children of eden

Chris Knight's avatar


Father (Neil Shepherd) teaches Adam (Stephen Hale) and Eve (Rose Cutuli Wray) how to care for their new charges during “Naming the Animals” as the Storytellers watch in a scene from Theatre Guild of Rockingham County’s production of
Children of Eden

Here it is at last: Opening Night for Children of Eden, produced by the Theatre Guild of Rockingham County. The curtain opens at 7:30 p.m. tonight at Rockingham Community College Auditorium. The show runs each Friday and Saturday night at 7:30 and then Sunday afternoon at 2:30 between today and June 29th.

If you are coming, and you have never seen Children of Eden before, then prepare yourself for a treat.

Children of Eden, with music by Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Pippin, Godspell and the music for the motion picture Prince of Egypt) based on a book by John Caird (the musical Les ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Here’s a photo from rehearsal last night, from the end of Act I. This is right after Eve (Rose Cutuli Wray) has bid goodbye to Seth (me), Seth’s Wife (Tisha Owens) and is now telling the rest of her descendants farewell. Also in this picture are Justin Marcellus, Jamia Parker, Jessica Wray, and Tyler Alverson…

Rehearsal went extremely well! We’ve got one more left before the curtain opens before a real audience tomorrow night for Theatre Guild of Rockingham County‘s production of Children of Eden.

One thing that’s kind of funny is that Pete Barr, the director, came to me the other night and asked if I could “tone down” the boogeying during “Ain’t It Good”. It’s like the story of when George Lucas was filming Star Wars Episode I and Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor kept making the noises with their mouths and didn’t realize it, and ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Okay, sure…

Here I am as Seth (while holding the Staff of Adam) in the Theatre Guild of Rockingham County‘s production of Children of Eden:

No, your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you: that is a good part of my Jedi Knight costume! I’m also playing a Storyteller and we needed something to differentiate me when I appear as Seth at the end of Act I. Children of Eden‘s costumer Kathy Morrison and I were talking about what we could do, and I mentioned that I had a Jedi Knight getup and then… click! I brought it in the next night and she worked over the next few days adding some color to the tabard and waist sash.

That is also the very first time in well over 25 years that I have worn sandals. Most of the time I wear sturdy leather hiking boots, either that ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Theatre Guild of Rockingham County‘s production of Children of Eden is now less than 72 hours away from opening (June 20th and 21st at 7:30 p.m. and 22nd at 2:30 p.m., with the same times for June 27th-29th). Everyone involved has been working whatever time they can squeeze in to get this thing ready. This past Friday night I worked with some other cast members in getting the lighting set up (‘cuz all cast members are expected to work at least one day during “Tech Week” and I wanted to take the opportunity to learn some stuff about lighting, since it might come in handy with videography). Most of the other cast loaded the props on Saturday. And Sunday was our first technical rehearsal: going through the show with everything going full-bore so as to tweak the lighting cues, the sound levels, and the props.

The thing about Children ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Two weeks from tonight, we will all be in makeup and costume, and about to take to the stage with the Theatre Guild of Rockingham County’s production of Children of Eden.

We have come a very long way in a short time. But there’s still plenty more to do.

The past few nights have been spent on cleaning up the choreography for the bigger numbers. Last night it was work on “In The Beginning” and “The Naming”, and that one was especially fun to watch. The two that I’m working on most in my spare time have been the dances for “Generations” and “Ain’t It Good”. I’ve written about it before here and I have to admit again: “Ain’t It Good” might be the most difficult song of the show… but I absolutely think it’s going to rock the house when we get to perform it. It might get ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

“Now uss dee time undt Schprockets ven ve dantz!”

Okay who can tell me where that’s from? Still can’t believe that I thought of it Sunday afternoon.

So yesterday we started doing choreography for two of the biggest numbers from the Theatre Guild of Rockingham County’s production of Children of Eden: “Generations” and “Ain’t It Good”. Singing the songs? No problem, ‘cuz like I’ve mentioned before after frequent listening to the soundtrack for almost a decade now, that’s easy…

…but dancing is a whole ‘nother thing.

Stephen Hale, who’s playing Adam in our production, is also our choreographer. He’s mapped out some terrific routines for these songs. They’re also a bit complex, especially “Generations”, which requires everyone radically changing positions on stage no less than three times. I’m thinking of bringing a video camera for next time we do this so that I can study it later (and possibly ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

I’ve a few nights off from rehearsal for the Theatre Guild of Rockingham County’s production of Children of Eden (‘cuz those are being used to focus on the solo numbers and I don’t have one of those). In the past few sessions we’ve finished going over all the choral pieces. I’m still amazed at how much work we’ve done in so relatively short a span of time.

The last major song from the show that we took on was “Ain’t It Good” from Act II. I’ve thought for years that “Generations” might be the most complicated song from Children of Eden but having done “Ain’t It Good” now, I’m pretty confident that it might be the more difficult of the two. But by the end of the night last night we’d put together a very rousing rendition. “Ain’t It Good” is the kind of style associated with gospel music from ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

It was a week ago tonight that I found out that my longtime dream of being in a production of Children of Eden was about to really happen. The cast came together for the first time a few nights later. We’ve now had three nights of practice and in that time we’ve done work on many of the major songs from the show (“Let There Be”, “The Naming” and a few others).

One thing about Children of Eden that makes this an interesting production is that a lot of the melodies repeat, with a number of reprisals in Act II especially. This is well in keeping with the overarching theme of Children of Eden‘s story: that each new generation often faces the same ordeals as the one that sired it. But also, that every generation – and the individuals that make it up – has a choice, and it’s ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

We met for three hours tonight in the auditorium at Rockingham Community College. I got to know quite a few of my fellow cast members (Children of Eden demands a fairly large number of people for this show, which is one of the reasons why it hasn’t been run on Broadway yet). As one of the principles I got to bring home a script, but it’s not mine to keep and in order to have this copy I had to leave a security deposit. That gets returned to me at the end of the show, when I give the script back.

Then all the principles and some of the kids who’ll be portraying animals listened to the 2-disc soundtrack of the Paper Mill Playhouse’s production of Children of Eden, the one that gave this musical its final form. For a lot of the cast this was the first ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Well, this day has seen it all.

I spent most of it working on stuff in my capacity as treasurer for my friend Eric Smith’s campaign for North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction. This mostly entailed finishing up the First Quarter Campaign Finance Report. Also had a few errands around town.

When Lisa got home from school I gave her a birthday card and the new Mario Kart Wii (also got another Wii steering controller so that we can race each other :-). Then we went to dinner at the Olive Garden in Burlington, and afterward we got another Wii game at the Best Buy near there. Then came on home and I finished the report, and joined Lisa for some Mario Kart Wii. It was a little after 8 when Johnny called to tell me about the Star Wars-themed Deal or No Deal that was on NBC tonight.

And ...

Read more