Theater Jobs: Fight Captain

A fight captain is just what the name implies, someone to watch over any stage combat. Now in the show I'm currently involved in there are two fight captains, myself, and another guy. This was done this way because we are both in the show and heavily involved in the fighting done in it. There are three main fights throughout the show. #1- The Wedding Fight This fight involves 8 combatants that are split into three groups. The main group has stage left and center stage and is comprised of three people (Myself and two others), the other two groups are on stage right and are comprised of two and three people respectively, ( The other fight captain and another guy in one group and three in the other group). This fight is one of the reasons two fight captains were chosen, so we could each watch part of the stage instead of one of us trying to watch it all. #2- The Glen Fight This fight involves only two combatants, me and the other fight captain. It is described as the most brutal fight in the show. It is between the two of us because we are the least likely to get hurt during it. #3- The "Bonnie Brawl" This fight involves many combatants, I'm not part of the fight but the other fight captain is. This allows me to watch the fight as a whole while he takes part and watches each individual. This allows for more control overall. This is part one of the Fight Captain entry. Stay tuned for more

Video Games Musicals: The Future?

So a fairly new channel on Youtube called RandomEncountersEnt has caught my attention with their video game musicals (I'm also a gamer in addition to my love of musicals).

The first musical of their's that I saw was Pac-Man the Musical: A Pacapella Song. Which as a fan of the old arcade machines this peaked my interest in what they did (I am still terrible at Pac-Man however).

One thing they do that makes them unique is the fact that they do what they call "Bonus Encounters" which are generally short behind-the-scenes, additional little musicals, skits, or just odd little tidbits, here is Pac-Man musical temp track which was shown to the cast before recording.

RandomEncounters preformed one of their most popular musicals Needlemouse: The Musical at Sega's Sonic Boom at E3. Sega is the publisher of the Sonic the Hedgehog games that Needlemouse is based on. If the actual company recognizes the song as good advertising without having to do any work themselves than we know that we have something.

Check out their others musicals such as:

• The Legend of Ganondorf: A Zelda Song
• Singachu: A Pikachu Song
• Angry Birds The Musical: A Green Pig Song ("When I take flight my pigging sprees" is forever stuck in my head)
• Nicole: A Dead Space Song (Dead Space: The Musical)
• Nothing Is True: An Assassins Creed Song

Check them out, they're pretty good and just keep getting better.

Website Story

Website Story is a parody of West Side Story. It was posted by College Humor on Youtube on Aug 6, 2009. It is a parody set in the modern times. Several songs a parodied including

• When You're on the Net = When You're a Jet
• I'm on Twitter = I Feel Pretty
• Pandora = Maria
• E-Harmony = America
• Evite = Tonight (They make a blogging joke in this one)

The description of the video says "CollegeHumor's first Broadway musical since (LOL)Cats"

Watch it here: http://youtu.be/FtPb8g8Jl6I

Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles

I havn't gotten a chance to (Sadly) go to Broadway and see the show but Rain looks promising. Being a huge Beatles fan a jukebox musical of their music sounds like both a great idea and a terrible on. It's great because it brings new life to their old songs, but terrible because it won't be John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

They've made the "counter culture" movement child friendly, they've removed all the drug and sexual references from the show.

This will actually be the second Beatles jukebox musical, the first being Beatlemania in 1997.

From listening to the soundtrack it will be a great show, but actors always preform differently under pressure than they do in a studio.

Rain will be closing September 4th, so if you're in NYC and a Beatles fan I recommend you see Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles at Brooks Atkinson Theater

Precasting

Precasting is one of the evils of the theatrical world. Some people love it (namely those that are precast) others hate it (those that arn't)

But is it right?

The answer is kind of in the gray area, some shows such as [Title of Show] were written for certain people to play the characters, these people were the writers and their friends, that is an example of a show that was precast successfully.

A lot of times directors will precast without telling anybody, this gives the illusion that others have a shot at the rule when they really do not. But sometimes a director will state the precasting in advance thus ending all hope of getting the role.

Now while they are both underhanded, the first method is the better of the two. In local theater especially people audition for a certain part and if that part is already taken see no point in auditioning. But usually these people will accept a role even if it isn't the part they auditioned for.

Precasting is bad no matter how it's done but sometimes it can be done more tastefully than others.

Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark = Worst Musical of the Past 20 years?

Spider-Man, New York's favorite web-slinger, he's been in comic books, graphic novels, TV shows, and movies without to many problems (I maintain the Spider-Man 3 is the worst superhero movie ever) but he is going where he has never gone before, a Broadway stage.

Turn Off the Dark is being called the most technical musical ever produced with fight scenes taking place over the audience, crazy sound and lighting design, and a whole lot of rigging, but did it cross the line into too advanced. Several  actors have already been injured, a spine injury in one case where the actor playing Spider-Man fell INTO the orchestra pit.



Is this show the worst content wise? Probably not, Pinkalicious still exists unfortunately but I can't deny the fact that this show hasn't even officially been released and their already nearly killing actors and putting audience members in danger. It also is the MOST expensive Broadway production ever and it isn't looking like it's gonna make all of it back.

Musical Characters Part 6 of 6: Stine

Stine is a fitting end for the series of musical characters because he is such a different character than the rest.  Ever character shown so far is either good or bad, their is no question about who they are. Stine however is both. To call him good would be a stretch because he is womanizing and eager to do anything to make a buck. But near the end of City of Angels he changes his tune, winning back his wife and tearing up the script he wrote.

Stine is a novelist with the tendency to base his characters off people he knows, but his main character, Detective Stone, isn't anyone but what Stine wishes he was. In the song You're Nothing Without Me Stine argues with Stone. They both bring valid points but as the song ends this sing together this verse

A puppet, an upstart
A loser who's destined to fall
I'm everything you always wanted to be
Let's deal with the issue:
You wish you were me
You're nothing without me
Without me you're nothing ...

They both have reasons to be jealous about what the other has. Stine is kind of crazy because a large chunk of this musical is Stine talking to Stone. Stone is a character in a novel so who knows what's going on with him.

Stine all in all is one of the most changing characters in all of musical history, even Billy Bigelow bed an unmarried women, never married her, tried to commit theft, died, than struck his daughter when he came back to earth eventually being denied passage into heaven.

Stine is just an average writer, nothing special, just trying to find a place in this world.