We presented the show for three nights in the Jerry R. Knight Auditorium.
The show was directed by Sarah Romanowski with Technical direction and design by Mr. Schaefer and the Technical Theatre classes. Student Directed by Natalie Lester. Stage manager was Laura Mitchler and assistance to the stage manager provided by Micah Hawker-Boehnke.
Musical direction provided by Mr. Kinworthy and conducted and first piano by Chris Petersen.
"Happiness is..."
Brandon Smith (as Schroeder) singing "Beethoven Day" with the cast.
An audience favorite!
What a ride!
Preparation for this production took several months.
The cast was absolutely amazing in their roles. Each and every one of them played their part like it was walking off the comic's pages. Charles Schultz would have been soooo proud of them!
The technical theater classes worked very hard on the period and comic's history, the planning and designing of the scenes, and the building of this very specific and particular set to get this show's unique story to come to life in such
a beautiful and heartwarming way.
What a huge success!
DIRECTOR's NOTE
(from the program)
On of my favorite memories as a child is seeing A Charlie Brown Christmas being played on the television. My Sisters and I would lay on the floor in our family room and watch it every year. Not too long ago I watching TV and it popped up on one of the channels and I screamed! ALL of those wonderful memories flooded back into my head and I instantly remembered how much I loved them. The Peanuts characters are such a staple in my life and so many other's that we decided to put it on stage this year. This will hopefully let a whole new generation fall in love with these adorable characters once again...
THE SET
The show had over 19 full stage scene changes for the cast (acting as crew as well) to move and place on the various spiked areas. Laura Mitchler had her hands full as stage manager organizing all of the changes and getting them down to a minute or less and making them smooth. She rocked it out!
Here are three samples of the arial drawings
of a few of the scenes that the technicians used to run our show.
Song #12 - "Beethoven Day"
Act II Baseball Diamond Scene
The Stage for Charlie's "Kite" Song
It was a very challenging show, for how simple it seems on the surface. Although the show is about a bunch of young children it was played by full grown teenagers (and on Broadway...full grown adults) and so the set pieces all had to be built to minimize the size of the actors on stage.
What a fun lesson in scale this turned out to be. We had several really interesting pieces (all on wheels) that had to be moved around to take the audience to all of the various scenes.
A "Snoopy" dog house (of course)
This was a very interesting set piece to build. It had to house Snoopy (played by the fabulously talented Jake Freund) and also had to support him sitting, standing and dancing in top. Once the piece was built we decorated it to look like the comic books. It was a highlight of the show to see the opening of the second act, where Snoopy fly the fighter plane and goes into battle.
MULTI MEDIA
The department has been trying to move into the digital age and to incorporate more multimedia into the shows. We had acquired (through our dynamite Pricipal Dr. Clark) a great projector to use for the show and with the cyclorama moved into the auditorium from the Little Theater we created a movie screen drop on the 2nd batten. It worked great and helped divide the stage for scene set-ups in many shows that followed.
Wil Trumper designed and anumated the incredible action sequence on video (using Flash animation) for the ACT II opener. We had explosions, clouds that flew by and the sky changing colors behind Jake during the whole scene. Jake played it like it was written for him! Brilliant!
A couch at Linus and Lucy's
A TV set (from the 50's...with the rabbit ears!)
This was such an amazing set piece for the kids to make. The oversized couch too had to support quie a bit of action and had to support both actors jumping and playing all over it throughout the scene. Linus (played by Jerome Riley) and Lucy (played by Maddie Byrne) both used it to the max!
The structure was built in about two weeks and was entriely constructed out of wood by tech theater students. The fabric (old theater curtains) was stretched and stapled around so the couch was complete on all sides. It was cushioned with foam and voila!
A mailbox A couple of short brick walls
A lemonade stand (turned psychotherapy stand)
A baseball diamond A bench
Schroeder's toy Piano also had to a dance number on top of it!
Everything had to make the actors look smaller
and we believe we absolutely accomplished that!
and we believe we absolutely accomplished that!
"The funniest image had to be the actors on the bench, and their feet dangling way off the ground."- Mr. Schaefer
We also built a really great tree that stayed on stage the whole time and moved around. Woodstock (Kel-C Johnson) was
able to climb it and hang out in the branches!
COSTUMES
Mrs. Romanowski and several hard working theatre students worked on designing and building a lot of the costumes for this very colorful show.
They did a great job with all the characters being dressed right from the pages of the comics.
With some help from student seamtresses (headed by Marika Betker), we had to produce one costume for each
of the 19 different characters.
THE DANCING!!!
The cast dancing the choreography of Robin Berger's energectic and lively routine for "My Blanket and Me"
The dancing in the show was pretty extensive and complicated. There were three big dance numbers that had the cast dancing There were several other parts o the show that had lots of movment set to music. The cast had their work cut out for them with this one!
The Other Technical Challenges This Show Offered!
We had a couple of special effects we had to work out for this show. Both of the effects had to be done using the fly gallery and batten system. (Thank goodness we have a fly system...we use it a lot in our shows!!!)
The Kite Flying Scene
The Light up cabaret piano for "Beethoven Day"
The Dancing Blanket
and everyone's favorite...
Jacob Manes's remote control bunny rabbit for the chase scene
Noah Jones as...............................Charlie Brown
Miranda West as..........................Sally Brown
Jerome Riley as............................Linus Van Pelt
Maddie Byrne as..........................Lucy Van Pelt
Brandon Smith as........................Schroeder
Jake Fruend as.............................Snoopy
Kel-C Johnson as.........................Woodstock
THE CHORUS (other characters from the Peanuts comics)
Choral pieces were instructed by Mr. Kinworthy. Lots of very difficult songs in this show. One of the toughest being the song "the Book Report" sung by most of the leads. All of the music was beautiful, and the choral element of our musicals is one of the big draws! Mr. Kinworthy does a great job with the sound of the cast!
Louise Love..................................The little red-headed girl
Sarah Manuel...............................Peppermint Patty
Haley Day.....................................Marcy
Jarrett Siefert...............................Rerun van Pelt
Tommy Degroot...........................Pigpen
Grace Knobbe..............................Violet
Alicia Trebus................................Charlotte Braun
Sean O'Brien................................Shermy
Maddie Hoiltzman.......................Suzie
Anna George.................................Frieda
Tea Rose Pankey..........................Sophie
Aubrey Wride..............................Patty
The Musicans for the Show
With Special Assistance from Mr. Williams and the Band Department
We decided to put the band on stage with the action, It was a really great decision in the end. It added so much more balance to the sound of the show and the musicans became just as important to the stage picture! We were so fourtunate to have such committed and valuable players in the pit!
The Band was directed from the piano by....................Chris Petersen
Flute...............................................................................Kate Grumke
Clarinet...........................................................................Will Mihill
Alto Sax..........................................................................Mary Ann Schloeman
Bass................................................................................Sam Boodah Fruend
Drums.............................................................................Joe Winstein Hibbs
Percussion......................................................................Katia Sittman
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T-shirt Design and Program cover by the
fabulously talented artist Sam Meyers
Sound..................Jack Newsham
Lights..................Colin Croy
Fly OP................Tommy Jerningan and Robert Lyons
Spot OP..............John Ketcher and Victoria Love
Costume Mgr.....Marika Betker and Katie Siede
Costume Crew....Maggie Mohr and Casey Murphy
Scenic Artist.......Becca Theerman, Sam Meyers, Kaily H.
Props Chief.........Meredith Howard (student teacher)
Props crew..........Kaitlyn Tourette and Emma Flick
House Mgr..........Kaitlin Suhre
Posters.................Victoria Love and Kaily Heusler
Show Banner Design.......Mrs Genovese
A Special Thanks to all the volunteer after school hours put in by the multitude of students in the department who work long hours for very little praise!
We could not do this without you!
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