Remember November?

November 2nd - Opening Night: Instead of resting before the show, the entire cast and crew of Antigone decide to play a massive game of Twister. Slightly crazy, yes, but for a good cause. More about this in the next post. Meanwhile...

Antigone has come and gone, but we haven't been resting on our laurels. The Arts Department has been up to all kinds of good stuff this month!

Mrs Silva, Ms. Hamlyn and Mrs. Sprague took a group downtown to the Ahmanson to see Jeff Goldblum in Seminar - a fantastic new play fresh from Broadway!

After attending Seminar, we walked to First Street to have a post-show discussion and feast at Pitfire Pizza.

Visiting artist Michelle Tellier, who plays the recorder with the world-class baroque ensemble Les Arts Florissants, came to speak with the orchestral students about her life as a professional musician. She played a few pieces and then worked with some lucky instrumentalists. 

Prince Wang and Lauren Carpio warm up before their session with Mme. Tellier

Mr. Standlea's class grilled some sliders, took photographs, and are now in the process of sculpting replicas of them. Actually, it's a miracle that any of the actual sliders survived long enough to get photographed - they were delicious.

Looking good enough to eat!

Wood-n't you like to know what this is for?

Antigone closed on a Sunday night, and by Monday afternoon we had already started building the set for the next show, The 39 Steps. Fun Fact: Theme week is the only time during the academic year that the Copeland Donahue Theater is "dark" - meaning we don't have any rehearsals in the afternoon or performances at night. (Classes, of course, continue during the day as usual.) So with just one clear week, we had to work fast! The week Antigone opened, Alex and I finalized the design, measured the space and ordered the lumber. Our awesome carpenter, Ray Skinner, cut the pieces during performance week so he was ready to start building on Monday.

Ray builds a 2-story structure for The 39 Steps, which will also be used for the upcoming musical, Little Shop of Horrors. He got the entire set completed in 5 days - incredible! The tech crew can't wait to start painting it.

After theme week we held auditions for The 39 Steps. If you're not familiar with the play, please have a look at some of the videos! http://www.39stepsny.com/media.html A massive hit in both London and on Broadway, it's a funny, fast-paced show that requires a lot of physical and vocal dexterity. The actors must be able to switch accents as quickly and seamlessly as they change costumes, so we did an accent workshop via Skype with dialect coach Adam Michael Rose.

The cast assembles for their first accent workshop: Landen (clown) Mallory (Annabella/Margaret/Mrs. Jordan) Marcus (clown) Vicky (Pamela) and Tinnie (clown) say hello to Adam. The clowns will be playing 4-10 characters each (that's a lot of accents!) Jack Gilliat, who plays Richard Hannay, sadly wasn't able to attend this rehearsal. Considering he's an Englishman who will be playing an Englishman, we figured it was ok for him to miss it. 

The Rain in Spain: Landen, Mallory, Marcus, Vicky and Tinnie will speaking in a variety of accents during the show, including three different English accents (received pronunciation, Posh and Cockney) Scottish, German and  French.

The Cast work on dropping their jaws in order to sound plummy and posh. 

Los Angeles-based dialect and accent coach Adam Michael Rose is currently working in NYC, so he offered to work with our actors via Skype. Yay technology!

In the following clip Mallory, Marcus, Vicky and Tinnie get to work on their Scottish accents. Why is the word "pudding" so funny?

But perhaps the most exciting development was this:

So long and good riddance. The unforgiving wooden seats of Mudd are carted away.

The campus is alive with the sound of jackhammers! Great piles of stuff are being tipped into dumpsters and taken away from what was Mudd auditorium. Alex and I had the opportunity to go into the building the other day, and I'm happy to report that it's gutted! Onwards and upwards with the Susan A. Nelson Performing Arts Center.

December is always a very busy time at Webb, especially for our musicians. The orchestra and choirs are busy preparing for the Candlelight Chapel concerts in just a few weeks. More on that festive tradition in the next post!