North Central College Media 200 Class

  Theatre Jokes and Mishaps by Erin There is a lot of humor and mishaps behind the scenes of theatre, and I’m going to tell some stories that have happened to me over the years I’ve been in theatre. I would do an advanced theatre camp for a few summers when I was in high school, where we would do an entire musical in 2 weeks. Yes, that is as crazy as it sounds. During rehearsals, the backing tracks we would practice to would occasionally go “rehearsal tracks” over the actual track. This developed into the joke of the rehearsal tracks soloist, who was listed to be in every scene on the scene breakdown backstage. Of course, no one was actually cast as the rehearsal tracks soloist. It was just an inside joke. Next, I’m going to tell a few stories about my time in Mary Poppins. There was one scene where I had to fly into at the end of a song. I would be brought up into the air off stage a minute or so before I would fly in, so I could be ready to go. During a rehearsal, the cast had to...

  My Experience Flying as Mary Poppins: Part 2 by Erin In my last blog post, I talked about some of my experience flying in Mary Poppins, and now I will talk about my experience flying during performances. How flying works is one person controlled the wires to move me side-to-side, and another person handles the wires to move me up and down. When I was attached to the cables, I had to walk along a track up in the stage's rafters. Before rehearsals, I had flying practice, and the rest of the cast was mesmerized watching me. During flying practice, I would sometimes go back to the side of the stage by the person controlling the side-to-side wire just moving me. I found it quite funny. It was bizarre being up in the air and coming back down. I thought I was going to step on people's heads. A funny story I have about me flying is one time my mom was coming into the auditorium trying to find me, and she looked up, and there I was. It startled her in the moment, but she hopefully fin...

  My Experience Flying as Mary Poppins: Part 1 In a previous entry, I’ve talked about my experience playing Mary Poppins and mentioned that I learned to “fly” for the role, and I’m going to elaborate on that experience. I found out that “flying” was a thing in 2015 when I was in a production of Peter Pan. The person who played Peter flew all around the stage, and I was mesmerized just by the fact that he was actually flying. I also saw my castmates flying in when I was in Aladdin, and I thought it was absolutely amazing. I really wanted to try it, but the only way was to get a role in a show that was flying. There wasn’t a way I could guarantee that, so I just accepted that it was a dream that I was still working toward but didn’t exactly know how to achieve it. That was until I got the role of Mary Poppins, and she flew at a couple of points during the show. During rehearsals, I just walked onto the “stage” - quotes because there was no stage, it was just marked out on the floor h...

My experience playing Chip in Beauty and The Beast By Erin The third show I ever did was Beauty and The Beast. I played Chip, the teacup, and I alternated with another person playing the same role. When I wasn’t Chip, I played an ensemble member and had a costume where I wore a white shirt, black cummerbund, a black skirt, and a fake cup that hung around my waist with straps on my shoulders. You would think that’s a good costume for Chip, but the Chip costume was much more elaborate. When I was Chip, I sat in a cart, and only my head looked like a teacup. There was a hole on the top of the cart for my head, and my face poked out of a soft a head-dress-like thing to make me look like a teacup. I got into the cart through a door on the back sat on some pillows on a slant. This cart had a mirror on the front, so it looked like there was nothing in the cart from far away. I got around the stage by someone dressed as a napkin pushing the cart. My neck did get a bit tired from trying to keep...

  My Favorite Show I've Done by Erin My favorite show is I’ve done is Mary Poppins. It is the only show where I’ve gotten the main lead role, which is one of the reasons why I love it. Not because I like being the center of attention, but because of all the good memories I made during that show. I enjoyed forming close friendships with my castmates. It was an adventure learning how to prepare for a lead role in a musical. I had to get private voice lessons with the musical director of the musical and lessons on how to “fly” during the show. It also felt very cool to be such an iconic role, which I do not take for granted. I am very thankful to have had the chance to experience playing such a special role. I will definitely remember playing the role of Mary Poppins for a very long time. The story and songs of Mary Poppins are another reason why I love the show. When I hear the songs, it brings back good memories and makes me happy. The story also sends a great message to dream big,...

  My First Theatre Production by Erin When I first tried theatre, I didn’t know that it would become one of my biggest passions. I just thought of it as another activity for me to try. The first theatre production I was ever in was The Music Man Junior. This was with the theatre company I mentioned in previous entries that rehearsed from May to September and had performances during a weekend in September. This production was in 2011, so I was not even in middle school yet. Before the production even started, I went to see a local high schools production of The Music Man. I decided after seeing that production that I wanted to be the mayor’s wife, which is a big role. It was also an especially big role for someone who had never done theatre before. I didn’t end up getting that part. I got a much smaller role. My role was a young girl, about the actual age I was at the time, who got piano lessons from the female lead role. She also had a crush on the female lead’s little brother. I o...

  Why I love Doing Theatre and Why I Miss It by Erin   I didn’t realize how much I love theatre until I wasn’t doing it anymore. This Isn’t just because of the COVID-19 pandemic ether. My main theatre company started rehearsing in may a few days a week, and then we started something called tech week, which is when we rehearsed every day for two weeks leading up to a weekend of shows. Tech week rehearsals usually went from about 6 pm to 9 pm, and then we had to get out of costumes, get microphones taken off, and get ready to go home. These weeks usually happened at the end of August, when school was starting, so I was also adjusting to a new schedule, which was difficult for me. If I was having a bad day, rehearsal would cheer me up and distract me from the days’ problems for a little while. I would hang out with my friends, sing, dance, laugh and just enjoy what I was doing. Rehearsals were sometimes stressful, as everything in life is, but the good things outweighed the bad. ...

  My Favorite Musical by Erin  My favorite musical is Legally Blonde. I like the movie version, but I absolutely love the musical version. I first saw Legally Blonde in Fall 2018 with my mom for a theatre appreciation community college class. It was a professional production that I got a free ticket to through my community college, and my mom got a paid ticket through my community college. I had to write a critique paper about the production for my class, so that’s why the ticket was free for me. Legally Blonde is about the president of a fictional UCLA sorority, Elle Woods. Woods thinks her boyfriend will propose to her but instead, he dumps her and tells her it’s because he is going to Harvard Law School. In an attempt to win him back, Woods also gets into Harvard Law School and soon discovers that law is what she’s meant to do as a career. I love this musical because it really shows that you can do anything you want to do if you work hard enough. It’s also funny and has cat...

  The Different Places I’ve Done Theatre by Erin I have done theatre in a few different places, and each place operated a little bit differently. The first place I did theatre is a community theatre production that would start rehearsing in the spring, continue over the entire summer, and perform in the fall. The cast would start rehearsing one night a week in the multipurpose room of a church and gradually rehearse multiple days a week. At the start of the production, no roles would be cast yet, and we would just rehearse musical numbers. We would then read for roles and get cast a few weeks into rehearsals. The week before the show, we would move into our performance space, a high school auditorium. We would then rehearse every night until it was time to perform. The performances would be at 7 pm on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and 2 pm on Sunday. In other productions, I would audition and get a role before rehearsals started. When I was in a different kind of community theatre pr...

  How I Got Started in Theatre by Erin In fall 2010, my mom asked me if I wanted to go and see a community theatre production that one of our family friends is in. I have always loved to dance and sing but had never thought about acting until I saw that production of Annie Junior. After the performance, mom asked me if I wanted to try musical theatre, and I said yes. In the summer of 2011, I was in my first production of the Music Man Junior, and I never thought theatre productions would become one of my most significant interests. As of July 2021, I have been in 23 plays and musicals. In middle school, I was in theatre productions run by the school and in the school’s drama club for all of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. I didn’t join the drama club in high school and couldn’t get into any theatre productions until my senior year. I was still in community theatre outside of school, but I only did one play and one musical run by my high school. Since 2011, I have been in 16 commu...