More pictures of where we are

Another set of photos of the rural midwest, in Oklahoma and Texas.  I think they give a great feel for where our show is set.  The last two pictures are of bridges in Oklahoma.  One of these could be our Potawney River Bridge.

Thanks for all your work!

Famous people! In our cast, famous people!

Next time you're at rehearsal, look around the room.  What will you see?  FAMOUS PEOPLE!

Seriously, we have some incredibly busy and talented members in our company.  Not only did we have folks performing in Grease at the ACC a couple of weeks ago and others Hustling to Get Here, but we have in our midst several people about to take the stage in Anything Goes, and a 2012 Music NL Award Nominee.

No joke!

Opening one week from today is...

Featuring Footloose family members Mark House, Angela Feltham, Zach McCarthy, Julia Dunne, Brooke Steinhauer, Lindsay Burke, and Kyle McDavid.  Get your tickets and check it out!

And next time you see him, be sure to congratulate Trevor Bennett, founder of Catcher.  They just got a nomination for Alternative Group/Artist of the Year at the MusicNL awards.

If only Chuck Cranston would finish school and stop dealing drugs, he, too, could be a famous musician!

Where are we?

Bomont.

To quote Ren's Chicago friends, where the hell is Bomont?  I mean, Ren says in the script, that people are flocking there from all over.  But if that's the case, then why-oh-why can't I find it on Google Maps.  And I looked!  I really did!

Bomont is the setting for the show, but the authors of the play did not indicate exactly where in the world Bomont is located.  It is in fact a fictional town, the only Bomont in the U.S. being an unincorporated community in West Virginia.  Or so says Wikipedia.  There are a few Beaumonts, in Texas, California, and Mississippi.  And there is a Baylor County in Texas.  The Beaumont in Texas is, however, not located in Baylor County.

For the purposes of this production, let's set Bomont in Oklahoma.

"But, Tim, why Oklahoma?  Kind of arbitrary, don't you think?  Did you choose Oklahoma because that's the name of your real favorite musical?"

Well, Oklahoma! is a great musical, ground-breaking in its time, but that's not the reason to set our Bomont in Oklahoma.  As you may have discovered in a previous post, the story of Footloose is loosely based on a town in Oklahoma.  Also, eastern Oklahoma is about the right distance from Chicago, where Ren and Ethel live before arriving in Bomont.  So, for our production, Bomont will be located in the eastern section of Oklahoma, somewhere in the Tuskahoma/McAlester section of the state, if you look at a map.

I think the inspiration for our Bomont can be taken from two towns, Chelsea, OK and Seymour, TX.  These are small towns, a bit of a distance from the interstates and big cities.

But what is Bomont like?  Here are a few pictures to help us get an idea.

Local Diner

Bomont Motel

Another Local Eatery

Poster for an upcoming performance

High School

Downtown Bomont

Municipal Building/Courthouse

A Home in Bomont

Meet the Cast! Part Two

Now that you had the chance to meet some of your fellow cast members at the meet-and-greet last week, here's another opportunity to get to know some of them, up close and on video, thanks to the magic of Youtube.  Please enjoy the rudimentary and low-budget movie-making as you meet more residents of Bomont, more of the fine folks you won't get to dance with!

(Well, I guess you'll technically get to the dance with them in the--spoiler alert--finale)

Let's meet Kristin Murphy!

Let's meet the Terrific Trio of Brooke Steinhauer, Lindsay Burke, and Julia Dunne!



Thanks to Kristin, Brooke, Lindsay, and Julia for enduring such severe questioning, undertaken on the lovely deck of the Fluvarium in St. John's.

Get the word out!

Though our rehearsals are only just beginning, it is never too early to start telling friends, family, frenemies, besties, teachers, and neighbors about our show.

Kathryn at the Arts and Culture Centre is working tirelessly to market our show and make sure everyone knows about it.

But we can help, too.  For example, you can take this awesome poster image below and put it on your facebook wall or your twitter feed.  Or just send it to your friends.  It has all the information about when and where our show will be taking place.  Our official show poster is coming soon, too, but why not go ahead and get this awesome image up on profiles so people know the show is coming up?

If you're a facebooker, you can check out the facebook event page for our show, at this link, click that you're attending, then start inviting your contacts.  Let's see how many attendees we can get for the event page!

Our show opens just two months from today--let's start letting folks know!

Have You Heard? It's the Word! (And a really busy weekend)

Members of the Footloose family are performing all over the place this weekend.  If you can, try to check out one of these performances this weekend.

At the Arts and Culture Centre...



It's the word.  It's got groove, it's got feeling.  It's not just something on your hands after you change your oil, it's also a musical!  On-going through Saturday night.  Check out this link for more information on the Arts and Culture Centre website.

The production features several members of the Footloose family, including Philip McDermott, Mallory Johnson, Olivia Drover-Martin, Ellen Edwards, Cody Basha, and Kade Bailey!

On Saturday night, you better...



This event is Saturday night at the MUN Field House.  More information at this link.

This performance (that sounds so cool I don't think they'll let me in) features Melissa Maynard-Power, our esteemed choreographer, along with Katie Yetman, Kathryn Summers, and Olivia Anstey, among other dance crews, B Boys, and B Girls.  I'm not sure what most of those words mean, but it sounds awesome.

We have a fantastically talented group of people working on Footloose.  Check them out this weekend!

Community

At the heart of "Footloose" is the community of Bomont.

With the exception of the beginning of the show and the trip out of town at the beginning of act two, the entire action of the show takes place in Bomont.  And most of the characters we meet call Bomont home.  Many of them were probably born in Bomont, grew up in Bomont, went to school in Bomont, met their spouses in Bomont, got married in Bomont, and work in Bomont.  This may be the kind of place where it isn't unusual for people to spend their entire lives.

I'm pretty new to Newfoundland, but it seems like our fair province and the town of Bomont have some similarities.  Newfoundlanders seem to be fiercely passionate about the island, wanting to spend their lives here and missing it when they are away.  The citizens of Bomont (are they Bomonters?  Is that what they're called?) probably feel the same way.  Big cities be darned, Bomont is a great place to live.

As in many small towns, everyone knows everyone else.  Your postman isn't just your postman, he's your neighbor down the street.  If you have a problem with homework, you know exactly where your teacher lives, and you could ask him or her for help after school hours.  As we see in our show, Ariel's father, Reverend Shaw, is in a Bridge Club with the school principal, the wrestling coach, and the head of the town council.  It's a tightly-knit group of people: Ren says he thought living in a small town would be "like one big happy family."

But a town like one big happy family means that everyone knows everyone else's business.  This is certainly true of Bomont, as we learn from the terrific trio of Rusty, Wendy Jo, and Urleen, in the song "Somebody's Eyes."  It's easy to see how this could happen in a small town.  If the teacher is friends with your parents, it's going to be hard to hide that failing test grade.

These are just a couple of things that living in a small town can mean.  What else comes as a result of living in a small town?  What ideas do we associate with small town living?  Do we expect it to be like a big family?  How is that true, how is it not?  What is it like to go from a big city to a small town?  As we explore this show, let's ask these question and think about how our characters are affected by living in this small town.

"Footloose" Family Meet and Greet Tomorrow

The official Kick-Off for our production is tomorrow, Sunday September 9th, at the Fluvarium.  Just in case you didn't get the info, here is a copy of the e-mail from Mandy, our fearless producer.

See you all then!

Sunday, Sept. 9, is our potluck, which is our first opportunity to meet the family of cast, crew and orchestra of "Footloose". 

 

We are meeting at the Fluvarium (behind Long Pond, by Pippy Park) around 5:30 pm (usually for a couple of hours).

Rather than have it a true "potluck" (and tempt fate with all salads and - God forbid - no sweets), we would ask if you could follow the following by SURNAME:
> A-K - please bring appetizers and salads,
> L-S - please bring a main dish,
> T-Z - please bring desserts/sweets.

The directors will have some schedules and scripts/scores for you at that time or they will be emailed  to you in advance during this week.

School Dance

Our production culminates in a dance: the whole Bomont community turns out for a party in the high school gym. (I guess I should've said Spoiler Alert, but I figured you'd all know that the town eventually throws out the ban on dancing.)

School dances are kind of a rite of passage for teenagers.  They are often filled with apprehension, excitement, high hopes, lots of hair spray and make-up, and (at least at the school dances I attended) lots of bad dance moves (performed by me).  A lot of us probably take school dances for granted, because, as opposed to the teenagers in Bomont, we're allowed to have them.



In preparation of our production, let's give some thought to our own school dance experiences.  Some of us have been to our fair share of dances, some of us are just starting to think about school dances, some of us may even have school dances coming up as we rehearse the play.  So let's ask: what makes a school dance fun?  It's a big deal.  People spend hours thinking about a dance, planning for a dance, shopping for a dance, worrying about a dance, and then, finally, attending a dance.  And why is it such a big deal?  What makes it a big deal?  Why do we want to have school dances and, in the context of our show, why is it something we are willing to fight for?



And why is there an App called School Dance?  More importantly, why am I downloading it right now?

We never say in the show that the dance is the prom, we never call it that specifically, because Bomont High hasn't had a prom in several years.  But a prom is a kind of school dance, so I wanted to send along some related links I thought you might enjoy.  There is a public radio program called This American Life that has been on for the last several years and takes a theme each week and examines it through stories, interviews, fiction, non-fiction, and sometimes music.  The theme they chose for one episode was the prom.

The first story they tell is the one that reminds me of Bomont.  In that story, which takes place in Kansas, a tornado rips through a town while the prom is going on.  Obviously there is no tornado in our play (oh, idea for Rennie's show 2014: The Footloose of Oz!  Ariel/Dorothy goes to a school dance, but then a tornado takes her to a place where dancing is banned by a wicked witch...sorry, got distracted), but in the story, you hear interviews with teenagers, living in a small town in the American Midwest, talking about their prom, their families, and their friends.  If you have a chance, give it a listen (the first story is about 25 minutes long).  If you're more of a reader, the second link will bring you to a transcript of the radio program.  It's interesting, it's completely true, and it's a little sad.

And, one last note, as a sort of disclaimer: some of the content, language, and references in the story are firmly in the PG-13/TV-14 range.  If that material might be offensive to you, maybe sit this one out.

Here are the links:
Radio Program Link
Transcript Link

Meet the Cast! Part One

Hello again!  As we get closer to the beginning of Footloose rehearsals, I bet you're asking yourself this question: who is in this show?  Who are these committed, talented individuals you're going to spend the next couple of months with, on this crazy trip to a town called Bomont?  Who are you going to not dance with (because dancing is not allowed)?

In an attempt to answer this question, this is the first in what I hope will be a series of posts, introducing and learning a little bit about the members of our cast.  This time, we're introduced to Philip McDermott and Courtney Fowler.  They subjected themselves to rigorous interrogation, all for your information and entertainment.  Check out the videos below

Question: who is this handsome guy?

Philip, I heard you can really dance.  Is that so?  Why do you love to dance?  Tell us more!



Wow.  I guess dance is really important to you.  What would you do if you lived in Bomont, and dancing was outlawed?




Wow!  This young lady is gorgeous!  Who is she, anyway?



Great to meet you, Courtney.  And how did you end up as a part of the cast?  What made you want to audition?



And what do you like about this show?  What makes it special for you?



Big thanks to Philip and Courtney for helping out with this post!