The Hobbit is Cast!

Well, it took a good chunk of last night, and makes quite a intricate web of people and parts, but I got the play cast and was able to announce parts at rehearsal today. If anyone is dissatisfied, I haven't heard yet, so I take that as a good sign. Four of the actors have one part each, while the majority have a number of parts to play (with one person with as many as five!). Costume changes will be interesting!

I was glad to be able to add in several non-speaking roles which were not in the script. Though I certainly appreciate Edward Mast's job of shortening the novel to a tolerable length for the stage, he dropped a lot of characters (and races of creatures) that are important to Tolkien's world, and though they won't have much to do, I am glad we will be able to at least visually allude to them in our production. So, though there are no spiders, wolves, eagles or elves (!) mentioned in the script, I had a enough spare actors to work in walk-on roles for each to be represented in our production.

I've been soliciting ideas from a number of friends for the biggest technical challenge of the play--how to portray Smaug the dragon on stage (with little space and budget). This will put my puppet-making skills to the ultimate test!