Endstation welcomes Chad Larabee to the Blue Ridge

I am very excited to welcome a fantastic new director to the Blue Ridge Summer Theatre Festival. Director Chad Larabee comes to us from New York and will be taking the helm on our first musical production, Stephen Sondheim's Assassins. When it came to producing our first musical, I knew immediately I wanted to bring Chad to Sweet Briar. Chad is also directing our festival kick-off event, Broadway in the Blue Ridge, featuring Sean MacLaughlin from Broadway's Phantom of the Opera.

Chad Larabee's production of POPart: The Musical

Chad recently directed the off Broadway revival of Garson Kanin’s, Dreyfus in Rehearsal, and the world premiere of POPart: The Musical written by Daryl Lisa Fazio and Aaron McAllister. He also directed the world-premiere of this season's Good Good Trouble on Bad Bad Island. This premiere was a part of the New York International Fringe Festival and was produced by company member Michael Stablein, through Endstation.

Chad directed the world-premiere of Ain’t We Got Fun in London with a cast including Broadway and West End actors. The production was part of collaboration with Margaret Whiting, Jack Wrangler, and Kevin Duda; which also includes Dream, the Broadway Musical and Jimmy Valentine.Chad is working with Lori McKelvey on the development of three new musicals: Camila, Georgia, and Hard Times. Chad directed a developmental reading of Hard Times produced by Endstation Theatre Company as part of the Sweet Briar Fringe Festival last year.

Other New York theatre credits include work with The York Theatre, Dark Luna Productions, Write Club NYC, and various independent producers. Chad is directing Hairspray as the inaugural production of the new Coralville Performing Arts Center this coming fall and is writing and directing a new stage adaptation of Charles Dickens classic novel, Great Expectations premiering at the University at Albany spring 2012.

Chad's FSU production of Evita

Chad is a proud graduate of The University of Iowa where he received his BA in theatre, and met and worked with many Endstation members when he attended Florida State University where he received his MFA in directing. Chad and I entered the directing program the same year and I am proud to not only call Chad a colleague but also a dear friend. We are honored to bring him to Central Virginia and we are excited to share his work with you this summer.

For more information please visit www.chadlarabee.com

Geoffrey Kershner

Artistic Director

Rollercoaster... of LOVE; Say What?!?

Sing it! We have quite a season in store for our audiences this year and taking over our indoor mainstage space at Babcock Fine Arts Center, is Assassins, the Sondheim musical which retells the individual stories of nine assassins who played a major role in shaping the history of the world, but also melds the environments of these figures in a twisted, surreal place where they meet and interact.

Sharing their stories through song, the Assassins require a visually interesting habitat that is versatile to suit the needs of multi-focus theatre and flexible to change and mimic the rhythmic pace that is inherent in the musical score. Chad Larabee, director and dear friend, suggested we explore the world of the amusement park, where the lights are bright and blinking, where the smells of popcorn and hot dogs fill your nose as you are whipped around by the Tilt-A-Whirl. A carnival he said, is the one place where there is an atmosphere of joy disguising an underbelly that is strange and disingenuous.





Why do you think so many children cry at amusement parks? It's because they can feel that something is "off". I had the charge of combining that joy/weirdness and what better way to showcase those ups and downs than with a rollercoaster. Millions of people dare to sit in those loosely fitted lap bars, and get thrown around by the antique wooden rollercoasters that sweep across our nation in some of America's oldest parks that are still in operation. And for what? The thrill? The nauseating ruckus that leaves our ears ringing and the spunk we feel when our hearts are in our throats? Are we sick?

Assassins Groundplan

"What would be nice is to tell them [the audience] to take the journey with us," he says. "It's a real roller-coaster ride." - Stephen Sondheim

Much of my research of turn of the century fairgrounds had the tarnish of a bygone day upon them. Many of the photographs, naturally were in black and white with a yellowed patina, deliberately earned. Our environment for the show should have that tonality as an overall brush stroke, I thought, as if we were looking at a photograph. This is a glimpse into a story or collection of stories from selected moments in history... why not capture the stage picture in this manner as well- as in a photograph.

Nice, Krista, strong yet subtle metaphor there. But let's be serious, Assassins is a musical and how do I not incorporate the joyous side of our carnival's color palette. Some of the iconic imagery that I incorporate in the design will have a more brightly adorned canvas and a mixture of textures to bring the slightest bit of realism into our scenic elements.




Although the Ohio Players probably didn't have John Wilkes Booth sitting on a crate under the shadows of a rollercoaster structure in mind when they came up with "Love Rollercoaster", I will be proudly playing it while we are in production for Endstation's first musical, Assassins. Keep your hands & feet inside the car at all times and make sure your lap bar is secure as we take this wild ride.

Report from Bad Bad Island.......

The official rehearsals for the 2011 Blue Ridge Summer Theatre Festival commenced at 10am this past Wednesday morning with the first rehearsal for Good Good Trouble on Bad Bad Island. This show for young audiences was written by resident playwright Josh Mikel, and first debuted at the 2010 NYC Fringe Festival (read a report on that experience here), and we are excited to bring the show to Virginia as part of this year's season!! (have you got your tickets yet?)

The cast all gathered in the lobby of Babcock Theatre on the campus of Sweet Briar College for a few minutes before heading down to the rehearsal room where we will be spending a lot of time over the next few weeks. Walter, who plays the character of the Idol in the show and our "captain" for this first week was taking care of some last minute details and soon joined us. There were hugs all around and we settled down at the table for our first day of play...ahem....I mean "work".

We went around the table, introduced ourselves and named the characters we would be playing. The majority of us all know each other and have worked on shows together before, and any new faces joined in easily, so it made perfect sense that we all fell into sync with one another pretty quickly. 

We read through the entire script and had a ball doing so, we were cracking each other up as we heard our fellow cast mates bring these characters to life. Already we could see that we were going to have so much fun putting this show together and then have the privilege to share with audience members shortly.  Once we read through the script, we went back to the beginning and started to work through it page by page, scene by scene and brainstorming along the way. Someone would mention one idea which would spark a thought from someone else, and soon we were really cookin' and ideas were flying everywhere.

Soon it was time for lunch and we all headed over to the campus dining hall to eat together, followed by a short break and then we all gathered back together in the afternoon to work some more. By the end of the first day we all were looking forward to getting the show "on it's feet" in the rehearsals to come and were excited about what the next days would bring.

Thursday morning came and we began to work out the blocking (ie. where everyone is supposed to be on stage when) for each scene. As we began to move around the rehearsal space one could begin to see more glimpses of these characters starting to peek through. We we able to use some of the props that we had on hand and with each element added we began to get more comfortable. Walter was a wonderful guiding force for all of us and it was a very collaborative environment to work in. We would try one way and if it didn't work we re-adjust and try again. Everyone was in great spirits and happy to be working on this special show.

By the end of Thursday we were a little tired, but a good tired, knowing that we had accomplished a lot. Friday rolled around and we jumped right back in picking up where we had left off and blocking the rest of the show. Everything was going so well that by the afternoon we were able to do what we call a rough "stumble through" of the show, where we basically do just that.....stumble through the entire show with scripts in hand if we need them and pausing if we needed to clarify where we are on stage, or other details.

By the end we knew that we still have a lot of work to do, but we were really encouraged by the fact that we had come this far in the short time that we have been working. Our captain gave us a rousing speech and said he was happy with where things were, that he appreciated all of us, that it had been easy to work with everyone, and we were where we needed to be......we could feel the love.

We are excited to be able to show what we have done so far to our fearless director, Geoff who will join us for our next rehearsal. Geoff and Walter had done a lot of prep work with this show and were in constant communication this week. All of their efforts definitely paid off as we had a clear picture of how things were supposed to run, and we seemed to hit our goals. We are all anticipating next week and looking forward to continuing to tighten up the show and take it to the next level.

This is a fabulous cast and a wonderful group of people, and I hope that you get the chance to come out and join us for one of the performances taking place June 1-5. Vist the endstation website for more details and to purchase tickets, because you won't want to miss this one!

Good Good Trouble on Bad Bad Island Cast

Idol: Walter Kmiec

Rosa: Jessica Mansfield

Hal: George Carruth
Chomps: Maria Hayden

Delmer/Rocker/Doots: Aaron Farr

Turtle/Spiderskoonk: Melissa Porcaro

Walrus/Garbeldunk/Larry: Sergio Soltero

Till next time~
Cheers,

MAH
Company Manager

Broadway is coming to the Blue Ridge!

Read today's Casey Gillis article in the News and Advance about our upcoming Broadway in the Blue Ridge concert.

Back to the Beginning.......

Greetings!

It is hard to believe that a year had flown by so fast! It feels like just yesterday that we were wrapping up the 2010 season and saying so long to everyone as they headed back home for the year. A lot has happened since last summer....... we did a lot of celebrating. We had a blast at another Garlic Festival gone by. Our Resident Lighting Designer, Dan and his wonderful wife and our very own Education/Development Director Angie welcomed the newest member of their family. Both founders of Endstation took the great leap into marriage, Krista and Drew with a beautiful Fall wedding in CT, and Geoff and Ashley a gorgeous Spring wedding in FL. All the while planning, plotting, and anticipating the summer to come.

You would think that the end of the season is the time to get sentimental or nostalgic, but those feelings usually hit right around this time for me. As we face the beginning of another summer I tend to start thinking back to how far this company has come in the last five years. We have added more productions each summer, more and more new audience members have discovered Endstation and gotten to enjoy the delights of live theatre, and we continue to discover new ways of implementing and improving our systems to better serve everyone to name just a few things. We have also made a lot of new friends along the way and look forward to seeing what this summer has to bring.

We began the first set of rehearsals today for the first show of the season and already the cast was beginning to gel and brainstorm and create this world to play in. As we begin to share and update the blog daily, I am so excited that you will be able to take a peek and get a snapshot of what life is like over the next eleven weeks during the festival. You will be hearing from actors, designers, guest directors, interns, staff members and some very special guests......you will be able to see the festival from all sides and I guarantee that you won't be disappointed.

Keep checking back daily as we will continue to update on the various goings on of the festival and all that it entails. I promise you won't want to miss a minute. Of course it is never to early to reserve your tickets so you can check out the festival first hand and we encourage you do to so by visiting our website  www.endstationtheatre.org.

Till next time~
Cheers

MAH
Company Manager

Lynchburg Living

Check out the great article on BRSTF in Lynchburg Living this month!

Stage Matters: Part 2

Stage Matters pt. 2 from Theatre Communications Group on Vimeo.