Reviewing Friends
I’ve just finished my most recent batch of shows. While doing my normal several shows at a time, I was presented with the opportunity to review several different shows including two shows that involved artists that I’ve worked with before. I was a little conflicted with whether or not I should take them since I was a bit worried if my previous relations with these people would get in the way of work. However, I decided that it would be a good opportunity to write from an honest and subjective point of view.
The key thing I found to be exceptionally helpful in both cases was to look at it just like any other show. No matter who’s involved, it’s important to write honestly about what you feel and experience. Even if there were aspects that I liked and didn’t like, I wanted to focus on what I experienced while being an audience member for the shows as oppose to how this would affect my working relationship with these people. So I made sure to be honest while not ripping anything apart (after all, there’s a difference between being honest and just being cruel), and hoped for the best.
West End Live 2014
Some of you may know that in London we have this annual, weekend long event called West End Live. Its a free concert in Trafalgar Square where majority of the current musicals will play a song or more. I had been in 2012, but had only come to see what it was like so turned up at half 12 and barely saw a thing. As university had finished the day before I was determined to do it properly this year, so turned up at 9 o’clock, for the 11 o’clock. After an argument with the security guard, it was definitely worth the early start for the view I had:
West End Live Day 1 (c) Heather Graham
On the second day I got there even earlier for a 12 o’clock start and ended up even closer to the front, and managed to get to the barrier before the final 3 songs but some of my other photos will show that. Now if I went on about every performance this would be an epically long post so I’ll just pick a few. Read more…
More Than Just Stage Lighting
Lighting design is a lot bigger than most people think. When most people hear Lighting Design, they think Broadway, and while some of the best Lighting Designers end up on Broadway, there are a lot of different ways our skills are put to use. Anywhere from Stage Lighting and Concert Lighting, to the under appreciated Architectural Lighting, the world of Lighting Design is everywhere around you. Most people don’t know the difference between any of these, and if you’re one of those people, have no fear, I’m here to help!
First, and most famous, is traditional Stage Lighting. In this world, a Lighting Designer uses the lights at their disposal to help create a fictional world on the stage, and help tell the story a Director is trying to tell. In Stage Lighting, the lights are never going to be the focus, they are merely there to help propel the story along, and in many cases, it helps convey what the characters are feeling, and projects that onto the audience. For example, if two characters are engaged in an angry duet/argument, you aren’t going to want pink and purple lovey dovey colors all over the stage. Instead, you want to the audience to feel the argument, so the lighting is used to help convey this emotion, and much harsher colors (red, for example) are used. Stage lighting is very intimate, and the Designer is very involved with the Director in trying to tell a story.
First Post/New Writer
Here I am sitting in my break room at Disney typing this up. I’m a new blogger for “The Green Room”. Well, let me get started by saying Hello to all you readers out there. My name is Christopher Gooley. I’m originally from Long Island, NY and somehow ended up at Disney World working in entertainment. I have done numerous off broadway shows and worked in regional theaters. Since my move to Florida I have been doing more on camera work. I’m also a proud member of SAG-AFTRA. I have trained at AMDA & Juilliard and hold a BFA in Theater Arts from Five Towns College.
Well, fast forward 5 years ahead and now here I am writing this. This Fall I’m moving back to NYC to go to NYU to get my MA in Educational Theatre. I’m also getting ready to move into the next phase of my career. Well, it’s time to do parade now here at Disney World, but I will be writing a lot more about my experience as an Actor, Casting Director and what its really like to work in a “Right to Work State” as a union member.
The Tony’s and Sound Design
One really great thing about the time we currently live in is how technology is always growing and expanding. Sound Design has only become an aspect of theatre about 45 years ago (the only newer technical aspect being projection and multimedia), and in that short time it’s become quite essential in our productions (there have even been shows that the sound was one of my favorite parts of the production). Yet despite becoming such an integral part of our world, sound still tends to be the area of theatre that gets the short end of the stick. Most theatre schools that have technical theatre concentrations don’t have one for sound design (in fact, there’s rarely more than one class offered for it if that). The Tony Awards nomination committee has 50 theatre artists from all aspects except sound designers. It even took 40 years for the Tony’s to recognize the field, only giving sound design a category in 2008. Which makes the choice of taking away that aspect even more appalling.
One Day More: a Reflection on the 2014 Tony Awards
Musical theater is a cruel, cruel mistress. Seriously. She takes all of my money, my time, and my sanity, and still I come a-crawling back when she beckons. I don’t have cable, so I missed the initial Tony Awards broadcast, but thankfully, I was able to catch it online a couple days ago. I was not expecting to have some kind of big, emotional meltdown during my viewing. I was like, “Cool, let’s watch Jean “the Wolverine from Oz” Valjean sing some ball-busting high notes and make fake nice with Neil Patrick Harris for 3 hours.” The show started off very promising because I had no idea there’d be hopping. Mind. BLOWN. It wasn’t until the cast of the Les Miserables revival came out and sang “One Day More”, a song that I have freakin’ heard a bajillion times (Heck, not to knock their innovative new way of taking epic steps forward and backward, but a performance that I feel I’ve seen a bajillion times), that I had an unexpected burble of feelings. When they hit the climax of that number, I totally started weeping like a little girl. If my boyfriend hadn’t been in the room, it might have turned into quite the ugly cry. I am just one of those people who sees the magic in the musical, and unfortunately, they don’t write ‘em like Les Mis any more. At least, that’s what I thought until I saw the performance from the cast of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. SOME ONE IS STILL WRITING GREAT, COMPLICATED, CHARACTER-DRIVEN MUSIC FOR THE THEATER. Kudos to Robert L. Freedman and Steven Lutvak. Kudos.
Now, about all of the controversy over the award for Sound Design being nixed and the “In Memoriam” segment not being broadcast: I do not agree with either of these moves by the Wing. Read more…
The Power of the Google Alert for an Actor
photo credit: Google
A very wise someone many years ago advised me to set up a Google Alert on myself. I can’t remember who it was, or I would share their brilliance publicly, but it was great advice.
You all know what a Google Alert is, right? I hadn’t heard of it at the time, but basically it’s a saved search through Google that will email you any time a new piece of information pops up anywhere on the web that meets your search criteria.
Having a Google Alert for yourself is incredibly helpful — you’re always the first to know what’s out there on the internet about you! Whether it’s a play review, a photo shoot that’s finally posted, a blog post that mentions your name, the Playbill announcement of your next show…you’ll get an email letting you know that it’s out there. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten a Google Alert about myself and been glad to have that information!
But there are so many ways that a smart actor can use Google Alerts to advantage. I’ve only recently realized that myriad ways to put Google Alerts to work for me, and I wanted to share my newfound knowledge with you.
8 Ways for Actors to use Google Alerts:
Everything Works, Until It Doesn’t
We all know the drill: You rehearse for weeks and weeks to put on this amazing production that truly showcases the collaboration between Actors, Directors, and Designers, and then the show opens and its beautiful and wonderful! While most of the time, things go off without a hitch, but there are always those times when everything seems to go wrong, especially when dealing with the technical side of things.
In my case, I have to run 5 shows a day, so the chances that things are going to break during the show are pretty high, and it’s when these things break that things get interesting. You can check lights and sound however many times you want to before a show begins, but its when things break in the heat of the moment, when the Followspot on the lead singer goes out during her big number, or when that quick change doesn’t go exactly as rehearsed, that’s when the collaboration truly shines. Its always when things go wrong that everyone begins to think on their feet, and they begin to work together.
As a designer, I’ve seen these mishaps happen numerous times, and its not always the technician that ends up fixing every technical problem. Just recently, I was in the middle of a show, when our female lead had her mic go out mid-performace. We couldn’t hop on stage and give her a new microphone, so we had to watch in horror as she sang, but no sound was heard. That was when the rest of the ensemble banded together to work the problem out! One of the male singers took over her section of the song while she ran off stage for a quick fix, and all of the dancers adjusted to the new performance. When the female lead returned, everything was back to normal, and the show still went on.
The Green Room 