2 By 5 2008

During winter quarter of 2008 Dave Hamilton was on sabbatical as I directed the musical review, 2 By 5, with Rexanne Ring-Harris as co-director and choreographer. We'd been trying to get Chicago and Samuel French suggested this review of Kander and Ebb songs that had a few songs from Chicago. It was usually done with five people, but we split it up so we could cast a lot more. What I didn't realize was that it had been written for just piano, so I ended up scoring it for a small live combo. Can't seem to find the program, but here is the poster and a few backstage pics.

Tommy 2007

We decided to do The Who's Tommy which had been made into a musical. It was sort of following on Dave's rock musical/opera kick. I did the musical direction and also midied the score. I don't recall why we did it in Winter quarter, but the show opened about a week after my daughter, Roslyn, was born. After that, I had said I wasn't going to do any shows outside of work for a couple of years.

April Mai designed a beautiful technicolor poster.

Jekyll and Hyde 2006

Nevada Civic Light Opera decided to reprise Jekyll and Hyde at Piper's Opera House in the fall of 2006. Suzie Tagayev asked me to do the music direction and play the parts of Jekyll/Hyde again. We used MIDI tracks this time instead of an orchestra to save money.

Joy Michiel gave us a great article in The Weekly. It also looks cool, but unfortunately is difficult to read.

Joy Strotz, who also played Emma in this production, took some amazing promo shots and did some fancy digital editing.

I don't recall who took these backstage shots during a performance, but the lighting was way cool. It may have been Joy or Suzie.

Hyde exults in his first killing.

The Confrontation (aka the Ponytail Duet) and a shot in costume outside of Piper's.

In 2008, Suzie asked if I would sing "This is the Moment" for their music review, A Tribute to Broadway, at Piper's Opera House in Virginia City. Below is a video from that performance.

Guilty Pleasures 2006

We updated Guilty Pleasures for another run at the Valhalla Boathouse Theatre in the summer of 2006.

Hair 2006

After having a once in a lifetime trip to the Edinburgh Fringe, what does one do? As it seems Dave was quite into the rock musical/opera genre, we decided to do Hair. I did the musical direction and conducted the band. We had a huge cast of all ages.

Ginger Janssen designed a beautiful psychedelic poster for us.

The Action gave us a nice little spread.

They had another article the following week.

Phantom of the Opera in Concert 2005

Nevada Civic Light Opera produced a concert version of The Phantom of the Opera in the fall of 2005 at Piper's Opera House. Suzie had gotten a license to use one of the karaoke tracks that had the highlights from the show. I did the music direction and sang the Phantom. Emily Hammer was Christine and Josh Jessup played Raoul.

We got a little blurb in the Tahoe Quarterly and the production was sold out fairly quickly. Lev even had a fake newspaper made.

Joy Michiel gave us her usual feature.

Lysistrata's War 2005

We had auditions and recast Lysistrata's War for our trip to Edinburgh, Scotland for the Fringe. This time I got to play the role of Theron. For a day-by-day blog of our Edinburgh trip with lots of pictures see: https://myfringetrip.blogspot.com/. The Fringe guide was this huge magazine where we had a nice little blurb.

We brought along Ginger's design for our own programs and had them printed there if I recall correctly.

The poster had Susie Bohannon as Lysistrata with a Bush/Cheney pin dripping blood from her bosom. The show itself was not nearly as PG-13 rated. We had them made into cards that we could hand out and leave on tables for promo.

Three Weeks gave us a 4/5 star review and The Scotsman gave us 3/5.

When we got back the Tahoe Daily Tribune had a nice feature article about our trip.

Guilty Pleasures Reprise 2005

At some point after we had done Lysistrata's War at the college, Dave got the idea to take the show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the largest theatre festival in the world. To help raise money for student scholarships that would help them offset costs, we did a special two nights only production of Guilty Pleasures at LTCC. The cast was the same as the previous summer, except Sharon Kerrigan replaced Mary Lou Whitcomb as the Judge.

Into the Woods 2005

Right around my birthday in 2005 I had met a woman online at Match.com. We hit it off and started dating. Junel was living in Sparks at the time, and I remember driving up there for the weekends and working on the MIDI for Into the Woods. To incorporate more dancers into the show, Dave had them also become parts of the set, a tree for example. The program I saved seemed to be missing a couple of pages so I don't have a cast list.

The artwork for our poster was done by Michelle Cornair and the graphic design was by Ginger Janssen.