Welcome

Welcome to my MCT blog. I have been the Executive Director of MCT since August 1997. In this blog, I will share some insights into our community theatre. We invite you to become a part of our family - you can perform onstage, work backstage on a show, sell tickets and seat patrons, construct the scenery, props and costumes, or assist us with board and committee work - it's all important and we couldn't do it without our great volunteers.

This year, MCT is producing Les Miserables as our 2009 opening musical. MCT is one of the first community theatres to produce the show, and I thought that it might be interesting to hear a little about producing this musical.

We started with auditions in the summer of 2008 for the "leading" roles - we were looking to cast Valjean, Javert, Fantine, Marius, Eponine, Cosette, Enjolras, Little Cosette, Lesgles, Joly, Grataire and Prouvaire. We had lots of people audition for these roles - we did it over two days and had people audition individually. Honestly, I could have cast the show twice - there were so many good people. In addition, we had a lot of new people audition, and several of them were cast. This initial casting was completed by September 1st.

In September, October and November, we had a rehearsal on a Saturday once a month to sing through the show and start learning the parts. In addition, those cast had their scripts and scores and were able to start learning (and memorizing) their part. In November, we held ensemble auditions, and had a good turnout again - although it's more difficult when people know that the leading roles have already been cast. We cast an additional twenty-five people from these auditions, and started Tuesday and Thursday evening music rehearsals in December. Before we stopped for the holidays, we had cast the show and learned the music.

After New Year's Day, we started blocking rehearsals. When putting together the rehearsal schedule, I found that this show was difficult to break up into sections. In past musicals, I might have started with all of the big group numbers and then picked up the smaller scenes as we moved forward. I ended up deciding to block the show in chronological order - I started at the beginning and worked my way to the end. For those who know the show, it's a very long show so blocking took two weeks - I was usually able to block three numbers each night. After two weeks of blocking, we went back and reviewed each scene and cleaned it up - that has taken us to tonight. On Sunday (February 1st) we will run the show downstairs in the rehearsal room, and then move up to the stage and start adjusting to the scenery and getting ready for our opening on Friday, February 13th.