I was hoping for a larger dragon, but I had to "scale back"...

I designed a pretty cool-looking 40' Smaug for our production of "The Hobbit," but then realized there was not enough room on stage for him to curl up. So we're down to 30'.

And at rehearsal today, I found out that two of our actors have backed out of the production. One came to me to break the news that he has family commitments out of town the weekend of the show. The other didn't show up and hasn't said anything to me or the producer, but he apparently told all of his cast-mates he couldn't do it.

So, back to the drawing board for THAT as well...

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!

Let Me Try This Again...

Obviously, I had this idea last year, and failed to follow through with it. The idea is, "Wouldn't it be neat to blog through my experience of directing a play?" Well, yes, it would... assuming I actually did so. I've been contracted to direct the Spring play at Rhema Christian School again this year, and this time we ARE doing "The Hobbit." Auditions were today, and I was quite pleased by the amount of talent I saw. My biggest concern is that only 13 students showed up. Last year we had 20 kids try out for an original play I wrote which no one had heard of; I was expecting a bit more excitement and a larger turn out when this title was announced. So, somewhat surprised... This script (adaptation by Edward Mast) has 29 parts, but with doubling (and tripling) of characters, it says it can be pulled off by as few as 10 actors. So, we'll be closer to the original production than I'd expected. More of an ensemble piece. And my problem last year was coming up with enough parts for the actors who showed up! This should be interesting...

Good Shepherd of the Outback Heading for the Stage

Tomorrow is try-outs for the Rhema Christian School Spring Play, which I will be directing. I oringinally signed on thinking we were doing The Hobbit, but it turned out that the bulk of the actors, who would be 5th to 8th grade girls, were less than enthusiastic about the idea of putting on beards and acting like dwarves. Next we settled on an adaptation of Rumpelstiltskin, which turned out to have little to do with the title character and mostly be a fantasy in the tradition of Shakespeare's comedies, with no less than EIGHT couples ready to wed at the end. Showing the couples to be in love would have involved some hand-holding or walking arm-in-arm, and that ran afoul of the schools policy on PDA. SO, after much thinking, reading, and negotiating (all while the clock was ticking towards performance dates of April 27 and 28), we finally settled on something we had in hand, that could be adapted easily without violating copyright laws... and we will be doing a full-scale production of The Good Shepherd of the Outback.

I see no real problem telling the story in one night, as opposed to stringing it over five days in serial fashion, and it will be good to give the story a fuller treatment production values that eight weeks of rehearsal and technical development will afford. If the message has come across as well as it has lacking that time and care, I can only imagine it will have more impact if it is presented more professionally.

My only concern is with the fact that every student who tries out is guaranteed a part. And I'm not concerned there in having to work with young actors lacking in talent; my teen drama groups often included actors of limited talent and range, and I've managed to cast them and work with them well. What concerns me is the sheer number of parts that may need to be created to accommodate this. We can double the number of sheep, certainly (we've always alluded to a larger flock than was represented onstage), and there are a few other parts that can be added with no problem. But if we get 30 kids or so showing up tomorrow, it's going to necessitate a major rewrite and create a lot of headaches for blocking!

Good Shepherd Triumphs Again!

Well, Raven S. Wolf's Lamburger machine has once again been destroyed, thanks to "The Good Shepherd of the Outback." The original VBS curriculum and drama was written for COTS in 2008, but we resurrected it this year for our second "VBS in the Village," held at the Rec. Center at Economy/Crestview Village housing projects on the northeast end of Ambridge. Somehow, it seems, no one managed to take photos this year (the one here is me in my wolf costume from 2008), but Barbi Davis managed to capture the climax with her Android and post it to YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBUpM59cXqI&feature=share

Although the actors were not as prepared as I would have liked (and due to illness and work schedules we actually had to switch some of the roles from night to night), I think the dramas went well, and the kids were very engaged in the story of the Shepherd, the Hireling, the Lamb who went astray, the Sheepdog, the Predators, the Wooly Bullies and the rest of the flock. I dare say it's one of the best pieces I've written, and once I've had an actual Australian review the dialect and slang, I'm hoping to make it widely available in some fashion. Let me know if any of you are interested!

Paging Hooto Crunk

Those who know me, or at least those who knew me in my first 30 years, might be surprised I haven't commented on the recent Rapture debacle. The fact is, despite its being all over the mainstream news and fodder for high-profile comedians, I was barely aware of it; oddly enough, it was a friend's Facebook update pointing me to the Doonesbury comic strip that first caused me to try to figure out why the Rapture was such a hot topic all of a sudden.

I'd never heard of Harold Camping before May 18th, and didn't find anything compelling in his reasons for stating that the Rapture of Jesus' elect would occur on May 21st, so I basically ignored it. It was a full hour after the 6:00 pm (local time) deadline that it occurred to me to check and make sure I was still around, and I didn't bother calling all my friends to make sure they were still here, either.

Earlier in my life, I might have taken this more seriously.

In fact, as a teenager I was quite convinced that the Rapture would happen at any moment, and there were numerous times when I was excited by seeing a particular cloud formation, hearing what I thought might be a distant trumpet, or when I got a little nervous when someone was supposed to meet me somewhere and they were long-delayed. I especially remember sitting on the church bus, ready to leave for my first youth group retreat on October 6, 1973, when the youth pastor stepped on onboard and announced that all of Israel's neighbors had just launched a war against the beleaguered state. Having spent the summer reading Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth, I was CERTAIN we would NOT be returning from that weekend!

One can only keep that level of anticipation for so long, I suppose. And I guess I am fortunate that no one in my life ever tried to exploit my beliefs in any way (not that I HAD much of anything in those days to be bilked out of. And unlike Camping's narrow following and precise predictions (all based on some bizarre numerological mathematics and dating of incidents like the Crucifixion), the apocalyptic fever of my youth was widely held by the majority of evangelicals, from Hal Lindsey to Jack Chick (the artist of the poster featured here and numerous comic-book style tracts, many dealing with endtimes scenarios) to Pat Robertson to every youth worker I knew to every Christian singer I'd heard, all the way up to Billy Graham! In fact, it wasn't Lindsey who first brought to my attention the fact that there were a lot of Biblical prophecies still awaiting fulfillment, and that many of them seemed to be coming true IN OUR DAY! It was the Billy Graham film His Land, featuring Cliff Barrows and Cliff Richard.

What strikes me as most interesting in comparing recent events to the events of my youth is the fact that, back then, it seemed the whole Church was tuned into and agreed on most of the details of the pre-millenial Rapture doctrine, and made fun of the unchurched, non-Christians who disbelieved it. I especially remember a very creative and funny Christian comedy album by a group called Isaac Air Freight which had a skeptic named Hooto Crunk give an "Editorial Reply" in which he ridiculed the station for endorsing the Rapture. The joke is, that when he finishes recording his piece, all the Christians at the station have disappeared. The clear consensus within evangelical Christendom was, "We're in the know, we all believe this, and pity the fool who doesn't agree with us."

Last week, it seemed clear that the "facts" of the Rapture doctrine were common knowledge to those inside AND outside the church, and the bulk of evangelicals I know or know of were saying, "We all--Christian and non-Christian--know about this, none of us believe it--at least not in the way it is currently being presented, and pity the fool who DOES!"

What a difference 35 years can make!

"Pretty-lookin' People"

My daughter, who is "terrified" by thunder, other loud noises, and many other minor things in nature, has no fear of people. On the one hand, this is rather nice; on the other hand, it makes things difficult for me as a parent. The other day, we started on a walk and remembered we needed to go back up to the apartment for something. There was some activity going on at the banquet hall across from our apartment, and a group of men were standing by the trash cans immediately across from our door. My daughter wanted me to go back upstairs by myself and leave her down on the sidewalk, but I insisted she accompany me inside. This led to a bit of a tantrum and long debate over "What's wrong with PEOPLE!? They're not going to KILL me! And if they try to tie me up, I will just run away!" I never said anything about them killing her or tying her up, and I had to admit that probably they were fine people and would not want to do any of that. But I still did not feel it was particularly safe to leave an 8-year-old girl unattended on the curb where I couldn't see her when strange men were hanging about.

I was still wondering where I got MY sense that people were dangerous from, when a friend informed me that yesterday was the anniversary of the ambush of Bonnie and Clyde. Suddenly I was six years old, walking with my father through a portable exhibit which included the "Bonnie and Clyde Death Car," with 160 bullet holes and blood-stained upholstery. My Dad was an auto mechanic and car enthusiast, and the Warren Beatty/Faye Dunaway film had been recently released, so Bonnie and Clyde were all over the pop-culture scene of the time. I knew that the couple were bad people ("the devil's children" in the words of the popular song), but I'm not sure I felt a whole lot better about the posse that had inflicted such a barrage of death, or about the people who made money off the exhibit. Overall, it certainly gave me a negative impression of "PEOPLE." But I wouldn't want to share that with my daughter.

So, how does one instill in one's child a balance of fear and trust of strangers? I'm still working on that one...

P.S. The "Death Car" apparently is still being exhibited in various casinos in Nevada.