Christmas Carol pictures!

Our first show, a preview, is on Tuesday, and we open on Thursday! These pictures are from dress rehearsal.

this is the whole cast singing joy to the world at the end of the show. i'm standing next to scrooge on the right.

this is the ghost of christmas past with scrooge. lindsay, who plays past, is an acrobat, and she flings herself around the two silks in the picture. it's super cool.

this is the fred party scene. from left to right, lexi (mrs. fred, a former apprentice), devin (on the ground, apprentice), daniel (topper, apprentice), john (fred, equity actor), jordan (on the ground, apprentice), rebecca (my roommate and apprentice), and martina (apprentice).

pictures

here's a link to the pictures from solo mio round 1:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/actorstheatreoflouisville/5196576341/in/set-72157625442535336/

other than me, the apprentices that did their pieces were monica (red jacket and glasses), victoria (bellydancing), jordan (wearing the hat), brandon (with rope), devin (dancing), and daniel (with the balloons).

rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal

Hello!

Last Friday we started rehearsals for A Christmas Carol, and it is so exciting and wonderful to be rehearsing a play! The version here is very similar to the one at the KC Rep, but there's a little more singing, and the narration is a little different. It's lots of fun to be singing so much again--I'm very grateful for all of those years of choir at Shawnee Mission East (thanks for not letting me quit, mom).

The actors in the show are all quite young, in their thirties...I remember everyone at the Rep being much old. But I think that's because I was 12, and everyone over the age of 18 is pretty much 90 from that perspective. They're a great bunch and I"m looking forward to celebrating Christmas with them everyday for the next two months!

xoxo,

ellen

the humana festival of new american plays

hello everyone!

i'm so sorry it has been so long--the past few weeks have been totally insane. the mystery of irma vep closed, we worked all week on the load in of the sets and lights of a christmas story, i've been watching all of the story rehearsals, christmas carol prep, etc, etc, etc. but this weekend and week my schedule is calming down a lot. so on my to-do list is "call people". if you are a homo sapien that i know, expect a phone call.

we've got big news at actors--the lineup for the humana festival of new american plays! the humana festival is a BIG deal. it's been around since the 70s and is the most important new play festival in the country. lots of plays that you've heard of premiered here--crimes of the heart, dinner with friends, becky shaw, the list goes on and on. the festival runs throughout the month of march, and tons of actors, directors, designers, critics, and theatre lovers descend on louisville to create plays and watch them and then take them back to their own theatres and produce them there. i've attached the link for the press release at the bottom so you can look at the plays and playwrights.

also super exciting is that the apprentice company has their own show in humana--it's called "the end", and it's about the apocalypse. there are five playwrights who are working together to create this play for us, and we do the show during all of the big humana weekends.

http://actorstheatre.org/2010/11/07/35th-annual-humana-festival-lineup-announcement/

talk to ya'll soon!

ellen

'tis the christmas season!

i know it's only the middle of october, but here at actors, it's the start of christmas season. last week we started rehearsals for a christmas story, which runs in the month of november, and in a few weeks we'll be starting rehearsals for a christmas carol, which runs in december.

i'm the understudy to the mother in a christmas story, which means that if she ever gets sick or hurt then i have to go on. it's my job to know all of her lines and blocking and basically do the role exactly as she does it--it's not my job to create my own character. so i've been watching all of the rehearsals and writing everything down and memorizing my lines. it's a lot of work; the apprenti call it "rehearsing for that play you're not in". i would hope that jessie (the woman who plays the mother) would get sick, but she's so sweet and kind (and a former apprentice!) that i can't do that.

for a christmas carol, i got cast as the part of fan! you might remember me playing this role in 7th and 8th grade. the version of christmas carol that actors does is very similar to the version at the kc rep, but they both have added different songs over the years and tell the story slightly differently. there isn't a dickens narrator in this one; the narration is done by all of the members of the company.

so from now until i see ya'll on december 24th, i'll be steeped in christmas!

xoxo, ellen

video time!

Hello!

It's video time! The show i'm crewing right now is The Mystery of Irma Vep, a fun gothic-melodrama spoof. The whole show is done by two guys, Larry and Blake, who play 6 characters. They're absolutely hysterical, and so I thought I'd share their promo videos:

Here's the second one:

And, just for fun, here's a video for the education department that me and fellow apprentice Jordan Brodess did. It's to promote the New Voices Playwrights Festival for high school kids:

flash mob

today, the apprenti took panera by storm and performed a flash mob to promote the production of dracula currently running at actors. a flash mob is when people seemingly spontaneously break out into some sort of performance--of course it's all very well rehearsed. we choreographed a quick dance to lady gaga's song "teeth".

enjoy!