From Page to Stage

Saturday night closed a chapter in my life, at least for now anyway. I say a chapter was closed. Perhaps I should say a prologue was closed. Saturday night was the last performance of the workshop production of “Company of Angels”. Back in June, a dear friend of mine, Julie Fulcher-Davis, sent me an email with the subject, “Favor?” What I agreed to do never seemed like a favor to me. It was an honor and an incredible opportunity as an actor. Julie had written a musical and she was trying to get a cast together to workshop it. She asked me to play the role of "Cornecia". She sent me a copy of the script and some wave files of my songs. I was on board immediately. In fact, I blogged about it in a round-about way in my post, "I Really Need to Practice What I Preach". A few emails back and forth about ideas and castings, and when all was said and done, we had a date to meet for a read-through with the cast, including my own daughters playing roles of angels in a celestial back-up group called "The Divinettes" From the first read-through and music rehearsals, I knew I was part of something special. It's rare that an actor gets the opportunity to bring life to a role. Along with the help of the writer and director, both of whom were Julie, you shape the character and propel it off the page and onto the stage. Julie is an incredibly giving and open director, and we, as actors were given quite a bit of freedom. "Cornecia" on the stage turned out to be totally different than "Cornecia" on the page, but that's what a workshop is about. It's a growing, living process. Hopefully the show will continue on it's journey and become a full scale production. The cast and crew would often say in rehearsals, "When we get to Philadelphia....[insert grand idea that takes grand budget here]." Philadelphia is usually one of the last stops a show makes before Broadway. The workshop production only ran here in Richmond for 7 performances. By closing night, the box office was turning people away. A very good sign, considering most of the advertising was through Internet, email, Facebook and word of mouth. Not everybody who came liked it, but the general public patron seemed to love it, and the audience reaction was very good. There were standing ovations more than once, which is more than I can say for some full scale productions I have been in. I hope this does make it all the way to Philadelphia, heck, we're Angels, let's shoot for the stars, Broadway. My character, "Cornecia", has a song in the second act with this line, "Even forgotten, a dream will unfold." I am so glad that I am a part of this process to let Julie's dream unfold. Now, if it could just get caught on the feather of a Broadway bound Angel wing.