By: Stephen Sondheim
The story follows a Baker and his wife, who wish to have a child; Cinderella, who wishes to attend the King's Festival; and Jack, who wishes his cow would give milk. When the Baker and his wife learn that they cannot have a child because of a Witch's curse, the two set off on a journey to break the curse. Everyone's wish is granted, but the consequences of their actions return to haunt them later with disastrous results.
My process began the summer of my sophomore year when I took the initiative to develop the necessary supplies for a successful crew. Throughout my freshman year as a costume member, I saw many things that our troupe could improve for our costume crew. Previous to my years there weren't any lesson plans or structured schedules for costumes, it is very understandable why that is since it took up my whole summer for research, proper planning, and writing. I watched videos on Broadway costume designers and slowly learned what a successful costume crew looked like. Not only did I make these discoveries with online research but I also had hands-on research during a summer camp. I decided it was best to expand my horizons and meet new people, so I joined a summer camp given by the Pearl Theater. I learned how to properly teach people and that we should never expect perfection while teaching someone, the goal is that they improve. Later I sat down and gathered my research and created a paper on principles and guides for me and future crew heads that may follow. Our process was something like so: We introduced what the essence of costumes is, we introduced ourselves to the crew, and talked about what the process would look like. We then began our research on the period of the show which was the 1600s and we based the costumes on the German fashion of the time. We then began our sketches, during our process, our innovations sped up the costume-making process and improved how much a crew member learned. Not only did this set up a future crew, but it also helped engage people and continue getting them to return, improving their skills over time. I am happy to say that all of our costume people learned how to properly use sewing machines and they all know the basics of creating a stunning costume. The costume crew knew it well enough to teach other people outside of costumes who wanted to help with sewing.
For my acting, I wanted to challenge myself to become a better actor. I took my knowledge of comedy from The Imaginary Invalid and learned how to work skits and how to make moments extremely funny. When I auditioned I made sure to make an impression although I was a little rusty on my singing since the last time I had sung was in elementary school. I also had to add movement and emotion to my singing which were two completely foreign things to me.
My biggest challenge for this production was the music, we had 8 weeks to work on the show. for the first 4 weeks, we went through all of the music which only gave us 4 more weeks to work with blocking and to familiarize ourselves with props and the set. due to the lack of time, we had little rehearsal with music and our rough spots were in the big ensemble pieces where everyone sang a different harmony. It was terrifying to put myself out there and sing by myself since I had no one to follow or to help me during the song. I had to learn to take up all of the space on stage and not be terrified to sing alone. With the help of our vocal coach, I learned just that, I learned how to take up all of the space and how to properly use my voice while singing so that it didn't hurt. Due to allergies, my voice wasn't doing so well a week before our show, I had to rest and hope for the best when it came to opening night. However, it ended up not being a big deal and my voice was in good shape for the first show.
My favorite part of the process was the show nights. Every night we had a completely new crowd, which is to be expected but I had never expected a difference so large. Some nights some jokes hit hard and the crowd loved it and some nights the energy was so low that we couldn't bear it. However, I learned slowly what worked with the audience and what didn't. I used this to my advantage, for every joke that they loved I would use and work harder to improve the jokes that didn't hit so hard I looked back and thought about why it didn't work and I used that to improve the joke. So I would say that my favorite part was working those moments with the crowd and being able to experience that bond with them.
Given all of this, the easiest part for me was the characterization. Bringing my character to life was so easy for me since I had lived the same life as my character. I grew up with only one parent and I learned why my character would do certain things to make her proud. No matter the situation when you only have one parent the child will do whatever it is in their power to give to their mother. I also played into the fact that because Jack is afraid of losing people and not having a stable family he is stuck in this mindset of trying to gain back his childhood giving him a reason to be curious and childlike.
With that being said and with what I have learned from this process I think I want to include more structure in the costume crew. I had many ideas that I brainstormed and I know that if we could have stuffed all of the new ideas we could have reconstructed what a crew should look like. With my acting, I think I just need to keep on experimenting and looking back at my work so that I can improve and grow to become better at what I do. I loved my performance as Jack and I think that I did an amazing job but I know that I can be way better than what I am I just need to gain confidence.
