Look at us! We’re getting all bloggy! Can you even believe it? Welcome — and thank you for visiting our blog. As I type, I’m humming along with the Duck for President curtain call reprise that’s floating up from the stage below. I hear the school buses idling out front and hope we can get this group of kids out before the buses pull up to drop off the next load. (I’m glad Erica‘s downstairs to traffic cop the whole circus. She used to be a cheerleader, so she’s able to rally the armies of children and get them to do whatever she wants.) In the office next door — okay, it’s not next door, we’re basically all piled in a room together — but in her own little corner, our education director, Frances, is huddled with one of our teaching artists strategizing about about classroom activities at a neighborhood elementary school, while Angelo is between us, in his little corner, on the phone about our upcoming benefit. Just outside the office in the rehearsal room, the strange wrestling sounds I keep hearing have turned out to be our tech director, Ian, who is constructing a giant flying machine. Yes, it’s true. There will be a giant flying machine featured in our next kids’ show, The Flight of the Dodo. That may have been top secret. But this is the place to get the top secret poop. Oops. More secrets. There’s poop in the show too.
Dang, it’s been a busy fall. In addition to the gazillion Duck for President performances, The Picture of Dorian Gray was a boffo hit that extended. Plus we moved last summer’s hit, The Mark of Zorro, to Theatre Building Chicago on Belmont Avenue for a fall run there. And don’t get me started with the birthday parties and special events and off-school workshop days. But finally we wind down for a brief spell. Our next MainStage show, Mariette in Ecstasy, doesn’t open until February. Dorian closed on Sunday — sold out thru the very last show. Zorro will close this coming Sunday (after 93 performances) and then we’ll bust it up and drag all the salvageable pieces back to Lifeline. Ah, it will be good to be home under one roof rather than scattered all across town.
So welcome to our blog! I hope you will visit us often and we will keep you up to date on our backstage antics, dilemmas and general hilarity. Right now, I have to go to my Snowflake Tim rehearsal. Oh criminy. That reminds me. Flight of the Dodo is NOT our next kids’ show. It’s Snowflake Tim’s Big Holiday Adventure. That’s a title we came up with a few years ago when we decided we needed a non-denominational holiday kids show. And who would think that plan would have worked out? But Christina took that title written on a cocktail napkin and wrote the play and it is GREAT, cuz she’s a genius. It’s funny, heartwarming, lots of audience participation. So we bring it back every couple years over the holidays. So — Snowflake Tim will open first and then Dodo a week later and then they’ll be in rep. Yes, in rep. Back-to-back shows right after each other on our little stage with different sets and different casts and not much time in between… What the heck. Who made this schedule? Does no one proofread the calendar? What were we thinking? I mean — What a bold new experiment! And with the team we’ve got over here and the production teams on these shows, I have high hopes we’ll be able to work miracles, as usual.
Stay tuned and I’ll let you know how it works out for us . . .
Dorothy Milne
Artistic Director