![]() A lot of buzz surrounds Spring Awakening opening next week. The show sold out in 36 hours, even before posters were printed, prompting the show to add a seventh performance (Thurs Feb 2 at 11pm) to try and accommodate all of the reservations. A huge reason for the interest in the show is that USC is one of the first college’s given the rights to produce the show. Before this it was only professional theaters and touring companies. Madelyne Heymen is the director of the 17 person show. She was chosen by the producers, Manny Prieto and Patrick Phillips after sending out an open call to the facebook world asking for people interested in working on the show. They had an overwhelming response from all majors particularly interested in being choreographers. The cast is an eclectic group from theater majors to computer engineers to chemistry phd candidates and a few graduate students. Manny Prieto is also production designing the show, meaning he is designing the set, costumes and lights (and never sleeping again). Recent graduate Jordan Schames is assisting on lights and Madigan Stehly and Kate Harrow are the technical directors. Jannelle Mammini and Kelly Ciurczak are the choreographers. Manny was drawn to the show because of the “the way [it] uses music to express feeling and emotion.” It is a very different type of musical that “speaks to [a] certain generation” through a more “rock alternative sound.” Cardinal Theater Productions began last spring when Manny and Patrick decided to produce a show for the fall semester. Over the summer they read dozens of plays and musicals, applying for the rights of Avenue Q, Bloody Andrew Jackson, and Spring Awakening. As you may have guessed Spring Awakening won. Because it is such a huge undertaking, they decided to push the show to the spring semester so they could have ample time to prepare. The Musical is based on the play Spring Awakening by German playwright Frank Wedekind. The play explores different views on sexuality, homosexuality, suicide, religion, abuse, education, and peer pressure, issues we still struggle with today. The play was written in the 1890s and premiered in 1906. It can be extremely depressing but very relevant to current issues. The musical premiered on Broadway in 2006, receiving eleven Tony Award nominations. The musical was written by Steven Sater and music by Duncan Sheik. The original Broadway cast included Jonathan Groff (Melchior) and Lea Michele (Wendla) most famous for playing Jesse St. James and Rachel Berry on Glee respectively. This following paragraph is solely because I am interested in lighting and fascinated by how the crew is going to pull off such a light heavy show in a very limited space. So if you care nothing about nerdy technical stuff, skip ahead. The Massman Theater is a beautiful blackbox space but has many limitations. The space has a limited inventory of lighting instruments and only 36 dimmers (usually only 32 work). How do you put on a musical with limited space, inventory and power sources? LED lights. The show has 20 plus LED lights that only use 30 watts per light instead of 1000 watts per light. This allows Manny to plug more lights into each dimmer. With this solution the show has more channels than dimmers. There will still be traditional theatrical lighting such as fresnels and pars. This is the first ISP I know of to use mostly LED lights for their show. Performance Schedule Thursday Feb 2 8pm and 11pm Friday Feb 3 at 8pm and 11pm Sat Feb 4 at 2pm and 8pm Sun Feb 5 at 2pm RSVP for Thurs 11pm at [email protected]. Limit 2 tickets per person. There will also be limited day of seating but there will be NO late seating or floor seating. Each day the show posts pictures and videos from rehearsals leading up to opening night. *Article originally posted here
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