I know, I know; the show has already closed! But I found that the rehearsals and run were so intense that I didn’t have the time or energy to add as many blog posts as I would have liked. So, I’m adding them now as time allows!
Here’s a genuinely clever trailer that the Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s inventive marketing department created to advertise the show. It only shows a couple of the characters we each played, but it does give you a great feel for the general tone of silliness that we sustained for 8 shows a week. It features all four of us performers: me, Christian Pedersen, Beth Hylton, and Joe Foust. Enjoy!
It’s all happening so fast! Here we are at opening night already. We’ll do a few last-minute tweaks this afternoon, then the performance, and after that a grand party at a local restaurant. Our preview audiences have been wonderful, and we can’t wait to be officially up and running! It’s too bad the run is only two weeks, but we’ll enjoy every minute of it. I play a dozen different roles, and one of my favorites is the chatty and excitable Mrs. McGarrigle, proprietress of the McGarrigle Hotel in the Scottish Highlands. Here I am as Mrs. M, with Joe Foust as Mr. McGarrigle, welcoming Beth Hylton (Pamela) and Christian Pedersen (Richard Hannay, our hero) on a dark and stormy night.
Copyright 2011 by Alicia Donelan, photo courtesy of the Maltz Jupiter Theatre
My thanks again to director Peter Amster and Artistic Director Andrew Kato for a fantastic experience, and to all the designers for such a beautiful-looking show. I just wish they could all stay and hang out with us for the whole run! But we’ll have a great time doing our zany little play with the fabulous staff of the Maltz Jupiter Theatre. This show is like being a cog in a giant Swiss clock–the “show” backstage is almost as complicated and wacky as the one onstage! Break a leg, all! Off to opening night!!
Wow, this rehearsal period has flown by! It feels like I just stepped off the plane in sunny Florida the other day, and yet last night we gave our first preview performance of The 39 Steps. It went very well indeed, and we’re looking forward to putting the show in front of more audiences this week and next. After all this intensive work, it seems a shame that we’re only running for two weeks–but it’s great that the run is already 86% sold!
Artistic Director Andrew Kato set the perfect tone on the first day of rehearsal, by having everyone in the building join the cast and production staff for a meet and greet session. His message was simple: everyone in the building is there to help us present the best production possible. The staff members with whom I’ve interacted have certainly gone out of their way to be helpful. The theatre’s guild even provided us with welcome beach bags full of useful goodies, and cooked us a wonderful dinner during tech weekend. In short, it’s a pretty great place to work.
The rehearsals themselves have been fantastic–director Peter Amster created just the kind of democratic, respectful, playful, let’s-see-what-we-discover environment that I love. And this despite the fact that he’s directed the show many times before. He freely admitted that while he knows what has worked in past productions, he knows that the play inevitably has a different “fit” when worn by a different set of actors. So while we benefited from his extensive expertise with this demanding script, we also were given carte blanche to get out there and surprise him. We laughed a LOT. Christian Pedersen (pictured here with me in front of the theatre’s marquee) plays our hero, Richard Hannay. Beth Hylton (a fellow grad of UNC-Chapel Hill’s MFA Acting program, and also represented by my agent, Renée Glicker of About Artists) plays the three women he encounters, and Joe Foust and I play the two Clowns who become all the other characters. Joe is the only one who has done this script before, as he was in a prior production for Peter. I think all four of us in the cast feel especially good that despite Peter’s vast experience with the script, we’ve still managed to come up with new interpretations and storytelling details that he hasn’t seen before. And in turn, Peter has come up with a lot of great new ideas to enhance this production–including a hilarious final image that involves one particularly silly final costume change for me. I’ll have to get a picture of that one to share!
We’ve also been blessed with the incredible staff at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre, including enthusiastic Associate Producer/Company Manager, Rachel Blavatnik, our unflappable Production Stage Manager, Brandy DeMil, and her resourceful Assistant Stage Manager, T. Scott Wooten. The design team has done a wonderful job of making the production look gorgeous. I plan to do a separate post to talk a little bit about the production design, hopefully with some photos!
If you’re going to be in the Jupiter, Florida area, I encourage you to come down and see this charming and very silly show. The cast is wonderful, the script is a hoot, and you don’t need to know the films of Alfred Hitchcock to have a great time.
I just came across a very interesting site called playshakespeare.com, which is a free resource offering online texts of all of William Shakespeare’s plays, as well as reviews of theatrical productions, an online community, research materials, the inevitable Bard-related shopping, and more. It’s an ambitious site, so it’s going to take me a while to look through it, but I certainly suggest you check it out for yourself (unless you’ve already beaten me to it, which is entirely possible!).
To my surprise, I found a review of the 2009 NY Classical Theatre production of King Lear that we performed in Central Park and Battery Park. The reviewer, Roseanne Wells, has lovely things to say about my dear friend Donald Grody as the tragic king, and she also gives a beautiful summation of the Fool and what I was doing with the role:
“Acting as a nursemaid and scolding schoolteacher, the Fool (Andrew Sellon) doles out tonics to calm Lear while chastising him through humor and logic, the only way to avoid offending him. Sellon also infuses genuine concern for Lear, worrying about his physical and mental health, desperate to keep him from harm; he is a fool by trade, a caregiver by loyalty and love.”
I think that puts it beautifully. To my knowledge, this is the only actual review of that production. You can read the full review by clicking here. If you ever come across another one somewhere, please send me the link!
You can visit PlayShakespeare.com by clicking the image on this post. I noticed that they also have a link to an iPhone app; there’s a $9.99 “Pro” version and a free version. I’ve downloaded the free one to start with, and will do another post if the app is really neat.
Okay. I’m super excited. First The Smurfs and now this! My agent Renée and her associate Joe called from About Artists this afternoon to tell me I’ve landed one of the two Clown roles in the Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s upcoming production of the hit Hitchcock spy spoof, The 39 Steps! I’ve been dying to do this show since I saw the NY production (which coincidentally included acting buddy Arnie Burton in a brilliant turn as one of the Clowns). I love playing multiple characters, and I’ll be playing plenty of ‘em in this show. I also love Florida! So this all works out nicely.
My thanks to Director Peter Amster, Artistic Director Andrew Kato, Casting Director Bob Cline, and the two wonderful readers who were there both for Monday’s initial audition and Tuesday’s callbacks. My thanks also to Renée and Joe for ongoing enthusiasm and support. Given how much fun I had at the auditions, I can’t wait to start rehearsals. My partner Tim is already looking at the calendar to plan some Florida time with me. It turns out Renée also represents one of the other performers who was selected, which means she represents half of the four-person cast!
The show starts rehearsals on October 11th, and runs from November 1-13 (closing on my birthday, which is kind of cool). For more information about the production, click the image on this post to visit the theatre’s web site. I hope I’ll see some of you there! I’ll be one of the two guys in the hats. And wigs. And pants. And dresses. And phony moustaches. And funny accents. You get the idea….
I’m delighted to announce that I now offer a comprehensive set of voiceover samples on the Voiceovers page of my web site. I’ve always had the commercial v/o demo available, but now I’ve added a host of others in a variety of categories, including eLearning, Documentary, Animation, World Dialects, and more. A number of the samples are tongue-in-cheek, so I hope you have as much fun listening to them as I did writing and recording them. In addition, the new samples have music by my old friend Elliot Sokolov, a fantastic composer and all-around great collaborator who has created music for film, television, and theatre.
To hear my new demos, click the Voiceovers link on my site, or click the microphone image on this post to visit that page. You will have the option of launching a nifty Flash menu that will allow you to mouse over each of the samples to hear them, or for those of you using devices unable to play Flash (like iPads/iPhones), you can launch the clips individually from the links provided on the Voiceovers page. Some of the clips contain more than one sample. NOTE: As the Flash file contains a total of 10 demo clips, it may take up to a minute to load on some systems.
Let me know what you think! And if you know of anyone seeking voiceover talent, please feel free to share the link to my Voiceovers page with them. Thanks!
A bit of background on the music in the new clips: Elliot and I were in the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop together for a couple of years many moons ago, me as a lyricist/librettiest and Elliot for his music. Others in the class included Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, two other swell people who went on to become the team responsible for Ragtime and many other fine shows. Elliot and I lost touch over the years, until Facebook came along. We hooked up again, began chatting, and when I asked if he knew of anyone to do some sound editing/engineering for my new voiceover demos, he revealed that these are some of the services he offers now! So it was a great excuse to get back together and catch up after all these years, and meet his adorable puppy Augie. I think Elliot’s music works fantastically with my demo clips. If you want to know more about Elliot, or if you’d like to take advantage of his services as composer or sound engineer, I encourage you to visit his site by clicking here. He’s a great guy to work with, and can write just about any kind of music imaginable!
On Sunday, Tim and I went to see the Smurfs movie in 3D with our nephew Nicholas, his mom Patty, Tim’s brother Danny, and his wife Ginny. We went to the brand new Ridge Hill multiplex here in Yonkers–it’s one of the only things open in this massive development (which is so big they may actually end up declaring it a village!). We made sure to get there good and early, prepared to take silly pictures next to the movie posters in the lobby, only to find out there weren’t any at this theater! So instead, before the action started, Danny kindly took this picture of us to mark the occasion of my major motion picture debut.
As it turns out, only about 1/3 of my little scene made it into the final film, so I’m really only onscreen for about 7 seconds. But I still interact very briefly with Hank Azaria (aka the villainous Gargamel) and hey, I’m up there. My thanks again to director Raja Gosnell for casting me and keeping a bit of the scene in the final film. As soon as I walked offscreen, Nicholas leaned over to me and whispered: “You were great!!” which really made my day. I told his mother later that being in a movie is indeed really cool, but being in a family and sharing little moments like this–now, that’s great!
Nicholas noted that we needed to stay and watch the credits at the end so that we could see my name. When the credits rolled, he pointed out: “Look! You’ve got a mushroom next to your name!” Evidently in the Smurf world, that’s a good omen. So if you end up seeing the movie and checking out the credits, look for the little red mushroom. Rumor has it that if this film makes enough money, Hank Azaria has already signed on for two more. So maybe we’ll cross paths again at greater length in a sequel! (And maybe the full version of the scene will show up on the DVD bonus reel…!)
Well, today’s the day I make my major motion picture debut. I play a silent waiter who runs afoul of the villain during a tasteful dinner at the Russian Tea Room. The scene lasts all of a minute (if they kept the whole thing), but if it’s as funny on film as it was while we were having fun shooting, it should be a hoot.
My thanks again to my agent Renée Glicker of About Artists, to casting director Richard Hicks, and to wonderful director Raja Gosnell for bringing me on board and giving me such a great opportunity. I had a fantastic time on my one day of shooting, and hope there will be many more. Raja, what are you doing next? Thanks also to Hank Azaria, Sofia Vergara, and Tim Gunn for being both gracious and very funny during shooting of our scene, and to Benita Allen and everyone behind the scenes on the production who kept things running so smoothly despite the antics of the four identical cats!
To top it all off, our nephew Nicholas announced that he wants to see the movie first with me! He even politely declined an invite from one of his schoolmates so that he could see it with me on Sunday in 3D. I’m honored, and I can’t wait.
Thanks also to all my friends who have been so supportive. I have no idea how I’ll look up there, but it’s great knowing that so many people out there are rooting for me. That means a lot.
At long last, the premiere of The Smurfs movie is almost here! The date has been moved up from August to July 29th. And today, I received a call from a woman checking the spelling of all the names to appear in the credits, and she confirmed that my little 30-second scene made the final cut! So while I don’t have any lines, I do have a fun scene with Hank Azaria, Tim Gunn, and Sofia Vergara, and it’ll be a hoot to see myself on “the big screen” for the first time. And in 3D, no less! My thanks again to my agent Renée Glicker, casting director Richard Hicks, and director Raja Gosnell for the opportunity to be part of the film. I had such a fantastic time filming, and I can’t wait to see the finished movie!
My buddy Katherine (from my old BMI Workshop days) tells me that my Minute Maid ad has now surfaced in the May 23rd issue of People magazine. So my kiss-covered face is definitely making the rounds. Thanks for letting me know, Kathryn! If anyone else spots my ad somewhere new, please do let me know. It’s becoming something of a party game!
But I found that the rehearsals and run were so intense that I didn’t have the time or energy to add as many blog posts as I would have liked. So, I’m adding them now as time allows!
