In summer of 2013 I auditioned for a new community theatre, Avenue Theatre Company, for their production of “Into the Woods” my all time favorite Stephen Sondheim musical. Well, my all time favorite musical, period. This particular staging was designed to be dreamlike and use a child’s bedroom as the set. This way, we relied on the audience to use their childlike imagination to build the complicated sets in the woods, using a ladder and a feather boa to represent Rapunzel in her tower, for example. I was cast as the Wolf in Act I and then double cast as a drag Step-sister. This show is a blast and has many layers to it’s sophisticated story, that’s really for kids at all.
This is one of the three Sondheim shows I have been able to learn and participate in. The first being “Gypsy” where Sondheim is only the lyricist, yet still gives us the some unforgettable ditties. The other show was Villanova Theatre‘s production of “Merrily We Roll Along” which was ultimately cancelled as a result of the pandemic in 2020. We were returning to the theatre the next day to start tech weekend when the lockdown began.
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