What up pirate folk! We have been open now for two weeks and arrrrggggghhhh having a blast onstage. Each run we learn new things about our characters, and it is a really cool to watch our company take some new risks out there. We have had to shuffle a little bit around to accommodate Eddie Curry, who is out of the show right now, but planning on returning for the Saturday, April 25^th show – but nothing has really thrown us. Rather than give you all the details on the changes we have made, just read about it on Eddie’s blog, here. I will say that I take my hat off to John Vessels, who was put into the show in a single rehearsal on Tuesday afternoon, then performed Israel Hands and Ben Gunn that evening. He had a boat load of stuff to learn and not only learned the entire show in two days, but is giving wonderful performances. Also, John Armstrong is really keeping it real as Blind Pew and Mark Goetzinger has easily stepped into the ASM duties that Eddie usually does. Such is life aboard the Hispaniola – we find solutions, and the show goes on, brilliantly, I might add.

You may wonder what it is like to be a part of a cast of 18 guys… it does have its perks. I never joined a frat in college (not really my scene), but I assume that if there were such thing as musical theatre frat, our cast would be it. We’re not the typical group of theatre guys. We play tons of poker, drink lots of “water”, and play catch in between shows on our two show days. The TV in the green room is continuously tuned to ESPN, and we have already begun to set lineups for the Broadway softball league. That’s right: watch out Mamma Mia, Little Mermaid, and Hair – there’s a new show that is about to own you! (Props must be given to Jay Elliott, here, who is heading up the B’Way softball operation, pending our New York run, of course.)

I share a dressing room with Jamie Jackson and Curt Dale Clark, and I must say they are great. Our room is very laid back; there is no stress about what is going on onstage and we do our best to keep it real. In Eddie’s absence, I have been forced to keep Curt and Jamie entertained (both need constant supervision), so I’m eagerly awaiting Eddie’s return so that I don’t have double duty: entertaining our paid audience on stage and Jamie and Curt off stage.

One of the fun things about our show is the varying audiences we get at B&B. Some houses tend to be full of laughs, others, not so much. I have heard some interesting things said while performing, though. (Yes, audience members, when you talk during the show, the actors can hear you ). Tonight, we had a giggling group of high school girls that seemed to have a thing for both Sam Weber and myself, though of course I will take most of the credit for their constant giggling anytime either of us was onstage. At our Wednesday matinee, when Billy Bones dies, I heard one kid sitting in the front row say to his friend, “I dare you to touch him!” The same kid also said, “Take the black spot,” which at this point has fallen out of Billy Bones’s hand and rests just inches from the audience. On several occasions I have been grabbed by audience members while playing a scene in the house. I think I scarred the crap out of one woman, who put her hand on my leg when she didn’t realize I was hiding behind her. Hehe. I laughed on the inside. Whatever ends up happening onstage, it’s important to remember that we are there to entertain and tell our story. The audience is really the missing character, and if you listen they will tell you just how they want to hear what we have to say.

Hunting for Easter Eggs...

On consequence of being an actor is being away from home over holidays. I actually don’t really see this as a bad thing, because it means we are doing what we love, but I digress. Anyways, Easter was on the 12^th, and since many of us are from out of town, we decided to take matters into our own hands and celebrate Easter as any pirate would: with a massive Easter egg hunt. We all met at the Beef and Boards farmhouse, where several actors live and the theatre has some storage space, and proceeded to have the most awesome day off in the history of days off. Here is how it went down: we partied from about One PM on Sunday until about One AM on Monday. The day consisted of tons of barbeque, food, “water”, poker, touch football, and of course our Easter egg hunt consisting of about 100 eggs. We couldn’t even find all of them, it was that huge – an actor years from now will probably find an egg and think what the @#$% is this egg doing out here!?!

I promised that I would give a personal shout out to one of our wonderful spot-ops, Kayla, in the blog. Kayla is super cool and along with her spot-op partner in crime Sandy (who incidentally seems to kill all of us in poker), does a great job – nothing is more irritating than a shaky spotlight, and these women are great at what they do. Actually as I think about it, I really need to give a shout out to the entire crew for Treasure Island, and more over everyone at Beef and Boards. I’m having an absolute blast here in Indy, and I hope that audiences can come share some joy with all of us!!!

Alrighty, that’s all for now – come see our show, and feel free to ask questions!!!

Peace!

Rick

I have no idea why this post is called green beans… so better off just dealing with it!

So this afternoon our wonderful stage manager Liz Stark called a “put-in” rehearsal. While this sort of rehearsal is pretty common on production contracts (Broadway), a put in at a smaller regional theatre is a bigger deal – it means someone is out of the show, and parts are going to get shuffled in order to adequately tell the story, often times (as is our case), there is only the put in rehearsal its self to prepare. So who is out you might ask? Beef and Boards brilliant Eddie Curry, who plays three different parts – Blind Pew, Israel Hands, and Ben Gunn – all pretty important characters. Fortunately for us, Eddie is only out of the show this weekend -  he’ll be back on  Tuesday. While we wait for Mr. Curry to come back, our fearless leader, Marc Robin, was able to get out of his commitments this weekend and will be playing the roles usually played by Eddie.

While we all will miss Eddie this weekend, I can’t help but get a little giddy with excitement over getting to play opposite Marc. Talk about a force onstage! Marc is a seasoned performer who has worked with people like Bob Fosse, and has thrilled audiences while on the First Broadway National Tour of 42nd Street. Not only that, but as you’ll recall Marc also wrote and directed Treasure Island. Marc was a joy to work with this afternoon at his put in, and if I were you I would sprint to the nearest phone and call 317-872-9664 for two sets of tickets: one to the show this weekend, and another to witness the creative genius that is Eddie Curry, who has continuously captivated audiences while on the Beef & Boards stage. To say you are in for a treat is a vast understatement. Both men will thrill you to tears!

It’s about six o’clock right now, and I’m so pumped for our weekend set – everyone is going to be on their toes while adjusting to Marc’s performance, and this is a great test as an actor to see how one  performace can influence the choices made throughout the show.

That’s all for now, but stay tuned, I have an update shortly on week one of our TI run!!

Rick aka Jim

So it’s Friday – we had our first preview yesterday, with one more tonight before our press opening on Saturday. The life of this show is an amazing thing – every performance seems to grow and change, and an audience one night may get something different than an audience another night. As we add audience into the mix, we are feeling out just where to break for laughs, or where it is appropriate to forge ahead. It is an amazing experience to get in front of people and share our story. You can rehearse and rehearse, but there is electricity between the actor and the audience that you just don’t have in rehearsal. The audience is the last element to our show, and if the crowd last night was anything like what we can expect throughout our run, we should consider ourselves blessed.

Honestly, I am just happy to have the day off! Our rehearsal schedule had listed a TBA rehearsal from 1-5 today, so to take the entire day for me is VERY welcome. In fact, as I look ahead – I am going to have a boat load of free time over the next few days. With the exception of shows tonight and Saturday, we are off until Tuesday evening. Sweet. You may wonder what it’s like to be a rich and famous actor and have nothing to do all day. It’s kind of awesome is the answer. I get to spend my days doing fun things like blogging, going to the gym (the theatre set us up at this awesome Gold’s), shopping, reading, watching movies, and staying out way to late at night. I can say it’s pretty much the life – just thinking about it makes me wonder why everyone doesn’t become an actor . I am blessed – at least for the next six weeks. That being said, I am one of those people who feels worthless if they are not being productive, so I try to find cool things to do to fill my time. Video blog? It might be in our future.

My parents are coming up from St. Louis to catch our opening on Saturday, and I was considering going back home to celebrate Easter and take Monday off, but I think our cast is planning a massive Easter egg hunt, plus I don’t feel like spending $40000000000 to fly back to Indy, so I’m probably going to pass. I hit the jack pot with parents; they are incredibly supportive of the sporadic lifestyle that comes with acting, and I thank them for not having an agenda for my life. I’m eager to hear their thoughts on how our production has changed since our premiere.

As I promised, I’ll give you guys the low down on the Treasure Island tech. Let me begin by saying that our fearless, amazing, words can’t possibly describe director Marc Robin has the most amazing philosophy on tech: “Tech is FUN!” (Incidentally, he has the same philosophy on life… brilliant man – go figure, right?) Anyways, Marc explains that the idea here is that since so many elements of a show are coming together, there are bound to be sticking points. If we expect for things to snag, we are setting ourselves up for happiness when things operate smoothly. I couldn’t agree more with Marc’s mentality here. We are not curing cancer, and as my wonderful teacher and friend Jen Waldman might say, “We are professional clowns!” The less seriously we take ourselves through this process, the more fun it is, and we all do this to have fun!

With “Tech is fun” in mind, we set out to tech this beast of a show – which went remarkably smoothly. Oh yeah… there was the computer that crashed after our first 10 of 12, resulting in losing our entire act one cue set, but that’s neither here, nor there. Paul Black, our amazing LD, his master electrician Brian (whose last name I have forgotten, sorry Brian), and a ton of others worked tirelessly to get us up and running again, and our show looks incredible. We all could have freaked about having to recue about 10 hours of material, but hey, TECH IS FUN, and we got the opportunity to make it even better the second time around! Way to go everyone!

As life in the theatre goes, our fearless leader Marc leaves Indy today to do The Producers at the Walnut. Words can’t possibly describe the profound impact this man has had on my life, through this show, but mainly through his zest for life! I’ll miss Marc, but I’m looking forward to coming to Lancaster and seeing him and Curt after we close.

Alrighty, that’s all for now, folks. If you are in Indianapolis, come join us at Rock Bottom tonight. It’s off of 86^th close to Trader Joe’s and Beef & Boards. The theatre is having an opening party for us and I’d love to all the TI fans come out in force!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Rick.

So to say our tech process was an experience would be an understatement! I’m neck deep in making sure I’m prepped for our our first paid audience, so I’ll give y’all the low down on what tech was like in a couple days once we get this sucker open…

Come see us at Beef & Boards – playing nightly through May 17!!!

Word all you pirate lovers out there! It’s Friday, only a week since I left for Beef & Boards, yet it seems like we have sailed all the way around the world… yeah I just went there. Anyways here is what we have been up to over at the Beef…

As you may, or may not know, act one ends with this awesomely huge brawl on board the Hispaniola: the sea shifts from an impending downpour, the wind cracks on the sails, the crew is full of angst from weeks at sea, and to complicate matters, land has just been spotted! What better time to have a fight for the ages? Enter Adam Noble, our killer (no pun intended) fight director. Not only is Adam is great guy, he teaches at the best college in the world, my alma matter, Indiana University. And although we didn’t get to work together at IU (Adam arrived just after I left), we are quickly making up for lost time with this production.

We had fight rehearsals on Tuesday and Thursday and to say this guy is great would be an understatement. He rocks. One of the things I really like about Adam’s direction is that he remains focused on telling the story. Those of you who saw our premiere know that the fight (brilliantly staged by John Bellamo, might I add) was a highlight of the show. Adam is working hard with the cast to take the fight to the next level, making sure our fight not only looks authentic, but also communicates the direness of the situation, and in turn, I am discovering the best ways to replace the air in between moves with acting choices that communicate to our audience exactly what is going on. I could go on and on about how awesome our fight is shaping up, but I guess you’ll just have to come see our show for yourself and find out!

I can’t speak for the rest of the cast, but today’s rehearsal was amazing for me. We worked a ton of moment to moment beats, and I was able to discover and hash out several things that make Jim Hawkins tick. As an actor, this work can sometimes be tedious and it’s vital to stay on your game; not judging or expecting anything from your process – after all it is a process… I thought I did a good job of that today (kudos to me), and as a result, I had some great discoveries – discoveries, which I never could have reached without pushing myself; asking difficult questions and applying their answers to my work on Jim. I already love performing Treasure Island, but after our work today, I NEED to perform this show. I so clearly relate to Jim’s arc and his super objective to be viewed as a man.

Tomorrow is our designer run. Basically this is when all of the creative team sits in on a full run through and decides if the show will be good or not. Just kidding. But truth be told, I can’t wait for our run tomorrow – so much of our work thus far has been ironing out moment to moment stuff, so we have yet to feel out the ebb and flow of our particular show. This run is going be an amazing tool to figure out exactly what we need to spend time on. Additionally, the cast of Cats (currently playing B&B) is going to sit in, so I’m very excited to share our show with them. Plus, it’s been awhile since I got the rush of a full run of TI, and selfishly, I’m ready to bring it. This show is the most important project I have ever worked on, and I am aching to deliver the goods onstage.

Off to look over some material! Till next time…

Rick

Oh, one more thing – I looooooooove hearing your thoughts, so please, comment away!