LEGALLY BLONDE THE MUSICAL is finally in Denver! Bend and Snap! And now, we present you with two videos from members of this stellar cast. First, Rhiannon Hansen, who plays Margot, tells us about the fashion in the show, talking to dogs, and why Legally Blonde makes a great date.
And now, Natalie Joy Johnson, who plays Paulette, tells us all about stepping into Jennifer Coolidge’s shoes.
That’s all for now! More about the show on www.denvercenter.org
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By Megan Byrne, actress in When Tang Met Laika, Denver Center Theatre Company
The “tang” in our play title WHEN TANG MET LAIK
A refers to Kraft’s orange-flavored soft drink, not the Chinese dynasty as some have thought. In 1965, NASA began using Tang on the Gemini flights. Subsequently, the general public came to associate the beverage with astronauts. NASA stopped serving Tang in space after the Gemini program. However for Americans of a certain generation, including President Obama, Tang will forever be thought of as the astronaut drink. In March 2009, while on a video conference with the orbiting crew of space shuttle Discovery, the President jokingly asked “Do you guys still drink Tang up there?”
Growing up, I also thought of Tang as the astronaut drink. It wasn’t until I began working on this play that I was introduced to some of the non-beverage uses for the orange powder. I play Samantha, wife of astronaut Patrick Norman. Sam makes Tang pie in the play. The key ingredient is, you guessed it, Tang. The pie tastes a bit like a creamsicle to me, but you should try it for yourself. Here’s the recipe:
Ingredients:
1/4 cup Tang orange drink powder
8 oz. sour cream
12 oz. Cool Whip
1 can sweetened condensed milk
2 graham cracker pie crusts
Preparation:
Mix all ingredients together. Pour into the two pie crusts. Chill in refrigerator for at least two hours before serving. Bon appétit!
Tang is not just for consumption. Apparently you can also use Tang to clean discoloration and scale from your dishwasher. Add one half container of Tang to your detergent and run a regular cycle. The citric acid present in the mixture helps to loosen up the hard water deposits and remove scale from your dishwasher. I admit I myself haven’t tried this out, but some people swear by it.
So the next time you are at the supermarket, you might want to consider heading down the powdered drinks aisle and throwing a container of Tang into your cart. Could come in handy. You never know when you might get the urge to whip up some Tang pie, clean your dishwasher or mix up a drink for an astronaut.
Popularity: 18% [?]
It’s less than a month until LEGALLY BLONDE hits Denver on February 2! Here’s a Q & A with Kathleen Elizabeth Monteleone (Ensemble, u/s Elle Woods, Margot) pulled from the “Legally Blonde on Tour” website.
You’re new to the cast — tell us a little about what you were doing before you joined the show.
Before the Legally Blonde tour I was auditioning a lot! Pretty much believing that something would break through (like the Legally Blonde tour). I was part of a play festival at the Public theatre in NY this last summer.
Kathleen Elizabeth Moteleone
What’s your favorite thing so far about being in the show?
I love the people! They are super-talented, have great attitudes and are just so fun to be with. I’ve been performing in the show just a few weeks now and every night I discover some new, funny thing that happens on stage. Whether it’s CJay’s comments under her breath as the judge, Sarah Shepard’s amazing facial expressions as Chutney or Kyle and Connie’s performance as Nikos and Carlos, each night I’m finding myself onstage saying “Kathleen, hold it together, find some professionalism”.
What do you like doing when you are not on stage?
I love traveling. My husband and I run a production company and it allows us to see new places depending on what we’re producing. We were in Australia last year. We also have a cabin in New York and I LOVE being there and working on new things around the house. I went to Target yesterday and went nuts over all their decor! I love anything Betty Crocker-ish/Martha Stewart-ish. It’s so opposite than “showbiz” and I like the balance.
What’s on your iPod right now?
Legally Blonde the Musical (of course), Ingrid Michaelson (obsessed), Jason Mraz, a little Glee, some country (Dolly Parton, Lady Antabellum) and all of my vocal sessions with Kyle our musical director (not as entertaining as the other stuff. I hit a lot of wrong notes during the learning process).
What would you say is your signature color?
Oooh, I would say black. Ha! I actually don’t know, but now that I’ve learned the role of Elle Woods I’ve been inspired to stay on top of the beauty standards every girl should know – for example: signature color. I did get a dark pink pedicure today. I’m at least improving.
What’s the most fun thing about working with animals on stage?
They remind you to stay calm and normal. I love that when I pick up Bruiser or hold him, it brings me back to Earth. It keeps me from “performing” Elle Woods and requires me to just be in the moment.
What are you looking forward to the most this year on tour?
Getting to be onstage! I’m still pinching myself that I got this job. And getting to see the country.
Finally, what’s your best Blonde Moment?
Do I have to pick one? How ’bout the first week I joined the tour in Costa Mesa, my brain was so fried from retaining so much information I couldn’t find our rental car in the parking lot of the theatre. So I tried to open every white car in the lot. Of course they were all locked and I swore someone had stolen it. I called Lucia (Enid) frantically and she reminded me where it was. It was pretty much five steps to my left (the one place I didn’t look) behind a dying parking lot tree. From that moment on Lucia has definitely considered me a “blonde”. (We blondes do have more fun though!)
Becky Gulsvig as Elle Woods and the cast of the National Tour of Legally Blonde the Musical. Photo: Joan Marcus
Popularity: 7% [?]
By Richard Thieriot, actor in When Tang Met Laika, Denver Center Theatre Company
Richard Thieriot
My name is Richard Thieriot and I’m playing The Young Communist (retired) in the world premiere production of WHEN TANG MET LAIKA I was part of the first reading of the play at Perry Mansfield right after I finished my degree at the National Theatre Conservatory (2008). The play has changed and grown a great deal since that first reading. I’ve never worked with a writer who is as active in changing and editing a script as Rogelio Martinez; he has given us a stack of new pages every day since began this rehearsal period on Monday the 14th. An actor gets to watch performances and themes develop in all rehearsal processes but it is a rare treat to watch the actual script change shape and evolve every day. Terry Nolen, our director, has put together an awesome group of actors for this play as well. I sit back during most of the read-throughs and just watch my cast-mates tell this story. They make me forget where I am. Just awesome.
A great deal of the play takes place in space and we’ve been researching the space race a great deal and talking about it. Last week, we had a real life astronaut come into the rehearsal and tell us about his experience in space. Bruce McCandless went on two expeditions in a Nasa orbiter totaling fourteen days in space. He looks pretty unassuming, just a quiet older guy with a bit of a Texas accent, but the stories he had about his life were unbelievable. He was the first man to do an untethered space walk (which means he was just floating around in space with nothing attaching him to the spacecraft). I’ve been on boats far from land and it was enough to make me nervous. FLOATING FREE IN SPACE! It’s a real stretch for me to conceive of being calm doing what Bruce did. He was absolutely calm in talking about it though and said he wasn’t that scared when he did it. I feel brave jay-walking in Denver.
Popularity: 100% [?]
By Augie Filholm, child actor in A Christmas Carol
Augie Filholm
In this past six weeks I have been performing as an actor at the DCTC (Denver Center Theatre Company). I was cast in the play A CHRISTMAS CAROL directed by Bruce Sevy. It was a lot of fun and it was cool to see how things worked back stage. Let me explain what it was like and what I had to do to be in this play.
First of all I had to audition. The auditions were at the DCTC, in a building called the Newman Center. The first audition was in a small room. First we met the director and the other kids at the audition. Then we had to sing. This was my fear of trying to get into the play. I am not a good singer. They made us sing a very short song in what we call the Schoolboy scene, when the main character Ebenezer Scrooge goes into the past and sees himself as a child. After the singing, we (meaning the other kids at the audition and me) were all assigned parts to audition for. We all got a sheet of paper that had the lines we were to audition for. They had me audition for a character named Peter Cratchit. Peter Cratchit is a boy who is the son of a poor man named Bob Cratchit. Peter has a younger brother and sister and an older sister, and his mother, of course. For my part, I had to read a small part from the Bible. This scene was a sad or gloomy sort of scene. It was not hard, but it was very exciting and nerve-racking at the same time. Every kid who auditioned for this part read the same thing. We all did it in front of each other, which made me even more nervous. After the audition, I waited at home for a call back. A call back is when the people who watched you audition call you back to audition again. This can mean that the director had a hard choice between two people or anything like that. We read and sang the same things as the previous audition, except there were not as many people this time. Feeling that I knew the part a little better than the audition before, I felt more confident and relaxed than the first time.
A couple days later, I got the call that I had gotten the part. Our first rehearsal was to be on November 2.
On November 2, the whole cast and crew showed up in the same room where we had the auditions. It was amazing to see how many people were really involved in it, and to meet them. It was especially fun to meet the kids who had gotten cast, to see who I was going to spend the next month and a half with. At this rehearsal we did not act physically, but we read the script. The director showed us a model of the stage and its props and features. We were going to first rehearse in the room that we were in right now.
The rehearsals were really fun, but they also made us very tired. We would sometimes stay at the rehearsal room from 6pm to 10pm just figuring out a small scene. Sometimes, it would just be a certain call for certain people, and sometimes we would have the whole cast there. Like I said before, this made us all tired. I thought I had it hard, but then we started tech rehearsal, and believe me, just a regular rehearsal was nothing compared to tech.
Tech rehearsal is when you move to the real stage that you will be performing on. Lights and most props are there, and sometimes, but not usually on the first tech, costumes. One would think that tech is really fun because you get to see all the props, and you get to see your costume, and you get out of school early, and things like that. When you get to tech, though, spending 12 hours downtown, with only a two hour break can sometimes make you feel tired, but mostly… very, very bored unless you’re on stage a lot. Finally we started previews, which is when an audience watches, but they can expect errors in lines or technical difficulties. This is also good for the directors, because they can get an understanding of the reaction to the crowd.
The Children of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. Photo by Terry Shapiro.
After the previews, opening night came. Opening night is the most fun that there is during the whole run. The reason for this is that it’s opening night for one, and it is fun to celebrate that we are able to make this far, and put on a perfect show. There is also a fun party after the show with the cast and crew. After the opening night, the real show is on. Being in A Christmas Carol, a tradition for most families and schools is to come and see the show. This means that we are almost there every day doing two shows a day. This was a really fun run. The bad part is that we only get Mondays off and Christmas day off. Then when all the other kids are finally off, I only get a day’s rest, because I am in another play, called EVENTIDE, as DJ Kephart. It’s a lot of work, but I love it!
Popularity: 24% [?]
Time for a VLOG! Steffi D, who plays Ilse in the national tour of SPRING AWAKENING, tells us about the show and her character. The show runs through December 13 in The Buell Theatre!
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Shauna Miles, “Actor B” in Well and Third-Year Student of the National Theatre Conservatory
Shauna Miles, National Theatre Conservatory Student
My experience in WELL thus far has been fantastic! My initial two years of training at the NATIONAL THEATRE CONSERVATORY have been in preparation for an opportunity like this; every rehearsal has given me a chance to take all I’ve learned and put it to practical use. The role of “Actor B” has been challenging, but also incredibly exciting and satisfying. I’m tasked with creating 5 distinct characters. Everyday I call upon my first year training in Larry Hecht’s “Extended Character” class to guide and inspire me in my development of each of these very different and very specific people.
And of course, working along side a Denver Center Theatre Company veteran like Kathy Brady has been a wonderful bonus. I love watching the way she continually uncovers the depth and humanity of the character she’s crafting. Bearing witness to the nuances and choices of each of the actors in this production has been absolutely invaluable; it’s a wonderful culmination to my time here at the NTC and I feel so fortunate to have been afforded this experience as I prepare to re-enter the “real world” of acting.
Popularity: 15% [?]
IN THE HEIGHTS is an original musical and is the brainchild of Lin-Manuel Miranda, who starred in the original Broadway cast and won a Tony for the show. Check out the video below where he teams up with his original Broadway cast co-star Karen Olivo (currently in Broadway’s West Side Story) and the actor playing the lead role of “Usnavi” in the tour – Kyle Beltran – to tell us how they’re going to “Run This Tour.” Let us tell you, we around The Denver Center are big fans of this show and are LOVING this video! The show isn’t quite as dark and intense as this, but the video gives you an idea of how fun and different this musical is – full of freestyle rap, insanely cool dancing and some amazing singing.
Popularity: 8% [?]
By Sean Lyons, Third-Year Student, National Theatre Conservatory
Sean Lyons, Third-Year Student at the National Theatre Conservatory
If you were a Third-Year student at the NATIONAL THEATRE CONSERVATORY, you would most likely have the opportunity to understudy a part in a Denver Center Theatre Company production. Some of you would actually understudy several parts in one show. Others of you would be cast in one show while understudying a part in another show at the same time — it can get rather tricky; but the opportunity is valuable in its lessons of discipline and professionalism, not to mention simple line memorization, typically the least of your worries.
If you were a Third-Year, you might be only an understudy for a certain show, so attending rehearsals in that case is not required. You would merely attend of your own volition to learn the movement of your character(s) and perhaps get a better understanding of your lines. The only requirement is a scheduled “Understudy Rehearsal,” where the Stage Manager will basically lead all of the understudies through the show on the set with the props. Other than that, there is a lot of freedom, but you’d better be ready if called upon because you never know. Several years ago, a student understudied Hamlet. He did go on, and he did great.
If you were a Third-Year, you would still have classes most of the week at nine in the morning. Whether it is directing, voice, movement, or showcase, attendance is mandatory and sleeping is not. You would also be in the midst of planning fundraisers for your class to earn some desperately needed extra cash as you will most likely venture into the wonderful world of unemployment after graduation – but hopefully not for long.
If you were a Third-Year, some of your class might be lucky enough to receive larger roles than others — it is simply the nature of the business. But most importantly, what you’ll find is the chance to build relationships with an excellent group of actors who have been around the block a couple of times. Whether you are a lead, a servant, a spear carrier, or just a tree in the background, you will get to know what it’s like to work with a professional ensemble, the ins and outs of an Equity production, and the fact that everyone has to start somewhere.
If you were a Third-Year, you’d slowly be transitioning out of the scholastic environment into the professional world, even though the learning never stops. No matter how many classes you take, it’s not until you take that step onto the big stage that a new schooling begins.
And if you’re anything like me, that step will be a great feeling.
Popularity: 14% [?]
Bryce Baldwin with Kathleen McCall in Richard III. Photo by Terry Shapiro.
Colorado’s own Bryce Baldwin, who appeared in Denver Center Theatre Company productions of A Christmas Carol and Richard III, is out on the road as “Michael Banks” in Disney’s MARY POPPINS. The show, which is headed for Denver next March, recently played an engagement in Minneapolis. We’ll be getting updates from Bryce about life and performing on the road over the next few months. And check out his interview with Minneapolis Star Tribune theatre critic Rohan Preston: THE CHILDREN OF MARY POPPINS
Popularity: 17% [?]
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