of the public. But Gretchen and I had an absolutely wonderful time.

If you're waiting to see the filmed version of this, as with The Producers and Mamma Mia, you may be waiting a very long time. The show relies heavily on stage conceits with a lot of speeches directed to the audience, something that simply won't film well. So if there is a movie version, it won't be nearly the same show.

And if you write music or ever wanted to write music, this is a good show to go see.