February 16, 2012

Creative Progress!

A lot has been going on around Goddess Wheel!

Over the weekend our director, Rusty Curcio, led us in a skill building workshop before beginning one of our rehearsals.

Rusty leading us in an exercise!

Cast Members Greg Martins and Bronwyn Whittle

Cast Members Matt Sydney and Max King stretching

Cast member Marti Maley and a partner working together
 on an exercise, trying to say the alphabet backwards

Cast Members Danielle Dallacco and Sean Fitzharris with the rest of the cast 
working on a group exercise before concluding 
the mornings workshop
  
We've also been doing some really inspirational scene work!

Some our female cast members listen as Rusty shares his ideas for the scene with them

Some of Our Goddesses (from left to right Jaime Maraviglia, Allie Dufford, Heather Kirschenbauer, 
Bronwyn Whittle and Erica Wiederlight) watching over the sleeping soldiers

Allie Dufford, playing Thalia the muse-Goddess of Comedy, and Jaime Maraviglia, playing Melpomene the muse-Goddess of tragedy, work on creating their characters

The Goddess Persephone, played by Leighann Colin, enters the dreams of the sleeping soldiers

The women of Athens, led by Lysistrata, played by Danielle Dallacco, look on in hiding as the men awake

The three soldiers, played by (from left to right) Rob Keir, Zach Fenoff and Andrew Khouri, 
discuss the dreams they just awoke from

The men work on developing how they might position 
themselves as the scene progresses

Our Goddesses take a break while we begin working on another scene

The guards of the Acropolis, played by (from left to right) Max King, Jesse McCaig, Greg Martins, and Matt Favetta, learn “It's A Man's World”

Overall, rehearsals have been going incredibly well! We're all finding inspiration and are exploring our creativity, heading down the road towards a great production!


February 9, 2012

Off to a Great Start!


A couple of weeks into rehearsal, we here at Goddess Wheel have certainly hit the ground running!

We've been learning music, exploring themes, expanding our expressive and creative capabilities and, just last week, we had our first read through of the script! It went incredibly well and made everyone even more excited to start working with the material.

Our cast hard at work!
Galt Macdermot at the read through.

We're now in the rehearsal room and are beginning to explore the scenes and how the actors might move within them, while still continuing to learn music with our incredible music director, James Higgins.

Ilana Bolotsky, who plays the Young Widow,
with our Goddesses learning "Stranger to Children"

We've all been so energized by the progress of our rehearsals but there has also been progress outside of the rehearsal room. We discovered we have a page on Wikipedia!


Check it out and check back here for more updates on all things Goddess Wheel!

February 7, 2012

What is Goddess Wheel?

"What is Goddess Wheel?" you, out in cyber space, might be asking yourself. Well, I have the answer!

Goddess Wheel is a new musical inspired by Aristophanes' anti-war play Lysistrata, with music by Galt MacDermot (Hair, Two Gentlemen of Verona) and Book and Lyrics by Matty Selman (Young Rube, Steeplechase the Funny Place, Uncle Philip's Coat), which will have its world premiere at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island this spring.

The show is being produced by Wagner College Theatre with an amazing cast of students led by their director (and head of dance for the college) Rusty Curcio.

I'm Paige, the assistant director for the production, and with this blog (and our tumblr page) Mary -one of our assistant stage managers- and myself hope to show the process of how the show develops between now and opening night (April 18)! Along the way you'll get to meet our amazing cast, our incredible production team and get to see what goes on behind the scenes!

Stay Tuned!