All It Takes Is Tuppence From You...

Yesterday was the Get Acquainted event that I plugged in my last post. It was pretty well attended and the general buzz was great for what should be an exciting summer of theatre in Peoria. I did get to interact and answer a few questions from people that could be useful information for others. (I will compile and answer them here in a future post!) I also got to speak to the crowd a bit about the show and what it means to me. I never do as well speaking off the cuff to a crowd as I’d like, so I usually write at least some of it down. I didn’t necessarily “stick to the script” but here’s what I had written down (which is probably about 75% of what I said) so in case you missed it:

Mary Poppins arrives in people’s lives when they need her...and for me that was now almost two years ago. I had just rebooted a big part of my life (going back to school), and had a break of almost a year where I wasn’t directing any shows. This gave me some free time in the midst of this big life change to look at and re-examine other parts of my life, one of them being “why do I love directing theatre so much?”,  and “what’s the point of it all?” Was I just sort of spinning my wheels doing one show after another?  I was definitely not burned out, but decided maybe I need to do a mental reboot of sorts,  change my approach a bit to keep it fun and never feel like work. 

Soon after this time, in an unrelated scenario, I came across this story again which I had heard long ago: the music of Mary Poppins was of course written by the Sherman Brothers. They had offices on the Walt Disney Studios lot and towards the end of Walt’s life, he would come visit them in their office on Friday afternoons, and eventually after their chit chat he would say to Richard Sherman “okay play it.” This was Richard’s cue to sit down at the piano and play Walt’s favorite song, which was “Feed the Birds”. Walt would just listen, maybe look out the window, and it always ended with him saying “yep that’s what it’s all about”. 

This quote could be open to interpretation, but basically what the song is saying to us is “small things can make a great impact”. It made me think that this sort of optimism is how I should maybe approach the shows I direct from now on. Maybe Mary Poppins is a show that could let me realize this need I find myself having? Maybe the tent at Corn Stock would be a wonderfully unexpected place to see this show? I had never given much thought to directing this show before, but maybe this is the one to help me achieve what I’m searching for.

When you’re part of a show here [at Corn Stock], it’s just part of a season of five shows, which is part of a theatre with 60 plus years of history, which is part of a community with lots of theatres, and so on. It’s just one show in a huge tapestry of many, but it can still make a big impact, and whatever brings you here to this place- whether it’s to perform, to make friends, bond with your family, take on a new challenge, support a local arts organization, or you’re just a big Disney fan--whatever it is, I want this show to be “what it's all about” for everyone who comes in contact with it. For me, that means getting to work with way more people than I usually do, and hopefully a lot of them are new people I’ve never worked with before. To help with this ambitious undertaking is the largest crew I’ve ever assembled, and I plan to have the largest cast I ever assembled. I want it to challenge me creatively in a way that is almost unsettling, I want to give back to a community that has been very good to me for many decades, and also tap into a place inside me that I’ve never gone as a director.  

From there I went on to plug this blog (hello to anyone reading it) and mentioned our online audition signup. “Online audition signup” you say? Yes! To help keep auditions organized and on schedule, we are requesting people sign up for a specific time on the audition days. There are separate times for kids and adults. This is sort of like having an appointment, and not just showing up and having to wait possibly for several hours to be seen. The link just went live a few days ago and quite a few spots have already filled up! You can sign up for an audition time by clicking the link below. It should be pretty easy and self explanatory from there.

Until next time!

CLICK HERE to signup for auditions!