Annie-The Beginning

     Hey guys, so it's taken me quite awhile to figure this site out, but I think I finally got the hang of it! To start out, I'll give you a bit of a description of my internship this summer. I'm currently working in Carroll, Iowa with the Carroll Community Theatre. I was asked to Assistant Direct the show "Annie" that the CCT is putting on for the summer. Ages range from 7-60 years old. We have little orphan girls, to teenagers, and even several older adults for the adult leads. Having only seen the movie, I was nervous to hear how big of a difference the musical was compared to the film.
     Back in mid-May, we had a production meeting where I got the chance to meet all the fellow adults I'd be working with including the choreographer, music director, stage manager, and a few others that were helping out. It was great to see that these people were volunteering their time to help put this show on for the public. During our meeting, we discussed different set designs and how we would incorporate the era, as well as the location into the backdrops. It was so great to be able to put in my ideas. We also talked about the future rehearsals and auditions.
     Auditions were held the last week of May. On the first day of auditions, young girls and boys came in to audition for the role of orphans and kids in Hooverville. Much to my surprise, over 60 kids came. The audition consisted of learning a dance which they then performed in a group of 10, and then they learned a song from the show that went along with the dance which they each individually had to sing. The talent from the kids was phenomenal. We, as the staff, had a hard time of picking 20 orphans. We also had to pick two different options for Annie because there is so much in that show to put on one little girl's shoulders that we thought it would be a good idea to have two. By the end of auditions, we had five options for Annie which made choosing just that much more difficult. It mainly came down to their conflict schedule. The second day of auditions was for the adults. They came in and also learned a dance, sang a song, and then read lines. Some were obvious choices for roles, while others we had a tough time placing. After we had the cast list up, several people, unfortunately were not happy with their roles and dropped out. This caused the production staff to have another meeting in which we discussed what would be our best options when it came to finding replacements. We ended up calling several adults around Carroll that had been in past productions. Much to our happiness, we filled all roles, and just in time.
     Fast forward to now, we have had about 6 rehearsals where I work with just the orphans and their choreographer helping them to learn the dances and run their lines. We've gotten up to scene 4 and the girls are doing wonderfully. They got their first song down in two days, and we are now working on "Hard Knocked Life." Each Sunday we get together with the adults and run lines/work in the songs to see how it meshes. I've been very pleased with all the progress in such a short amount of time. I even got to read lines for Miss Hannigan, which I must say, I got quite a thrill out of. I look forward every day to being able to see how excited the girls get when they learn something new, or even just help each other, and being able to give my own direction is pretty great. Our next rehearsal is tomorrow, so I will keep you posted! :)