Jungle Book and GOT Films

February 8th - February 16th
Alright! I helped with makeup for The Jungle Book. I did very simplistic detailing for the different kinds of animals, monkies, snake, and wolves. It was a lot of fun to get to do more kids makeup, but I wish I would have been able to some crazier styles. But hey! With the time that was allotted for me to do a whole slew of people's makeup, I'm glad it was simplistic. That happened, what seems like, ages ago.

February 16th - Now
I have been in Las Vegas since 6:30 a.m. on February 17th and its been quite an interesting little adventure. The plan was to help on the sets of Pawn Stars and American Restoration but because of GOT Films contracts with the company out of New York that makes both shows, me being an intern without a contract with that specific company makes me a liability on set.

So! I am helping with other projects for GOT Films such as a show they are going to film out here called Mirage. My cousin's husband, Robert Cochrane, is actually the writer/ producer/ actor for this show and I would probably compare it to LOST but in Vegas. HAHA, not sure if thats an appropriate comparison in their eyes, but thats just how I took it.

I have drawn up a storyboard for the intro which is like the beginning of entourage ( here's the clip) but on The Strip here in Vegas. If all goes well, we should be shooting that in about one to two weeks. I'm super pumped for that!

Ok, the most exciting news so far is that I get to meet with makeup artist Jim Sacca tomorrow at GOT Films shop!!!! He's been a makeup artist forever, basically, and I'm thrilled to maybe get to work with him while I'm here. Jeremy, owner of GOT, wanted me to meet him in hopes that maybe he will take me on as an apprentice once I graduate. I can only hope to be that lucky.

In the mean time, I will probably be writing up invoices and office like that until there is a non-contract job later in the week.

Liza Bevilacqua

Jungle Book #3 and Final

Where I left off was the week of our pick up rehearsal.

2/15/2012: (Pick-up Rehearsal)

     Today for our pick up rehearsal we started it off with some fun games to get the kids excited to be there.  We did this for about 30 minuets before we started our run through.  For the run through we did a Italian run.  This means that we had no props or set but had them do all of there blocking and say there lines as fast and clearly as they could.  We got through a hour and a half play in just under 45 minutes.  We spent the rest of the time playing more games.

 2/17/2012: (Performance #4)

    For having a week were we only rehearsed the play once this performance went very well.  There were a few line issues but all of the kids covered them very well.  Then at the last scene of the play the switches back stage for the house lights got bumped making them turn on in the middle of the scene.  Other than these few mistakes everything else went fine.

2/18/2012: (Performance #5)

     This performance went great.  The few line mistakes form the day before had been corrected.  The show ran without any major issues.

2/19/2012: (Final Performance #6 and Strike)

    Several of the kids were sad that this was the last performance of the show.  They all however seemed to have a ton of energy.  The kids put on a great last show.  It was one of their best performances. 

     At the end of the show we had to strike it.  Dan and I had the majority of the set piece packed into the truck before the kids were done changing.  We then had to clear the stage so we could take down the set pieces that flew.  That took maybe 30mins.  All that was left to do was to put the lights back to where we found them.  We were done with strike by about 5:30.  all in all it only took us about and hour and a half.

Final Thoughts:

     It has been a really interesting experience getting to be a stage manager for a children’s theatre.  For the most part I greatly enjoyed my experience.  The main thing that I learned was the kids are almost always easy to work with.  The hardest part was having to deal with their parents.  Getting parents to check their Email was one of the most frustrating parts!  They would ask their children instead of checking the emails we sent to them.  Overall I would recommend that every person involved with theatre at some point and time works with a cast of all kids.  It will definitely help increases your patients.

Tuesday the 21st

Hi everyone! I'm Kat Simpson. I'm new to this whole blogging thing so bare with me. I will be blogging about my experiences at APR dance. I work with young dancers and gymnasts from age 2-12, however this session (January-April) I am only working with dancers that are 3-6. This can be quite a challenge, and today was no exception.

The kids were super hyper tonight. I think it was because of the nice weather. Anyways, for the life of me I could not get them to listen. They kept running around and could not seem to keep their hands to themselves. At this point in the year, listening is crucial because we are trying to teach the kids their dance for the recital, which is April 1st. It was near impossible to get them to cooperate today though.

Using candy as bribery could come back to bite me, but it seemed to be the only option. They didn't end up "deserving" it anyways. This leaves me baffled. If they won't even respond to candy, how do I get them to do what I ask? In the past, stickers have always worked. This session just seems to be different and more out of control. We sat the kids down at the end of class and explained to them the importance of listening and what to do to be better students. Hopefully this will work and they will be better next week!

I hope I did this whole blog thing right. If any one has any ideas on how to get the kids to cooperate, let me know!

Jungle Book #2

The last time I blogged my show was in the middle of tech rehearsal.  So, that is where I will pick up at.

2/8/2012: (Tech)

     This was our second full tech.  The actors did a way better job of remembering their lines and their cues.  Most everything went according to plan.  The run crew was still having some trouble with the set changes, but I have the confidents that they will get it down before the show.  To help them, the run crew and myself sat down together and talked through every set change.  We figured out what goes on and what goes off. We also designate specific people to do to carry on and off set pieces.  I am going to type this all up in a excel file so they can refer to it during the show.

2/9/2012: (Final Dress)

     So the whole play seemed to take a step back today.  The actors once again were having trouble with lines and cues.  We also had some costume issues tonight.  Even though I spent a good hour typing up all of the set change information the run crew did very poorly in the second act of the show.  They did a great job in the first act but it all went down hill form there.  After we ran the show I sat down with my run crew to discus what the problems were.  None of them seemed to have any idea what they were supposed to do.  At this point I was extremely frustrated with them because they were not using the information sheets that I had spent my time on to make for them.  And all of the mistakes they made would have not happened if they followed the sheets.  So I felt that it was necessary to be a boss and I raised my vice and got mad with them for a few minutes.  After I was done lecturing them I made them go through each scene change step by step exactly how they were stated on the information sheets.  After that I let the run crew leave.  After this rehearsal I was nervous for the opening of the show.

2/10/2012: (Performance #1)

     Today was the first performance of the show and it went way better than I expected it to.  There were no line issues.  None of the actors forgot their cues.  Then what I am most pleased with is that the run crew did their job perfectly.  The crew was fast and accurate with their set changes.  The play as a whole went really great!  I was really proud of all the actors and crew for putting on such a great show!

2/11/2012: (Performance #2)

    This performance went as good as the first!  It was another great show!

2/12/2012: (Performance #3)

     This performance went really good!  I think that some of the kids were tired.  Throughout the show there were a few minor line issues.  These issues were so minor that I don’t think that the audience noticed.  I am really looking forward to seeing how the kids do with having a few days off.  We will be having a pick up rehearsal on Wednesday Feb. 17.

Taylor Clemens

The Jungle Book #1

This is my first blog for this semester.  The internship that I have been involved in is with The Story County Theatre Company of Ames and their production of The Jungle Book  by Rudyard Kipling.  I have been working on this project since last November as the Stage Manager for the show.  This show is made up of Kids from the ages of 9 to 17.  Now that I have given a brief over view of what my internship is I will tell you what we have been doing and some of the things that I have learned along the way.

We held the auditions for the show in the middle of November.  We had a great number of kids turn up to try out for a part.  I think that the end count was 57 kids in all.  The hardest part about the auditions was trying to remember what kid did what.  After 57 kids it was really hard to keep them all straight.  We held 2 nights of open auditions and then a third night of callbacks.  We ended up calling back 32 of the kids.  After callback Amber and I sat down and started to create our cast.  After about 3 hours we finally got the show cast.  Unfortunately some of the kids that we cast ended up not being able to take part in the production, so we had to recast a few spots.

At our first rehearsal we had a read through of the play and played some games to get to know each other better.  At the end of this first rehearsal Amber and I both felt really encouraged and happy with our casting choices.  For the next few rehearsals we spent the time doing table work, but since we had a cast of kids did explored the play through games and activates.  One game we played was all about tactics.  We had the kids try using different tactics to get something from one another.  We also had the kids come up with back-stories for their character.  We also taught the kids about character objectives.  Most of the kids seem to really enjoy these games and seemed to learn what we wanted them to.

After the first few rehearsals of games and script analysis, we started to block the play.  If you thought blocking a play with college students was tedious try blocking a play with young kids.  Because of the short attention span of the kids we spread the blocking over several rehearsals to make it more bearable for the kids.  After the play was blocked we went back and started to go through the play and work parts of it.

This brings us to about present time.  Last week we started to do full runs of the play.  This last past weekend the staff spent it loading the set and lights into the theatre.  We hung and focused lights, set and spiked drops and boarders, got props ready, spiked the set, and all of the other stuff that goes along with getting ready for tech week.  After that we had a dry tech.  So yesterday February 7 was our first full tech day with cast and crew.  The kids handled the whole process fairly well.  And everything went rather smooth for being a first tech.  There are however still some issues with actors remembering lines and blocking.  That is a little scary considering that the show opens on Friday.  Tonight we have another tech so I will be bloging again here soon.

Taylor Clemens