Inside a Youth Musical Theater Audition with CTC

Reporting: Monessa Guilfoil

Last week I visited Chattanooga Theatre Centre to look inside the process for auditioning a musical.      Youth theater director, Maria Chattin Carter and musical director, Kyle Howard presided over auditions for, “A Year with Frog and Toad.”

Howard, a middle school music teacher by day asked each of the auditioning youth to sing solo a verse of one of the songs from this show.    He was looking for those who could sing on pitch and those who could belt it out as there will be no microphones used for this production.     Howard also asked that the youth “dot the i’s and cross the t’s,” meaning to pronounce each consonant with verve.

Carter said that auditions are the hardest part of the process of preparing a musical as those who audition rarely know what the director is looking for and many are not familiar with the play for which they are auditioning.    She was looking for those who could bring  a glimmer of personality into their auditions.

There’s a whole website dedicated to the art of auditioning for a musical which includes a section entitled “Audition Tips” and another, “Show Research.”  

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“Times Square Angel” On-Stage for Circle Series at Chattanooga Theatre Centre

Reporting: Monessa Guilfoil

The Theatre Centre Circle Series continues this Holiday Season by offering a play for adults written and originally performed by Charles Busch and company in 1987.       The following comes from CTC’s Press Release:

Charles Busch’s campy melodramedy is a satire of the Hollywood fantasy films of the 1940s such as It’s A Wonderful Life and The Bishop’s Wife with a bit of A Christmas Carol thrown in there, from the playwright who gave us Psycho Beach Party. An alternative adult holiday entertainment. It’s the story of Irish O’Flanagan, a street urchin who has her dreams dashed by cruel fate, grows into a big burlesque star, and chooses financial security over true love, closing off her heart until the fateful Christmas Eve when she gets one last chance to make things right. Like a steaming lilac-scented bubble bath or an embarrassingly large molten chocolate dessert, the best way to enjoy Times Square Angel is to sit back, turn off the plot-following part of your brain, and just let the sweet, sweet cheesiness flow over you. Suddenly you’ll realize that Irish O’Flanagan and her chorus boy are singing a medley of Christmas carols in which they impugn each other’s age, appearance, talent, and virtue, exactly like a couple of Ann Miller and Debbie Reynolds impersonators on a sketch comedy show. And it won’t be a bad holiday after all.

I read in Theatre Mania that Charles Busch plans to perform a staged-reading of his play as part of a Twelfth Annual event in New York.     He will once again dawn the role of Irish O’Flanagan, the “tough-as-nails nightclub chanteuse in 1940’s Manhatten who makes Scrooge look like a sentimental sap,” according to Dan Bacalzo who did the write up.

Busch has a website at CharlesBusch.com with what may be the original play poster for “Times Square Angel” shown below.      Here’s some more facts related on his website:

Times Square Angel was first performed at the Limbo Lounge in December, 1984.
It was performed Off-Broadway at the Provincetown Playhouse, November 1985.

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“The Producers” by Mel Brooks to open on Theatre Centre’s Main stage

Reporting: Monessa Guilfoil

“The Producers” opens Friday, August 13th, 2010 at the Chattanooga Theatre Centre.     Magge Hudgins directs this classic Brook’s musical comedy starring Chattanoogan’s, Allan Ledford in the role of Max Bialystock and Zach Cavan as Leo Bloom.      Here’s the write up from the Theatre Centre webpage:

The Mel Brooks Musical Adapted by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan. Lyrics by Mel Brooks; Music by Mel Brooks and Glen Kelly.

Adapted from the 1968 Mel Brooks movie by the same name, The Producers is the story of two theatrical producers who scheme to get rich quick by overselling interests in a Broadway show sure to be a flop. But when the show turns out to be a rousing success, things get complicated. The original production opened in 2001 on Broadway starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick and received a record 12 Tony Awards.

Nancy Shute wrote about “The Producers” for US News & World Report in 2001 in an article entitled, “20 Mel Brooks, His Humor Brings Down Hitler and the House.” Here’s an excerpt:

When the movie of The Producers debuted in 1968, many critics panned it as crude. But the film is now considered a classic, and when the stage version opened on Broadway earlier this year, it was an instant hit, sweeping the Tony Awards. It also sparked fresh complaints about its gleeful mockery of Nazis, Jews, and homosexuals.

Mel Brooks was well aware of Hitler’s tragic follies, Shute’s article continues:

Brooks, who is Jewish, saw the results of Hitler’s handiwork firsthand, while serving in the Army in Europe in World War II. “I didn’t see the camps, but I saw streams of refugees. They were starving. It was horrible.” Brooks attacked that horror with the only weapon he had–his wit.

Mel Brooks

Listen to interview with Magge Hudgins, Zack Cavan and Allan Ledford:

“Pig Farm” by Greg Cotis On-Stage at the Theatre Centre

“Pig Farm” opens at the Chattanooga Theatre Centre on Friday, May 28th and runs each Friday and Saturday through June 12, 2010 on the Circle Stage.   Performances begin at 8:00PM and there will be an opening night Reception which is also a “Girls night out” on May 28th.

The Theatre Centre has this to say about this play by Greg Cotis:

On a struggling pig farm somewhere in America, Tom and Tina (with the help of Tim, their hired hand) fight to hold onto everything they own —namely, a herd of fifteen thousand restless pigs. Dumping sludge into the river has driven Tom to drink, and Tim seems to have caught Tina’s eye, but when Teddy, a gun-toting officer of the EPA arrives to inspect the operation, life on the farm explodes, implodes, then explodes again. Not literally, of course, but… you get the idea.
By Greg Kotis, who gave us Urinetown.

Directed by Scott Dunlap.

‘“Pig Farm” defies easy classification,” says South Coast Repertory.

Here’s an interview with Greg Cotis published online by the British Theatre Guide.

Reporting: Monessa Guilfoil

Listen to the story with Director, Scott Dunlap:

Chattanooga Theatre Centre’s youth perform Greek Classic, “Antigone.”

Chattanooga Theatre Centre youth director, Maria Chatten Carter discusses the rehearsal process for Jean Anouilh’s adaptation of Sophocles’ Greek Tragedy.    “Antigone” is about a young girl who chooses to make a big sacrifice inorder to secure an honorable burial for her brother.    This play is a tragedy Carter explains, and it is also a piece of literature surviving from antiquity and a required read for high school students.     A play written about a young character qualifies as a play to be performed by a youth theater troup, Carter says and Heidi Bradway who plays the Queen in this production agrees.

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Reporting: Monessa Guilfoil