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Tale As Old As Time Beauty and the Beast closed today. Despite the hell that the camp was for the first couple of weeks, and the fact that I have to work with eighty-two children on a daily basis, and that we had to put the entire hour and fifteen minute musical together in approximately sixty hours, the show went very well. Okay, it went wonderfully. People are saying it's one of the best the program has produced in fourteen years. I'm proud of this fact, and of the kids. Some of them drive me freaking batty, and I am still exhausted and we still have another show to put together (that goes up a week from Tuesday!), and some of the staff still pisses me off and the program is still not what it was years ago - but my kids did good work, and I'm proud of them. The show was an independent version of the fairy tale turned into a musical that we rented, and then we...well...not so legally stuck in some of the movie and Broadway musical songs and hacked the script to pieces. It flowed very well. I have a good eye for casting, so despite the fact that I ended up with most of the "bad" (behavior-wise) kids in my show, I also had, hands down, the best leads. My Beast? Rocked. This fifteen year old kid has a voice you wouldn't believe, and was absolutely a delight to direct every day. My Beauty was also quite good, and the two of them together were wonderful. My secondary leads were all quite talented and I ended up with an ensemble that gave me some really lovely stuff. Funny things happened, of course, as they do in all theatre - and most involved my male lead. The Beast starts out as a Prince and then a spell is cast on him and he "transforms" in a blackout-with-strobe, by putting furry feet and clawed hands and a half-face-mask and a full furry head on with his Prince clothes. The effect isn't great but gives you the idea, except for the fact that the head looked like the Grand Poobah hat. But anyway - the mask is furry and hot, and he must have pulled the face part up so he could breathe backstage. He came out with it still up on his head. About halfway through the scene he realized it, and not so subtly slid it back down. In the afternoon show that day, he missed an entrance because he didn't hear his cue. During this scene, the entire group of castle inhabitants is onstage, and the Magic Mirror says He approaches! and they all back up in apprehension. So she says it, and they move aside so he can come down the back center steps - and nothing. God bless my kids, because they tried to cover: Who approaches? Mercifully, after the Nuh-uh!, the Beast finally came in. Beauty comes in a minute later - and she missed her cue. At that point, I just put my head down for a second. At the end of the same performance, the strobe somehow got turned around to face the audience. The result of this was that when the Beast "turned back" into the Prince in another blackout/strobe, we saw the cast members helping him change and throwing the Beast pieces into the wings. It's children's theatre. All you can do is laugh. We had a million tech problems too, not the least of which was our new sound tech, who was totally clueless. He had to be told go sound over and over and over and was incapable of thinking on his feet at all - I can't tell you how many cues he messed up. The grip crew didn't get it together until the last two performances, and somewhere in the last performance our house flat broke. Literally. The door ripped off in the middle of a change. It really helped to remind me how much I hate calling cues. Today the cast gave me an exquisite Beauty and the Beast snowglobe that plays the title song from the movie. It's so lovely. Beauty's mother bought the cast a sheet cake and I tried to tell them how proud I was of the work they'd done. The Beast made a brief but touching speech about how much I'd taught them over the last few weeks. The show ended and while I'm not sorry it's over, I'm happy with what I did. Of course, now it feels like the summer is over - and yet, we have an entire show yet to do. I'm feeling quite content about the job now, but talk to me again next week!
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