Photos and the Beginning

In the MU-Middletown elevator, with all the set and props!

The set of Tom Sawyer: An Original Musical. (Robbie to scale.)

About to raise the backdrop.

Assembling the backdrop.

Robbie and Caitlin, excited for their first day on tour with ArtReach!

Robbie, Caitlin, Teresa, Chris: Loading out at Miami University-Middletown

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We start the new tour--officially--tomorrow, with a performance in Blue Ash, OH. After yesterday's staff dress rehearsal of Town Mouse, Country Mouse, we continued to tweak and play through the afternoon today. Our artistic director and playwright, Kelly, encouraged us to play and explore as the tour progresses, discovering more moments and bits in the next two months. We can thank her and Roderick for the progress we've made with this new script, and we look forward to taking it on the road.

Hoedown

Yesterday, we premiered Tom Sawyer: An Original Musical (this newest version, at least) at the Middletown campus of Miami University. We had a morning and an afternoon show, entertaining crowds of teachers and young students. They are always wonderful to us at this venue: they constantly reiterate how much "we just love ArtReach," they feed us box lunches, and they help us load-in and -out.

It was also Caitlin and Robbie's first time on the road with ArtReach. We couldn't have asked for a better beginning. The sun was shining by the time we got back in the van, so we stopped briefly at Sonic's (it was on the way) and got slushies.

Today, we have a later rehearsal slot (4pm-9pm) at the office. We will perfect the choreography for Town Mouse, Country Mouse. It is a bit exciting to think that in less than a week, we will be out of the rehearsal room and on the road, into the full force of two months of touring.

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Facebook users can perhaps find video of Robbie and I (as the Country Mouse and the Brooklyn Bunny) dancing the "hoedown" dance. (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/video/video.php?v=1049196228927&subj=71500601)

Town Mouse, Country Mouse

We begin rehearsals for Town Mouse, Country Mouse on Monday, with our director, Roderick. We worked with him for A Christmas Carol not three months ago, and we are excited to have him back.

Jen, our director for Tom Sawyer: An Original Musical is wonderful and fun, very open to suggestions and enthusiastic about getting as much of "the funny" as possible out of every joke. Because of her excellent guidance, our dress rehearsal for the staff of TCTC went very well on Thursday--so well, in fact, that rehearsals were called off for Friday, due to lack of needing them. It is a testament to Jen's directing capabilities and a compliment to us actors, and we all enjoyed our separate days off yesterday (probably sleeping in and catching up on TV...and memorizing lines for the next show, of course).

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The break is a welcome one. This three-day weekend is a luxury we rarely enjoy in the thick of a touring season, as is the convenience of working always close to home. It is a grind still, but a lesser grind, a loosened tie, a release of pressure.

It seems, too, that this last leg of the season will be a light one, in terms of our set. The last time we toured two shows simultaneously (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and An Algonquin Cinderella) was back in the fall, and the van was unbelievably packed. So, also, with A Christmas Carol, a show whose set pieces were much larger than any others we've transported. The set for Tom Sawyer uses the same amount of space as did the Coretta Scott King set, though prop-wise it is more advanced: two standing gravestones that can be disassembled and stacked, a white picket fence piece that folds in the middle but is still about a yard square, a large wooden bench, and a slew of props and costumes.

From what we've seen so far, the TM, CM set will be similarly small. Two blocks from Cinderella have been repainted and can be turned upside-down to serve as containers. What will go in them, though, has yet to be seen.

And we won't find out until next week. For now, there are hours of scripts and words, and plenty of imaginings. Everything solidifies on Monday.

New Shows, New Folks

We've ended the tour of Coretta Scott King, and we've moved right into Tom Sawyer: An Original Musical and Town Mouse, Country Mouse (rehearsing in that order).

Tomorrow, we will have been working on Tom Sawyer for a week. Quite literally, we left one show and entered another. Teresa and I said goodbye to Marva and Justin after our morning show at Blue Ash Elementary last Monday, and after snagging a quick Rally's lunch, arrived at the home office to meet the new half of ArtReach, Robbie McMath and Caitlin Drance. Robbie has done some CTC work in the past (we saw him in High School Musical 2 that Saturday before we met him), and Caitlin is new to the company.

Even with our vast mix of experience and training, our talents meld nicely. Robbie just graduated high school last year and plans to attend NKU this fall. Caitlin has gone to college for theatre, and she also went to a stunt school. Jen Scott, our director, said that we were the most talented group of actors ever to do ArtReach at one time. We'll take it.

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Now, six days into rehearsals for Tom Sawyer, we are already off-book and layering on sound cues and costume pieces. The next few days will be the real test of our virtuoso abilities, as more costumes come into action--and also more spectators. The dress rehearsal for the staff is Thursday, but we'll be ready.