We at Stagefright are collaborating with our good friends at Stray Factory to present Chennai’s first IMPROV team!! The show and team are called HORN OK PLEASE, and features some of Chennai’s funny people, with many more set to join.

The team currently comprises Venky Harinathan, Rajiv Rajaram, Aparna Nagesh, Kiran Thomas, Roshan Mathew, and Paul Philip, and is being coordinated by Mathivanan Rajendran of Stray Factory and yours truly.

We’re also inviting college students who are practitioners of Whose LISA (Just who IS Lisa, anyway..?) to be part of our show. The idea is to create a performance group that will do shows on a regular basis and not just at an auditorium alone.

So stay tuned for more from us. Between our newly launched GLEE CLUB, Across the Universe, and now, HORN OK PLEASE, there’s tons of action happening at Stagefright!

Fred

Creative Director

Yes, I realize that it’s been a LOOOONNNNGGG time since I’ve posted, but I was caught up with the intricacies of life. And in between, we had a few shows that happened, starting with World Theatre day way back in March, which we did in collaboration with the Stray Factory monkeys.

And then more recently in July, we performed our first public show at Coimbatore, courtesy of Stray Factory again. They produced the show, which was on July 9 and 10, and while they performed “Hitchcock” on the 9th, we staged “Love is Strange” on the 10th to a small but very appreciative audience. Besides directing the evening, I was joined onstage by Mathivanan Rajendran and Amrita Samant (Saaaamant…) who is now in Bangalore, creating chaos there.

We then took part in the Short & Sweet Festival, an international competition of 10-minute plays. I had a superb entry, thanks to Vivek Hariharan, Naren Weiss, and Venky Harinathan, but in the end, it was Samyuktha PC and Rajiv Rajaram’s respective plays that the judges and the crowd seemed to enjoy. In the process, Naren Weiss and Mathi got a lot of acclaim as they were involved in the plays that did well.

Stagefright is also in collaboration with Showstoppers Inc. (which is run by my good friend whom I exploit shamelessly, Aparna Nagesh) and has launched Chennai first – and probably only – Glee Club. the idea is to create a performance group that can do shows and brings together dance, singing and acting in a single performance. And when I say “in a single performance” I don’t mean that there a re multiple performers each doing one thing onstage. I mean, c’mon, that’s so passe! We’re looking at performers who can do all THREE!! Work has started, and we’ll be recruiting some more people imminently.

And finally, with much excitement, joy, love and warm fuzzy feelings do I announce our next musical. Auditions for ACROSS THE UNIVERSE will be happening soon,as per the poster below, so stay tuned!!! I’m BAAAACCCCKKKK!!!

Fred

Creative Director

If you think you’d be interested, you’ll need to log onto this site and register: http://www.eventzilla.net/web/event?EventID=201103011316

The fee for the MasterClass is Rs. 1000 for the two hours, and is payable in cash only at the venue on the day of the workshop.

Try and make it for what is going to be an awesome session!!

Fred
Creative Director

Anyhoo, I’m back, after a long while, on THIS blog, but that’s mainly becuase I’ve been busy updating the OTHER blog, namely www.dirtydancewithus.wordpress.com, because the show is literally around the corner for us now and rehearsals are moving fast and furiously. We have started doing full run-throughs – believe it or not, we started 2 weeks ago – so that’s giving us the time we need to shape things up.

The team has been up to lots of stuff, so you may want to check that out on the Dirty Dance blog.

Personally, I’m just looking forward to February 11, when we move into the Museum Theatre and have our tech. It’s gonna be a rockin’ show!!!!

Fred
Creative Director

As part of promoting my new production, I’ve started a separate blog – www.dirtydancewithus.wordpress.com – and I’m going to be using that for the next month to keep people updated on DD status. It will also serve as the link for our online sales.

I hope you’ve all been following our Facebook community page; there are links to videos on Youtube and we have lots of pictures posted there as well.

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Promote Your Page Too

We’re working on some promo ideas as well for the upcoming month so make sure you’re at the hip and happening spots around town to catch the buzz! And certainly, we hope to see you at the shows on Feb 12 & 13!

Fred
Creative Director

So anyhoo someone mentioned that they couldn’t see the pix of our dance rehearsal that I had uploaded so try this link instead:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=17773&l=a8736736e3&id=115780578481884

Hopefully this will work…

As I mentioned, I was caught up with a thousand things and hence the delay in posting. In the week gone by, we have continued rehearsals and about a third of the play is blocked. We have been reasonably successful at sticking to the schedule that I slapped together, so we should finish blocking all the scenes before we break for Christmas. (Which means we’ll have time for a kickass Christmas party as well…)

Dance rehearsals have started in earnest, both with the group as well as the individual dances (meaning, the ones between Johnny and Baby or Johnny and Penny)

A late addition to the cast is Mathivannan Rajendran, who is going to be playing Johnny Castle as well. This role was one I wanted double cast all along, but there were some logistics to work out – but work them out we did!! So now Mathi has 3 months to put on about 50 kg and in the meantime, start pumping iron every spare moment he has.

So between Johnny, Baby, & Penny, there are at least 3 roles that have been double cast. Which is extremely time-consuming, but you know what? I’m lovin’ it (to quote McDonald’s.)

It’s 1:50 in the am and I’m supposed to get up at 6 am so that doesn’t leave me much time to rest. Shalom and catch you on the other side!

Fred

Creative Director

We have started working on the scenes, and last Thursday, we had the most AWESOME dance rehearsal. Our choreographers have come from the cast itself: Aparna Nagesh and Cassius Leon will be choreographing the dances for the show. Aparna will handle the larger groups, while Cassius will be handling the dances involving Johnny and Baby or Johnny and Penny. Both Aparna and Cassius are superbly talented and it’s been a real treat already working with them. You can see some pix here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=17773&id=115780578481884&fbid=120234464703162

Aparna barks orders at the team ,while Fred looks on, wondering exactly WHAT THE HECK is goin' on...

There’s lots of stuff happening this weekend: Evam are having their production of “The 39 Steps” at Sir MV Rao Concert Hall, and while I suspect their ticket sales weren’t what they expected (who knows, I could be wrong) the feedback from their show has been quite good. I’m sure they’ve done a good job, and I hope that the amount of work they’ve put in makes it work for them.

Stray Factory, on the other hand, are trying something completely new and unheard of (to a large extent). They are having their “Blogologues” this weekend, which will basically be monologues of selected blog material. It’s a bold idea by a very talented and hard-working group, and I certainly wish them the best of luck.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to make it for the shows, cos we’re caught up with some personal work over the weekend, as well as attending the Sparky’s Halloween party on Sunday evening. That’s for my son Mark’s benefit as it will be his first Halloween.

Mark's actual name is Bruce....

As Bill Joel said, and so it goes, and so it goes. I shall be back for sure once we’ve moved and settled down and all that – I guess it depends how fast I get my Net connection!!! In case there’s some delay for some weird reason, Happy Halloween to one and all, and a very safe and Happy Diwali from all of us at Stagefright!!

Fred

Creative Director

Rehearsals are finally going to be off to a flying start from Tuesday, now that I have the schedule in place.  Once I e-mail the schedule to everyone, they just need to follow the dates and turn up. The process we normally follow is to get everyone’s busy dates, input those into the calendar first, and then create the rehearsal schedule around it. The idea, of course, is to ensure that people’s prior commitments are given importance. And then once the schedule is in place (as it is now) all they have to do is give it the dedication it requires thereafter.

From the looks of things, we will have finished rehearsals before Christmas (assuming everybody – including myself – sticks to the schedule) and then we have some time after the Christmas break to rework scenes, tweak stuff here and there, and basically make last-minute changes.

There will be 10,000 things to attend to in between, so it remains to be seen how diligently we will all follow the schedule. Hey, but a brother’s gotta try, right?

We’re still looking for people who want to work full-time or part-time with Stagefright on marketing work, production work, and backstage.

Sleep is coming, hence I will sign out before I start to type more nonsense than I already have.

Fred

Creative Director

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXO6kA2YJ60

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=16746&l=343096cfc9&id=115780578481884

Rehearsals started on Sunday, October 17 with a reading, as you can see in the pix above. I will be working with individuals during the week, and again this Sunday, we are all meeting to start some of the bigger scenes.

In between all of this, I am running around for sponsorship as well, and that leads me back to a point I raised in an earlier post. If you, or anyone you know, would be interested in helping out with generating sponsorship, we can try to make it worth your while. That means being part of the Stagefright team AND getting paid for it. (Yeah, NOW we’re talking…!)

Hope you like the little sneak peek we’ve created. We’re gonna try and make it a regular thing…

Fred

Creative Director

(From right to left) Prasanna: Hmmm, how do I design the different costumes for all the 48 characters? -- Becky: Where do I pick up the cutlery, tablecloths and all the other props that we need? -- Neesh: WHERE THE HELL DO I GET ALL THE MONEY WE NEED FOR THIS????

I know that some of you have been waiting breathlessly (makes for an interesting visual, considering I don’t know what most of you look like yet…) to hear about the casting so let me  get to that sooner than later.

However, before I let that cat out of the bag, let me mention something that a lot of you wouldn’t know.

When we found ourselves faced with the load of talent that we did, we decided to do something unusual, and that is to double-cast certain roles. The idea behind this is to give more people the opportunity to get on stage, but it also provides us a backup in the untoward event that an actor is unable to perform at the last minute.

It is a common practice to cast understudies for roles, but interestingly, even that is not common in our venerable theatre community. Which makes the idea of double-casting even more bizarre. It implies double the work, double the time, double the costumes… you get the idea. But the opportunity to put more people on stage and work with them is a concept that totally thrills me, and by and large, it’s my raison d’etre for doing theatre.

(Okay, have I dilly-dallied enough?)

The casting is 90% done. I say 90% because there’s always the possibility that I’ve missed out on someone’s talent and so I’m keeping that door open. But for now, here are the main roles as they have been announced:

• Johnny Castle – Cassius Leon
• Baby Houseman – Aparna Narayan & Pooja Balu
• Penny Johnson – Aparna Nagesh & Amrita Samant
• Dr. Houseman – Yohan Chacko
• Mrs. Houseman – Pushpa Balu
• Lisa Houseman – Taberah D’Couto
• Max Kellerman – Sharavana Raghavan
• Neal Kellerman – Roshan Joseph Mathew
• Robbie Gould – Rajiv Rajaram

These are the main characters. We still have another 20 to 25 people who are essaying roles of resort guests, waiters, and of course, dirty dancers.

My backstage team is gonna be really important in making a project of this size work successfully, and I’m happy to say that we have an enthu and dedicated team on board. Principal crew members include:

• Stage management – Nirmal Kumar
• Properties management – Becky George
• Technical team – Paul Philip, Pradeep Kalipurayath, Ganesh Swaroop, Charan, & Selvakartik
• Costumes – Prasanna & Priyabat

There are still more people in the team, and some of the cast members are helping with behind-the-scenes work as well, so all in all, things are chugging on!

More later!

Fred

Creative Director