Laura: This is the ShowBizRadio podcast for November 26th, 2006.

Mike: This evening Laura and I volunteered down at Ford’s Theatre in downtown Washington DC. We saw A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas. We had a lot of fun. We got to meet some of the other ushers of course. We got to stuff inserts into the playbill and then help take tickets. We met a lot of people. The theater was basically sold out. It was a great show.

Laura: This was a standout show. Everybody did an amazing job. I enjoy ushering at Ford’s Theatre because they do such interesting things with the sets. It’s really a lot of fun to watch.

Mike: This show was just magical and it was incredible what they did with their set. I have never had so much fun watching A Christmas Carol. It’s almost the standard because there was so many unique things going on in the show.

Laura: Such as the entrances of the three ghosts: Christmas Past, Present and Future were incredible how they came out.

Mike: It was also the most colorful costumes I have ever seen for a Dickens’ play. It almost felt like Alice in Wonderland. You had giant hats and you had bright greens and just super colors. It was just so bright. The set itself was mostly white so the color just stood out. The lighting was incredible. It was a wonderful show.

Laura: Ebeneezer Scrooge was played by Richard Poe. He did an outstanding job. I was really impressed. When he first came out as Charles Dickens he looked up and acknowledged President Lincoln’s box with a nod that I thought was really classy.

Mike: All in all this was a very classy show. If you can get tickets to see A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas at Ford’s Theatre, you should do it. It’s playing through December 30th and we’re going to call this a standout show. We really encourage you to go see this show.

Laura: A couple weeks ago I went over to The James Lee Community Center in Falls Church, Virginia and auditioned for a part in the upcoming Spring show of the Providence Players, Good Help is Hard to Murder. Auditioning is always a nerve wracking process, but it was a lot of fun. There were some newcomers and there were some returning people that I had worked with as a Providence Players groupie for Mike’s play The Time of Your Life. Unfortunately I didn’t get a part, but that’s ok.

Mike: And she had a fun time, I could tell. It was an all female cast. So I was sitting there. There were basically three men in the audience and there were thirty women all trying for eight different female roles. So it was a lot of fun to watch.

Laura: It was fun. We all got to try to do southern accents and I came away wanting to go rent Steel Magnolias.

Mike: Speaking of auditions, we do have an updated list of upcoming auditions on our website.

Laura: If you do go to an audition and you found it out on our website, let the theatre know you heard about their audition at ShowBizRadio.net.

Mike: Getting ready for Thanksgiving, I took our digital camera out and made sure all the memory cards I had were cleared off of old photos. And I found a whole set of pictures from backstage of my show back in October, The Time of Your Life. So I’m going to put those up and make them available. There are even some videos of walking around the sets so you can see what it’s like going from backstage to onstage and then what it looked like from the theatre, looking out on the house from the stage.

Laura: And lastly, there are a ton of Christmas shows playing throughout the Northern Virginia, DC, Maryland region. Definitely recommend that you try to go see some of those shows. We have as complete a list as we can on our website: ShowBizRadio.net/Christmas/.

Mike: And now, on with the show.

Mike: Welcome to the ShowBizRadio podcast for Saturday, October 21, 2006. We only have one review this weekend. We’ll be seeing 1984 on Sunday evening so we’ll bring that to you on Monday. So we just want to bring you up to date to the things that are going on.

I’m in The Time of Your Life with the Providence Players. We are half way through our run. It’s getting better every night. It’s really quite exciting. We were almost sold out last night. The people on stage and backstage were very excited. I made a couple minor mistakes. I just kind of oopsed. Laura noticed it because she knows the script so well, but I don’t think anybody else did. It’s going really well, though. It’s very exciting.

Laura: The show is going really well. I’m having a good time being a Providence Player Groupie. I will see the show again tomorrow afternoon for their matinee. One thing I find annoying is this thing about cell phones going off during the show. The director made an announcement before the show started. It’s in the program. It’s on the wall outside in the lobby. So don’t tell me you don’t know how to put the thing on vibrate or silent or whatever. That was the only distracting thing. The actors did great. Everything ran smoothly except for that stupid cell phone.

Mike: One thing I’m looking forward to after our strike next Sunday afternoon is to be able to listen to our podcasts again. Something I’ve gotten in the habit of doing as Laura and I travel to shows is burn some podcasts to CD and listen to them in the car. One I really miss is the Your Neighborhood Stage discussion. It’s at NeighborhoodStage.com. It’s a very interesting podcast. If you’re into theater you need to listen to it.

Laura: This weekend The Unexpected Guest opens at the Castaways Repertory Theatre in Woodbridge. I will be going over there tonight to help with Front of House putting out the cookies and non-alcoholic punch and setting up before the show starts. So I’m looking forward to seeing the show as well as helping out with the front of house stuff.

Mike: We will be back in a couple days with our review of 1984 performed by the Meat and Potato Theatre in Washington DC.

Laura: And now, on with the show.

Mike: This is the ShowBizRadio podcast where we’re talking about some things that have been keeping us busy over the past few weeks.

Laura: Two weekends ago we went up to New York City with a theater group, The Sterling Playmakers, and saw some musicals. And then this weekend we saw a play Friday night, The Women.

Mike: At the Greenbelt Arts Center.

Laura: Saturday we went to a rehearsal for Mike’s show and then we hopped in the car and went down to Newport News for Mike’s 20 year high school reunion. And then we got up on Sunday and came home. So it’s been a busy last few weeks.

Mike: The one thing I totally under estimated was how many rehearsals you need to do a show. That time commitment is just so significant. The past two weeks we’ve been at the James Lee Center for the Providence Players‘ production of The Time of Your Life. We’re actually in the theater now which is really nice. We were meeting at the director’s house and reading lines together. Now that we’re on the stage we can kind of get a feel for the blocking. The set has actually been designed and built. They painted supposedly a lot of it on Saturday when I wasn’t able to be there. But it looks really good.

It’s a bar in San Francisco. We’ve got a nice little bar and an area for a piano and a stage area. And tables of course and a pinball machine. So it’s really looking good. But the rehearsals, oh my gosh. We’ve got the theatre reserved for five days a week,Tuesday through Saturday. And then I think there’s a couple Sundays in there, too, coming up. Two weeks ago I had rehearsal on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Then last week I had rehearsal on Tuesday Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Then I had to leave early because of my reunion. We’ve go three and a half weeks ’til we open. And we’ve got at least three or four rehearsals a week up through there. It’s a lot of time. It’s something I totally underestimated. But I am enjoying it. The other actors are really good. I’m very lucky to be in the middle of so many top notch people.

It is very different doing the lines with the other people I’m acting with as opposed to reading them myself here at home or on the bus. Or having Laura reading them with me. My Mom even read lines with me over the weekend. Laura is giving a different interpretation than my Mom gave. And then they’re both giving a different interpretation than from how Patrick or some of the other people are doing the lines. So that’s something else that’s kind of throwing me. Hearing a different voice with a different cadence and a different emphasis.

I’m still struggling through doing my lines. I’m probably about 75% there. Tomorrow I’ve got rehearsal I’m pretty sure. Work on those scenes and try to be off book from now on. We’ll see if I can do that. If I can’t do that I’m in trouble. But I think I’ll be ok. I just have to force myslf to not pick up the piece of paper on stage.

Laura: I’ve been attending the rehearsals for The Unexpected Guest that Castaways Repertory Theatre is doing in Woodbridge. I’ve been able to go to most of the Thursday night rehearsals. It’s been interesting to watch. The director is a new director. This is his directorial debut. It’s coming along well. Right now they’re starting to collect their set pieces. When I’ve been sitting in on the rehearsals they’ve had chairs set up to kind of pretend where the set pieces will be, but Kevin says his house is right now filled with all the set pieces that will be going onto the stage when they can actually start building stuff.

Castaways rehearses on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and Saturdays. I have not been to a Saturday rehearsal yet. I probably will in the next few weekends when I’m not working on Saturday at my other job. It’s been interesting to watch. Again, his interpretation is interesting and his directorial style is interesting to watch. So I think it will really come together well.

Mike: And then on a lighter note. I was reading on of the blogs I read regularly. The name of the blog is Butts in the Seats: Musings on Practical Solutions for Arts Management. Sounds like a boring subject, but it really is quite interesting. The blog talks about different issues in putting shows on, and putting on different types of art events. There’s both dance and theater, music. So it’s a very interesting blog because basically it’s talking about something that every theater has a problem with: getting butts in the seats and how do we do that. They had an entry last week talking about The Virginia Stage Company.

I made a comment at the bottom asking about copyright. Copyright issues were alluded to in the posting. They wrote an entire entry on September 14 about copyright and theater. It’s really interesting. It’s something I’ve wondered about. You go to Broadway and they kept saying, “No pictures and no recordings. It’s a copyright problem.” There’s some many different places tht hold a copyright. You’ve got the music, of course, and the writing. And it turns out that the costumes and the sets can all be copyrighted. Since we’re running this website, we sometimes put up photographs of different productions. It’s interesting. It’s a good read. I suggest you go over to Buttsseats.com and it was the Sept. 14th issue titles, “Copyright and Theater.”

Laura: And now, on with the show.

Mike: We’re talking about some different things going on in theatre in the Washington DC metro region.

Laura: Last evening I auditioned for a play upcoming in October at Castaways Repertory Theatre in Woodbridge, Virginia.

Mike: And what play was it?

Laura: It was the Unexpected Guest. It’s an Agatha Christie whodunnit murder mystery. Those are always fun. There were about thirty of us who auditioned last night. We all signed in and everything, and got parts. When it was our turn we went up and read a scene together. And then sat down. I actually put down several different people I could be interested in playing. So I was reading those different parts. And it was a really interesting experience. It was a little nerve wracking, it’s the first time I’ve auditioned in years I think. I did do a few performances through the Nova Woodbridge Theatre Group, seems like an eternity ago. But it was nerve wracking, but it was really interesting, actually to sit back and watch all the people audition. There was a wide range of talent expressed there. So it was an interesting show. There’s another round of auditions on Saturday. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend since I’ll be at work. Hopefully I’ll get an email or phone call on Sunday saying come on back on Monday. So that was an interesting fun experience.

Mike: And the show I’m in at the Providence Players, also in October, The Time of Your Life, by William Saroyan. I play the role of Tom. So I’m learning lots of lines. I’m learning how to emote, and how not to emote and lots of other skills I’m gaining through this experience. In early July we had a read-through where the whole cast got together and we just sat through and read the whole script straight through without doing any acting, just reading. That was really good, because it really made a lot more sense once you’re hearing the different voices reading this. It also helped to hear it out loud, as opposed to just reading the script at the pool. Just reading the script it doesn’t work too well, but once you are hearing it and hearing the different voices, it’s really nice.

We’ve had a few small rehearsals, with small groups of people. A lot of the scenes, I’m working with a character named Joe. And there are a few other extra people on the sides. That’s been really interesting. The director is giving me feedback on “What is he thinking here?” and asking me to think about why is he saying this. There’s also lots of comments about stage directions for some of the characters. “Oh you’re not doing that to him, you’re saying this to this other person.” So it’s really been a lot of fun seeing the characters come together. And this is only after I’ve been to two rehearsals now. I’ve got a couple more weeks of small group work. And then we’ll be at the theater doing rehearsals, and that’ll be a lot of fun.

Laura: In September, Mike and I and a group from Sterling Playmakers are going to be taking a roadtrip (Roadtrip!) up to New York City, to see Wicked on Broadway. The rest of the weekend we’re kind of on our own, so we’re putting it out there to everybody, what should we say on Broadway?

Mike: And what shows should we not see on Broadway? I will say I just finished reading the Wicked novel, the one that started everything. And it was one of the worst books I’ve ever read. I just didn’t get it. I liked how he kind of spun some of the things, but I didn’t like the book. I’ve got the soundtrack, I need to listen to that a few times. but I really hope the play itself, the musical, is good.

Laura: Since Mike and hopefully myself will hopefully be in a play in October, we are also making a call for guest reviewers to come and review shows while we are in rehearsals and performing at our two theaters.

Mike: We’ve had a couple people express interest, but we could always use a couple more. Laura and I have been seeing anywhere from two to five shows a week, and we can’t keep that up. So spreading out the workload would be a big help for us and everyone else in the area who wants to go see good theatre. So just send us an email, or comment to this podcast, and we will talk with through email or the phone, and get it setup.

Laura: Tonight (Friday night) Mike and I will be traveling up to La Plata , Maryland, to see Mindgame at Port Tobacco Playhouse. Not quite sure what to expect, sounds like it’s going to be a deep show. But Port Tobacco has always done really good shows in the past, so I think this will be an interesting one, and probably a deep thinking one.

Mike: That review should be posted sometime on Saturday afternoon or early evening. We’d also like to remind you to go see Blood Brothers at Elden Street Players. Call them for reservations, this is the closing evening, and this was our first Stand Out! show. We really think you should go see this show because it was very well done.

Laura: And now, on with the show!

Mike: This is Showbizradio. We’re just talking about some things that have come up in the last few weeks.

Laura: We really enjoyed seeing The Music Man up in Baltimore, Maryland. We live in Woodbridge, Virginia. It was an hour 45 each way. It did make for a really long evening. So we’re looking for for possible guest reviewers to see some of the shows in the Maryland area.

Mike: Also, I’m in a show with the Providence Players in October, The Time of Your Life. Laura is trying out for a show down at Castaways Theatre, The Unexpected Guest. So in the month of October there are going to be three weekends where we will not be able to go out and do reviews. We would definitely like some guest reviewers to review some of the shows that we would usually do.

Laura: If you’re interested in being a guest reviewer, just send Mike or Laura an email and let us know why you are interested in being a guest reviewer.

Mike: At this point we can’t pay you any money, but we can get you free tickets to the show. If you’re going to a show anyway, this would be an easy way to save $30 for tickets to the show.

Laura: We also want to let you know about other resources in the area.

Mike: We’ve been listening to a podcast, Your Neighborhood Stage. It is on the web at NeighborhoodStage.com. Rob and Chris talk about different issues with theatre. Each of their podcasts comes out once a week and is about thirty to forty minutes each time. They do an interview and then they talk about a different issue such as costumes or publicity. It’s really quite detailed and they have several ways to get back in touch with them and share your thoughts and opinions on the issues that they raise.

Laura: So visit NeighborhoodStage.com.

Mike: And our plans for the week. We have several shows. This is a busy week in August. I think a lot of people are trying to get their shows finished out before Labor Day and people start disappearing for vacations. We have a show every night this week. Tonight we’ll be seeing a technical rehearsal for the Rockville Musical theatre Center’s production of Meet Me in St. Louis.

Laura: Wednesday night we will be seeing the final dress rehearsal of Floyd Collins with the Hard Bargain Players.

Mike: On Thursday we will be watching the opening night performance of Phoenician Women by Natural Theatricals.

Laura: On Friday, the Nova Woodbridge Theatre Group will be performing their opening night production of A Doll House in Woodbridge, Virginia.

Mike: And to finish out our week of shows, on Saturday night we will be watching Little Women by the Tapestry Theatre Company in Alexandria, Virginia.

Laura: So we’d like to invite you to come and meet you at any of the public performances, Phoenician Women on Thursday, A Doll House on Friday, or Little Women on Saturday.

Mike: If you’re able to come, we’d love to meet you.

Laura: And now, on with the show.