Y’all wouldn’t believe how crazy the past few days have been. And it’s gonna get crazier still! Lord willing, I’ll be able to report on it soon.
YES I KNOW! I still haven’t done that The Dark Knight review! But it hasn’t been for lack of trying. If I’m having this much trouble putting my thoughts together about this movie, I hate to think about what’s gonna happen when Watchmen comes out in about six months.
More tomorrow....
Last night at Rockingham Community College the Theatre Guild of Rockingham County held its season-ending banquet, followed by the 2007-2008 Golden Guild Awards. That’s the annual ceremony that honors those who volunteered during the previous season. The various award winners are chosen based on votes cast by the cast and crew of the shows.
In addition to the Best Actor and Best Actress categories, Best Production etc., there is what is called the Spirit Award. There’s one given for each show during a season’s run. I was told that it goes to the person who “best exemplifies enthusiasm for a show”.
The last Spirit Award for the 2007-2008 Golden Guild Awards was the one for Children of Eden.
And I’m still reeling in shock after the envelope was opened and hearing “Chris Knight” announced as the winner!
I barely remember staggering on stage, and the first words out of ...
…and so little time.
(And yes, that The Dark Knight review is still coming!)...
Man oh man, I really need a laptop now, don’t I?
Lisa and I arrived back home almost forty minutes ago. Already stuff is piled up on the plate that I’ll have to address in the next few days. No rest for the wicked, eh? Next time, I’ll try to blog some from the road too.
But right now, after a journey of epic proportions, I’m thankful for the adventure, for having a wonderful wife and best friend to share it with, and that God brought us back home. Fittingly, we crossed the border with Virginia right as James Taylor’s “Carolina In My Mind” was playing on my iPod.
In the next few days, expect a number of write-ups and YouTube-hosted video about what happened, which entailed chasing down Amish farmers, animatronic cows, the longest road trip to a barbecue joint ever, snogging Ukrainians and Bollywood hopefuls, absolute horror at ...
This is the way the world begins: not with a whimper but with a bang!
Yesterday was the final performance of the Theatre Guild of Rockingham County‘s production of Children of Eden. After the amazing reaction that the show got on Saturday night, could Sunday afternoon possibly be any better? Judging by the approval of the packed auditorium at Rockingham Community College – the biggest audience of the entire run – the answer to that is an emphatic “yes”!
The show went great! One funny thing that happened came during the scene where Father (Neil Shepherd) is banishing Adam (Stephen Hale) and Eve (Rose Cutuli Wray) from the Garden: when Father smites the Tree of Knowledge, the special effects crew had the tree rigged so that there was a very loud flash of light and smoke,as the tree splits in two. Well, they must have put some extra ...
“Dear Lord, am I really doing this?!” A Few Good Men. Red eye over England. Bennie and her mom. Mayhem in the marketplace. The brothers. Lots of wine. The village countryside. The pissing statue. The dark hospital. The odd pizza. “Coke is better than beer!” The American compatriots. A prophecy fulfilled. The peculiar picnic. A strange place to celebrate the Fourth of July. The haunted ruins. The jibber-jabbering Belgian lady. Helping the three Russian students. A kiss on the hand for a real queen. “Le stupid American!” The Piano. Andre’s crazy cop cousin. The towering fortress on the river. The blood of Jesus Christ. Real magic. Cows at 150 miles per hour. The Eiffel Tower. The Bosnian refugees. The dead body in the alley. The Maquisard. The hunt for the Hard Rock Cafe. The singing drunk Frenchman. The four Dutch lasses. The unicycling saxaphonist. The Canadian Richard Petty ...
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 ...
A few days ago was the twenty-fifth anniversary of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. I’d thought of writing about that but you know, that’s one event in my life that I’ve shared my memories about a few times already. All these years later and my ears are still ringing with the pandemonium that erupted when Darth Vader betrayed the Emperor.
That’s already one of the fondest memories of my generation. But there’s something else about the present time, that to me is much more special and worth honoring here. Because it was twenty-five years ago this month that a life-long friendship began between me and Chad Austin.
It was actually a few years earlier that Chad and I had met, on our first day of kindergarten at Community Baptist School in Reidsville. We didn’t get to see much of each other though for the next ...
“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 ...
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 ...