Connor Rickman Presents:

Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of:

The War of the Worlds

One night only: Thursday May 5th 2011 7:30pm,

Studio 115 at the University of Utah Performing Arts Building

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Bad news gets worse, then gets better

Minutes after I finished writing the last blog post I received an email from my remaining two ballet dancers. Citing their busy schedules and the need to keep their GPA's up as the reason, the two departed from my show. At first I was rather furious, thinking about why these people couldn't have just said "no" when they volunteered for the project. My anger was soon turned to triumph however when I was rescued by the best people in the universe, friends!

My friend of many years, and his entire life, Jesse Wood complained about why his sister got to be in the show and he didn't. I found no reason not to let him perform with us. Furthermore, Nels Jorgensen, possibly my best friend from High School, also volunteered. Nels is a physics major, he works in a research lab and gets an average of 4 hours a sleep per night and he still was willing to be there for me in order to help me succeed. This is true friendship. Also, it appears as though I too will be appearing in my own show. On principle I'm opposed to theatre directors also appearing as actors but desperate times call for desperate measures. I just hope I don't screw it up too much.

Armed with newfound resolve we plunged headlong into the next week of rehearsals which went incredibly well. From Tuesday March 29th up until Thursday April 7th, we did nothing but block the show and practice walking/singing through it. By yesterday, the cast managed to run through everything we had worked on so far and put it in the correct order. The show is finally taking shape.

We still suffered a few setbacks however. Our leading man Rob Shand had to leave Utah to attend his Grandmother's funeral in Washington DC and was therefore gone for a week. Keir Schmidt our musical director wasn't able to attend rehearsals due to how much time he's been putting into making the music track. We missed out on a day of rehearsal this week because the University of Utah's Musical Theatre Program students are involved in their own performance and they decided to begin tech rehearsals a few days early. Finally our youngest cast member Rebecca Shillander got hit by a slow moving car in a parking lot and has suffered some minor mobility hampering injuries. We're all hoping she recovers by show time.

None of these things stopped us from having what has possibly been the two most productive weeks in our rehearsal period. Shalee Schmidt, our vocal director, came in twice to coach Lauren Wood through her singing in "The Spirit of Man" and again to sing through the entire score with the whole ensemble. Our choreographer Katie Staszkow also came in and taught us a wonderful dance for the song "The Red Weed." It's all coming together!

I also presented the progress of the show to an audience of theatre students and a couple of professors at the University of Utah's Undergraduate Research Symposium 2011. As part of the requirement of the University funding my research in this process, I was required to present my findings. I discussed how the project came about and my reasons for producing it, however I had no visual aid. With the fear of giving a boring presentation I had Colin McDermott snap some pictures of us in rehearsal to use with a powerpoint while I spoke. You can see into the rehearsal room with some of these pictures here:

From WOTW

From WOTW

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3rd Production Meeting and some Bad News

Bad news first...

After last week's debacle about the no-show, no-call incidents, Sarah was forced to write a long an detailed email reminding everyone of the commitment they made to the show and their responsibilities as actors. We have allowed for everyone to have rehearsal conflicts as long as they clear them with the production team before rehearsal begins. This email was sent to everyone in order to scare a bit of professionalism into our cast.

This attempt at reminding everyone of their duties wasn't at all heeded by one person, who emailed Sarah today and quit the show. This moves the total number of people who were once involved in the show up to 8.

Although I need as many people as possible to finish this project, what I don't need is apathy, and to be honest, one less person is of more value to me than an apathetic cast member. The total integrity of the performance will not suffer due to the departure of these people, and their leaving serves as nothing more than incentive to make the show even better despite them. They are the ones who chose not to be involved in something that I will not accept as being anything short of amazing.

That ideal is shared by my production team and the members of the cast that have consistently appeared at every rehearsal. For every cast member lost there is at least one other who possesses twice their enthusiasm and professionalism, and although they may or may not actually be, to me they're twice as talented as well.

Upon the arrival of this news at the production meeting today, Video Producer Colin McDermott took hold of the publicity wagon and is planning on driving it straight to the bank. Having just finished his first round of video shooting, Colin will have completed his video tasks in the next week or so, leaving him available to aid us in other ways. I imagine I'll have to call in some favors for people to operate puppets, but he said he's available for that as well. Also, as required by the mass exodus of ex-cast members, we have gained my long-time friend Quita Christison in the singing chorus and it seems as though every member of the production team, including myself, will be performing in the show somehow.

My desire for collaboration has turned into exactly that, plus the need to multi-task. I had stated in my production proposal that I would like every member of the cast to experience something outside of their chosen field. It appears as though this statement will ring true for those of us on the production team as well. I just hope Colin can fake dancing enough not to trip over himself too much.

Rehearsals - Week 2

I got an email from my choreographer saying that her flight out of Memphis was cancelled and that she wouldn't be back in Utah until after spring break. After a brief freak-out Sarah, Christine and I came up with a solution.

We reworked the entire rehearsal schedule to allow for 2 hours of singing rehearsal and material with the singing cast to be worked at the beginning of the day and 2 hours of dance rehearsal at the end of the day. This calls the dancers for less time and doesn't increase the burden on the singing chorus. Another important decision was made to rehearse "Horsell Common and the Heat Ray" this week instead of "Thunder Child." I would take the responsibility of rehearsing "Horsell Common..." and Katie, our Choreographer, could tackle "Thunder Child" after she returned.

I got to work on Tuesday evening, rehearsing "Horsell Common..." with the singers. We had just gotten to the end of our 2 hour session when I was greeted by the loveliest sight! 4 new dancers to add to the cast. 3 of them are dept. of Ballet freshman and 1 is a theatre student, huzzah!

From WOTW

From WOTW

I immediately put them into the dance and choreographed about 3/4 of the song by the time we had finished that night. In one rehearsal, we had managed to do almost all of what I scheduled the whole week to finish. Thing were going well.

Things stopped going well soon after however. 2 of the dancers told me they weren't going to be available for Thursday's rehearsal. Something I didn't mind too much due to the fact that we still had 2 dancers left to teach them the choreography later, but come Thursday we had a grand total of zero dancers show up for their call. The two we were missing were eventually tracked down and we were told they couldn't make it because they were "Packing for Spring Break." Spring break was in 2 days. To quote Christine, "Does it take 48 hours for you to pack?"

The remainder of Thursday's rehearsal was cancelled because we couldn't do anything without our dancers and we were forced to cancel Friday as well. Apparently those who were packing told us that it would take a very long time.

Thursday wasn't entirely a waste though. I managed to teach my father, who is puppeteering the Martian creature, his choreography for the dance and run a few bits with the singing chorus. Spring break is beginning just as I write this so I hope people will be a bit more on top of things when they return. I'm headed to New York for 5 days for the Theatre Department's Senior Showcase. It's a pretty big deal but it didn't take me 48 hours to pack...

The Departed

I suffered a rather disappointing day, which is not great seeing as it comes after some rather encouraging rehearsals. I had two cast members quit the show on the same day. Something that is quite unfortunate because I barely have enough cast members to get by as it is. Each one had a good reason to leave but its hard not to be a little upset, especially after they signed performance contracts and committed to the show.

This comes after I lost 5 cast members immediately following auditions. I had cast everyone that came to auditions and every one of them left for reasons that basically equaled "I'm too busy to rehearse and perform this show." I understand that people are busy but seriously, if you're too busy, don't audition in the first place.

7 people gone out of a cast that was originally supposed to equal 12. I have no doubt that we'll be gaining a few more people in the near future but even this early in the rehearsal process this show is shaping up to be one of those where the entire cast isn't in the same room until opening night. I'm a bit more shaken than I once was, hopefully we'll see an improvement in week 2.

2nd Production Meeting

A very exciting meeting indeed. I was so inspired by the progress we had made earlier in the week that I began to draw some preliminary sketches of the set and puppets. I wish I had scanned my notebook so you could see what I'm up to, but I gave the picture to our new production designer Hannah Jones.

Hannah and I went to high school together and she had mentioned that she wanted to get involved in some production design at exactly the right moment for me to get her involved with this show. Hannah and I talked a bit about what we'd like to see for the performance and we threw around a lot of ideas in the presence of Sarah and Christine before she was sent away to go work and think for a week or two. I can't wait to see what she comes up with!

We also met with our Video Producer Colin McDermott to give him an idea of what he'll be working on for the final video track. After handing over the music to him, he too left the meeting to go work. I'm excited to see what he comes up with as well.

Rehearsals - Week One

I experienced a very encouraging first day of rehearsals. Having just concluded a 4 day gig as a PA for a commercial shoot, I rushed from our shooting location to West Institute 301 to begin this crazy process. I met with the entire cast, minus Topher Rasumussen who's in rehearsals for Borderlands at Plan-B Theatre Co, and informed them all of why I thought the project was important.

The commercial shoot I was a part of was for University of Phoenix, the for-profit business university which has many distinguished graduates including the mayor of South Salt Lake. During the shoot I overheard many corporate executives from the UoP parent company talking about the death of the traditional university and the rise of online, personalized learning. They were all putting forth the argument that growing tuition costs and the long period of time necessary to complete a degree at a traditional university is not worth the investment and students were better off completing degrees in an accelerated degree program either online or at one of the UoP campuses. I respectfully disagree.

A traditional university offers a student more than just classes in their chosen career field and a diploma, it offers opportunity. I told the cast that the opportunity for me to create WOTW as my thesis project would not exist at a career college and that the resources allotted to me by the University of Utah allow me not only to learn about theatre, but also to practice it in my student years, before I ever graduate. A traditional university offers me resources in their other students which leads to opportunity to collaborate. In short, the University of Utah is allowing me to stage a professional production while I'm still in school.

After the introductions, my speech and a quick read-thru, we took a short break to snack on some first rehearsal treats courtesy of Sarah Young and some unidentified snacks that I stole from the craft table during my shoot earlier in the day. We reconvened to listen to the entirety of the original recording of Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. We then broke for the evening and met again on Thursday for a singing rehearsal.

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The first thing I will say about a singing rehearsal, "Make sure you have someone to play the piano for you."

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Keir Schmidt, our wonderful musical director, is great at arranging and writing music but he isn't a strong accompanist. After a few minutes of trying to figure out harmonies and vocal top lines, it was revealed to us that one of our other cast members, Rebecca Shillander, actually plays the piano very well.

From WOTW

With that figured out, we ran into another problem. It turns out that Jeff Wayne, while a brilliant songwriter, isn't one for vocal scoring. The score, as sent to us by Jeff Wayne Music Group, doesn't divide the harmonies into separate lines. Instead, there are notes all over the same staff. This proved problematic in our first rehearsal but Keir managed to make us a brand new vocal score for the next rehearsal which made it much easier.

During these first two singing rehearsals some collaborative energy was beginning to flow. I told the cast that if they had an idea they should share it with me and thankfully they listened. It was my original idea to have the song "Forever Autumn" sung by Rob Shand who plays the Journalist. Rob however, felt it better that he did not sing it, because he felt it didn't make sense for his character. After some brief discussion, the song was given to chorus member, now soloist, Trevor Blair so that he may sing while Rob focuses on narration, which is his character's primary goal. It was exactly the sort of grass roots directing I was hoping for.

By the end of the week we had sung through all of the songs and gotten people their correct harmonies. I'm confident that if we needed to make the show nothing more than a staged reading, we could do that very easily.