Guerilla Theatre, Corinne and Nate Duet "I Need You/I Run to You"

A little medley thrown together for a Guerilla Theatre performance.

I Need You / I Run To You

Anton in Show Business

Sunday we went to see Anton in Show Business at Shenandoah. Corinne was the enthusiastic Texan ingenue Lisabette, flanked by her roommate Shannon as Cassey. In five words, it was funny, funny, funny, funny, tragic. With an emphasis on funny. With a tinge of tear-jerking tragic at the end. DEFINITELY a must-see, but if you didn't see it, it's too late, it only ran three shows. You would think I should have some pictures of the show, or if taking pictures during the show was a problem, maybe pictures of the cast after the show. Or pictures of the whole group of us going out to dinner afterward. Apparently no, I was just in it for my own selfish entertainment.
If I had not waited until the last performance to go, I would have gone again.

Knoebel Finale

This weekend was Corinne's last weekend at Knoebels, we went to see her on Saturday. 




Auditions at school start on Thursday.

Knoebel Cast

A couple shots of the High School Musical Cast at Knoebels.  Cast: the pictures should link to originals that have good high-resolution for printing.

From Knoebel HSM Cast

From Knoebel HSM Cast

Go Dog Go

Corinne adds to her performing credits with a trumpet/baritone performance role in Go Dog Go, a Shenandoah Theatre for Youth production in two acts.  The book really was the book.  And it really stretched to two acts.  Good fun for the kids.

I Dreamed a Dream

This is a video of the "I Dreamed a Dream" number in last summer's Tidewater Teens' production of Les Mis. I added it in part to demonstrate to myself that I can get video onto my site without using YouTube. YouTube is easier, and offers a place to put the (large) video file., but also adds a bit of branding that I prefer to avoid, if possible.


The penalty to me of not using YouTube is that I will very quickly run out of storage space with my current hosting provider (lowesthosting.com). I may soon move my hosting to 1and1.com, as they offer good, low-budget plans with LOADS more storage space.

A Quick Change of Seasons

In the blink of an eye, Corinne left Hershey Park Ice Breakers for Shenandoah; auditioned, and was given a role in The Caucasian Chalk Circle, a main stage play at Shenandoah. Yay Corinne!!!

Thursday, September 18, 2008 -through- Sunday, September 21, 2008
The play “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” is presented at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday in the Ohrstrom-Bryant Theatre. Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for children. FREE for SU students and employees with I.D. Call the box office at 540/665-4569.

Football season started a few weeks ago, but we just hosted the 15U Maryland Elite Basketball end-of-season party. The party primarily featured volleyball and cheeseburgers.




Meanwhile, since the first scrimmage Chris has been practicing with the C. Milton Wright varsity football team. I am not privy to who made that decision and why, but C. Milton Wright is not a small school, enrolling 1746 in grades 9-12, and historically they don't make a habit of bringing Sophomores onto Varsity. Yay Chris!!!

And today we got confirmation that Laura is fully recovered, ahead of schedule and is doing very well. Yay Laura!!!

As a PS: Super Bowl Champ, 4-time NFL Pro-Bowler, Washington Redskin legend Joe Jacoby joins Shenandoah University Football Staff. No lie.

Arise from thy slumber

I've got a bit of catching up to do.

Last I told anyone, Christopher's 15U AAU basketball was making a run at the Maryland Championship. And a good run indeed, although they ran out of gas at around 8pm in their third game of the day on a sweltering Sunday, that just happened to be the semifinals. Their performance was enough to garner them an invitation to the AAU National Championships in Little Rock, Arkansas.
We've since had a tournament in Virginia that went well (not terribly strict on the age requirements...), and another in York. The York tournament was interesting: we won all the games up to the last, where we were pitted against the host team, which also happened to be a year older than the other teams. We played them even in the first half, then started pulling away in the third quarter. The York team didn't take well to getting beat, and they responded. The officials ultimately called at least 5 technical fouls, ejecting a York coach and a York player, then finally when order could not be restored, called the game in the third quarter. This weekend the boys go to a YBOA tournament in Pennsylvania, where they could conceivable receive an invite to the YBOA National Championships in Florida.

Corinne made it back from college for a full week before heading off to Hershey for summer work. If you're up in Hershey, be sure to catch the Ice Breakers

As for me, Godspell opened last week, and runs through May 25. It's got a very strong cast, but was slow to come together, due to all the various conflicts. However, now that the show has opened, I can say with certainty that I recommend it. Hopefully not too late, so far this is the best show nobody has seen--attendance has been poor. Blame it on poor advertising, or Mother's Day weekend, or something. Come if you can, tickets are $15, see tidewaterplayers.com.

Fall Break

We've enjoyed having Corinne around for the weekend while she's on Fall Break. We won't see her again until Family Weekend. Next Weekend. The first thing we did was get her home in time to watch Christopher's game (his win against Aberdeen). That was nice, but very very cold. This weekend was also CMW Homecoming, so after checking out Gina's game,

she went out for the night.

Sunday we went to see Doug at Spotlighters in Baltimore in "The Great American Trailer Park Musical". I didn't know what to expect, but it was very enjoyable.

Les Miserables

Wow, what a great show! Unbelievable that it was put together in two weeks. Bravo! I saw it four times, but only because I had conflicts on the other two performances. Laura saw it five times. I only took pictures once, but they're not too shabby if I do say so myself--no flash photography you know...



Just the death throes

Corinne in Les Miserables

Just a quick post... Corinne is doing Tidewater Teens this summer, as she has in previous summers (West Side Story, Footloose, Grease) and this summer is Les Miserables--actually it is Les Miserables, School Edition. This summer it is done as a "camp", so the cast goes M-F for two weeks and the show opens. Casting is done on day one, and by day 10 they are running the show! Corinne is Fantine, Brandon is Javert. I expect it to be an awesome show!

Les Mis shows at Tidewater two weekends: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday August 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 12. It's coming up VERY quickly, and I couldn't say much about it before now, 'cause it just got started! Call Tidewater for tickets if you can make it. I as at the theatre today and it was cool, and they will have someone come for maintenance on the AC tomorrow, so the plan is to keep it that way. We can hope! Plan to bring tissue.

Footloose! 2005

I came across a selection of photos yesterday from Tidewater's 2005 Footloose! They had been put on an alternate computer, and I had just had cause to put Google's Picasa application on that computer. Wow the lost gems that were found!

I hadn't done anything with the pictures before, because the quality was pretty bad. Prior to finding Picasa, that's where the story ends. But in a few brief moments of Picasa editing, VOILA! A little cropping, a lotta "I'm Feeling Lucky" (it's a Picasa photo-fixing button). Photographic genius, no. But presentable pictures from the past:

Tidewater Jr Debuts with Seussical, Jr

Tidewater put on its first ever Junior production. They held a camp for two weeks and prepared the entire Seussical, Jr in that time. An incredible feat, and a great, entertaining show. They'll follow this with a teen camp/production in a few weeks.



Corinne intends to play a part in the teen production (Les Miserables), but for the junior camp, she was a counselor and a stage manager. A few pics from opening night showing the fruits of their labor...

Beauty in da hood

Opening Night, Beauty and The Beast

We opened Friday. Had an awesome crowd, had fantastic performances, and a power failure. Passing severe thunderstorms knocked out power to the theater about 10 minutes into Act 2. We waited for generators to kick in, or power to return, but after a few minutes something needed to be done.

With power out, the house and stage had some lighting from emergency lights--adequate lighting for an unexcited evacuation, but not enough for a show. No light backstage, no microphones, no music.

So we rolled out the piano and did our best to entertain the crowd while the directors and theatre staff figured out what to do. The entire cast came out on stage in whatever costume happened to be on--some the audience hadn't seen yet. We ran a couple of show numbers. Then we sang happy birthday to those with birthdays in the audience. Bobby (Cogsworth) worked the crowd at all times. Then we sang a few more songs.

The decision was made to cancel the rest of the performance (the first time in twenty years that a show was canceled due to power failure) and reschedule for the following Wednesday. A refund was also offered.

This didn't help our guests who had come in from Cumberland and could only stay that evening. But that wasn't the worst. Others I'm sure were in a similar boat. Beast and Cogsworth (in costume) found two sad little girls from South Carolina who were visiting grandparents, and were leaving the following morning. They gave the girls attention and apologies and hugs. I don't have a picture of the sobbing little girl clinging to The Beast. We have something in store for those two, but I can't share what it is, at least not yet.

The only pictures I have are the cast during the impromptu sing-along, and Belle autographing for one of the girls in the audience.

Beauty and the Beast: Good Morning, Belle!

Congratulations Corinne!!
Corinne has accepted the role of Belle in Phoenix Festival Theatre's production of Disney's Beauty and the Beast!

This is Corinne's third production of Beauty and the Beast, having performed as Belle in the high school production and in the ensemble for the production at Tidewater Players.

Mark your calendars for show dates--TWO WEEKENDS ONLY!!
June 8, 9, 14, 15, 16 at 8 PM
June 9, 10, 16 at 2 PM

As for me, I've accepted a role in the ensemble. Hard to say what that might mean, maybe a corkscrew? Maybe a drunken frenchman? Maybe a fish monger? We'll have to see.

I auditioned for Lefou, hehe

So I auditioned for Lefou at Harford Community College Phoenix Festival Theatre. Kinda spur of the moment, I only became aware of the opportunity the day before. I knew that auditions were coming up, but I didn't think that there was any chance I'd audition.

I don't know how well you can expect an audition to go when you go in unprepared, and don't have the talent to carry you through. I "prepared" 16 bars (32, but who's counting) of "Gaston" because, well, it wasn't too hard I don't have a vocal repertoire. At the end of my prepared portion, I turned and thanked the accompanist/musical director who told me to keep going. Ooooh. I had to admit I didn't really know the words (not good). I was pushed into trying anyway, and in a few short moments proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I did not know the words (more not good). I received the comment that while preparing 16 bars is fine, it wasn't the 16 bars they wanted to hear (need I say: not good).

No call back. Duh. Not waiting for the phone to ring.

Meanwhile Back On The Couch

Had an absolutely SPLENDID evening enjoying the KC Players "Meanwhile Back On The Couch".

Lots of pictures of varying quality. No flash photography was used, so my options were limited. The slideshow is pretty long, but has maybe half of the pictures I took. I just kept clicking, because I couldn't tell what if any were going to come out.



The slideshow was created using Picasa2 and WebAlbums. It's as easy as using Picasa to select the pictures [edit, resize, etc] upload to WebAlbum, then running the slideshow feature and capturing the URL. Stick the URL in an iframe and you're done. I use

(iframe src="[Full URL, no spaces]" frameborder="0" width="550" height="400")
(/iframe)

Substitute < for ( and > for ).
[Anyone know the html for entering code? tt and blockquote didn't do it.]