by William Nicholson
Sheesh. I hate stupid legal stuff. Technically, since I am advertising the play, I have to put the name of the author, in font size no less than fifty percent of that of the title, immediately following the title. I also need to say that the play is being "Produced by special agreement with Samuel French, Inc."
Anyway, the play is going to be performed at three different times. These times are as follows:
Thursday (04/01) @ 8:00 PM
Friday (04/02) @ 8:00 PM
Sunday (04/04) @ 2:00 PM
All performances will take place in the Education Building. Student tickets cost four dollars. Tickets for anyone else cost five dollars. Honestly now, isn't that a really low price to watch me play the priest that marries Spaulding and Amy?
Come watch the play and give us your money!
Now, if you would like to read about the gripes a number of participants have concerning the play, please continue reading.
(All of the following are opinions expressed by myself. Some information has been gleaned from overhearing discussions between those more important in the production than I.)
I'm not really sure where I should begin with this. I guess I will start with one of the earliest gripes I heard surface.
We did not get copies of the script until about a month and a half before opening night. This was most unfortunate. I understand that the person responsible for taking care of all of it was quite busy during that time. The end result was that Spaulding and Amy, who naturally have the largest chunk of lines in the play, did not have a great deal of time to learn lines. Spaulding has had to practically memorize the entire play, and I applaud his ability to do so in such a short time.
Moving on to a slightly bigger subject, we have had quite a hassle concerning stage set-up. Thankfully, the play is being performed at the same time as Hootenanny. This gets that huge stage away from the storage room in the Advancement Building and gives us room to build and paint backgrounds and props. Unfortunately, we are not able to actually set up the stage until Wednesday afternoon. This means we may get a full dress rehearsal in on Wednesday. The administration has not been very helpful with Stage Right's needs. Despite the fact that we have to perform the play they selected on the date they set, we are unable to work on the actual stage in the room of the performances until the night before opening night. This has become more than a bit stressful.
We also have a limited budget. Basically, we used the profits from last year's production to pay for the majority of what we needed to buy. Since Lisa graciously took the responsibility of finding costumes for cast members, Stage Right both saved money and has a large number of good-looking clothes on stage. A number of the larger props needed are also being loaned to us from generous people. The majority of the money (I believe) has gone towards stage production and maintenance. This includes wood, paint, screws, etc. We don't have much money left to buy stage make-up. I am not even sure of the status of our make-up requirements at the moment.
One gripe specific to me is that of publicity. Approximately one week before the play started I was given the responsibility of promoting the play. This meant orchestrating a chapel announcement (of which I passed the responsibility back to Pat), creating a sign for Saga (which was done quite poorly, I have no artistic talent whatsoever), and creating small flyers to post around campus (which would not have been done quite as well had it not been for my roommate). The job also entailed creating tickets for the play and making programs for the performances. The tickets have been created and are now being sold. The programs are currently just a sketch on a folded piece of lined paper. All of this has proven to me that I do not want to be in charge of promoting or publicizing anything ever again.
Posted by Randy at March 31, 2004 01:53 AM | TrackBack