Wassail!

Hello again! Opening night has come and gone --- and was fantastic! We've been doing two shows a day since Friday, and one school matinee today; so the festivities have begun! The energy is palpable; in the audience and among the cast and crew. It's an amazing story with heart, and a timeless classic for everyone. As I have said, I am incredibly honored to be a part of the show, and notice always a larger, more silly looking grin on my face backstage before I go on each performance. There's only two more public performances (this Friday) so get on it!

So what does an actor in Hanover Theatre's A Christmas Carol do on an evening off? Why, make a big batch of Wassail of course! What?! You don't know what Wassail is? Well, in the life of a Hanover Theatre Christmas Carol actor it is two things (well, maybe two and a half ). One: an AMAZING arrangement of a traditional Christmas carol by Ralph Vaughn Williams that we sing together during the Fezziwig Party scene (The scene with the Doodlebobs!!! - Look it up in our blog!) when Ebenezer Scrooge visits himself as a young man. The merriment of the Fezziwig party completely embodies the joyous tradition. Two (and a half): Wassailing is a tradition of caroling around the holidays to bless the upcoming crop of apples. It means literally "good health," and became associated with a warmed, mulled cider offered to wassailers for their song. I decided that tonight would be the perfect night to make this traditional drink for the holidays. So I scoured the interwebs and found the following lovely recipe and made it for a holiday party I am attending tomorrow night. Enjoy! (Please note: the beverage does contain alcohol, I did find a non-alcoholic version here).

Ingredients:

8 to 10 small apples

1 large peeled orange stuck with whole cloves

8 to 10 teaspoons brown sugar

2 bottles dry red wine

1 teaspoon ground ginger

3 cloves

Small handful of blueberries

2 or 3 cinnamon sticks

1/2 teaspoon of allspice

2 cups sugar

1/2 gallon of apple cider

1 splash whiskey

Directions:

First, core each apple and  fill with a teaspoon of brown sugar. Place into a baking pan and fill the pan 1/8 of an inch full of water.

Cored apples.

Filled with sugar and ready to bake!

 Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Then, peel the orange. Next stick the orange with cloves, about a half an inch apart. It should look similar to this:

Clove-stuck orange.

 Then place alongside the apples and bake in the oven for about 30 minutes.

Remove the orange and the apples and puncture the orange in several places with a fork. Next, in a large saucepan or pot, combine the red wine, cider, ginger, cloves, allspice, blueberries, cinnamon, sugar, and the water from the baked orange and apples. Slowly, bring the mixture to a simmer, cover and let sit on low heat for fifteen minutes (Do not allow to boil). 

Wassail, wassail all up in the pot!

 Add a splash of whiskey, to taste. Pour into a large punch bowl, steaming hot and float the apples and oranges. Serve with a stick of cinnamon. Preferably in a "green maple" bowl. Makes enough for about 15 jolly wassailers!

Oops! Got to head to bed! I've got to jump up for another matinee tomorrow morning at 10! Can't wait!

Lipstick Trick

The benefit of sharing a dressing room with 16 women? All the stories & tips! Holidays, boys, auditions, food, makeup...all possible topics at any given moment in the ladies' room a 1/2 hour before the show starts. The female cast of "A Christmas Carol" agreed that the following tip from the fantastic Ilyse Robbins (Choreographer/Mrs. Fezziwig) should be shared with our blog supporters. Enjoy!

Opening Night!

So I am far too tired to write a lengthy blog as we have performed 4 shows in the last 48hrs and have 2 more "today". Monday we will have really earned our Day Off. But before then, I wanted to take a second and share some pics from our Opening Night party on Friday! You can especially tell on the kids' faces, what a sense of accomplishment an actors feels when their show finally opens. We've had four great audiences, so far; I can't wait to share "A Christmas Carol" with even more people. :)

Carola LaCoste (SM) Peter Adams (Xmas Present) Tyler Bellmon (Young Scrooge)

Christie Lee Gibson (Fiddler)/ ME/ Micah Tougas (Belle)

Peter Stamoulis (Tiny Tim)/ Tori Heinlein (Xmas Past)/ Samantha Keville (Fan)

OUR LAST 10 out of 12 Rehearsal

This is what happens at the end of the night!

A Twelve Hour Journey into Tech

- 12:00pm -

Call time/Costumes

- 1:00pm -

Joelle Kross, Micah Tougas, Peter Adams, and Eric McGowan still happy on hour 2!

- 2:00 pm -

Joelle Kross and Ilyse Robbins start to get bored, but they still have a smile on their faces.

- 3:00pm -

Micah Tougas and myself start forcing some smiles.

- 4:00pm -

Joelle Kross and I start getting loopy while waiting for Fezziwigs Party.

- 5:00pm -

Dinner Break

- 6:00pm -

We are still eating.

- 7:00 -

Actors are back in costume and happy to have food in their stomachs! I am not lying when I say buttons broke and costumes didn't fit after dinner.

- 8:00pm -

Girls start showing their ankles at Fezziwigs Party!

- 9:00pm -

"Look at my math!" I start getting bored and doing math in my counting house book. Something actors rarely do, and when we do it usually isn't right.

- 10:00pm -

Tori Heinlein gets really bored and sits on the job, while Micah Tougas and I entertain ourselves with lights and weird voices.

- 11:00pm -

Scrooge (Dale Place) is caught playing Angry Birds on set.

- 12:00am -

Story time with Peter Adams right as the end of the day is called!

I will be updating you all tomorrow! Another twelve hour day!

Fabulous Feet

or more specifically fabulous shoes! All the actors have finally completed their costume fittings with the talented Gail Astrid Buckley. You get a lollipop after a doctor's appointment , but after a fitting with Gail you get rehearsals shoes! It is a luxury to be able to work with your "show shoes" early on in your rehearsal process, but it truly makes a difference in the final product. This way the actors are able to have time to get comfortable doing their dance steps, lifts, any brisk movements, in the correct footwear. So if adjustments need to be made to the choreography or footwear, there is ample time.

Lynne Rosenberg (Mrs. Dilber) zips up her show boots/ a pile of shoes wait for their owners at rehearsal

Today was our last day in our rehearsal space. On Tuesday we start rehearsing on the stage in full costume with lights and sets and the mighty Wurlitzer! There will be so many new elements to get use to. I am very thankful that our fabulous shoes will greet us like old friends, first thing on Tuesday.

Tyler Bellmon practicing dance steps/ Joelle Kross laces up/ Lisa Dempsey is ready to Wassail!

Eric McGowan (Xmas Future) with ASM Candice Mongellow. He is probably the most thankful out of all that he has time to practice in his shoes!

Boo!

Mrs. Cratchit here! So we have 3 days until we get onto the stage. It's very exciting to have so many pieces together. In the last 2 rehearsals we have been doing run thrus with stops and starts. As you might have guessed that means we run the scenes until Troy stops them to fix or change something.

Today we stopped on one of my favorite parts. It's early in the first act just before the ghost of Jacob Marley arrives. Some audience members might just think they are hearing wind or some prerecorded voices, but in every production I've appeared in just before Jacob Marley appears the actors all assemble in the wings and get to make spooky noises! At 16 yrs old in my first "A Christmas Carol" production at Foothills Theatre I remember thinking it was so cool that the whole cast got to be the voice of the ghosts for a brief period of time. Mostly the actors chant "Ebenezer" or "Scrooge" during this scene or try to sound like the wind, but there is some flexibility within that. It is so fun to play with different ways to use your voice or different words you can interject in rehearsals. Today Troy stopped us for a couple of reasons during the "spooky noises" ... not enough consonants, not enough wind. I am sure we will have it perfect by opening, but until then I am happy practicing because it makes me feel a bit like a 7year old with all my friends on Halloween! "SssssscroooooooogGGGGGe" ! I love my job <3

Dale Place in last year's production of "A Christmas Carol" at the Hanover, right before a ghost arrives! Can't you hear our spooky voices in the background???

A season of waiting and preparing

Christie Gibson here, the fiddler of the cast.

Growing up in my family, the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas was, as it is for many people, a time to decorate the house and get people presents, to bake special treats and spend time with loved ones. All of these things were part of the preparations for Christmas Day. We also went to church every Sunday, lit the candles each week for Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace, and put another ornament on the Advent calendar every morning. With each of these rituals, I keenly felt the anticipation, the excitement, the waiting that marks the season of Advent. It was often hard as a kid - I didn't want to wait! But ultimately having to wait and prepare added suspense and made Christmas Day all the more exciting.

Now, as an adult, I'm preparing and waiting in a slightly different way. I'm still singing lots of carols and sharing lots of baked goods with my family and this great cast. We're also preparing our lines, our choreography, and for me, my violin playing, so that we'll be ready when opening night comes. We're getting to the point where we know what we need to do and are itching to get it out in front of the audience. But there is still a lot of preparing and polishing to do, so we have to wait another whole week! It's hard, just like when my sisters and I were kids. But I know opening night will come, just like Christmas always did.

I can't wait!

A Cookie Carol

Hello Everyone!

This is my first time contributing an entry to this blog, and I must admit, I wasn't sure what I'd write about. But I remembered, sitting here at my laptop, that a cast mate suggested I blog about what I bake. For me, like many of my other cast mates, this show is more than another job, it's a holiday tradition. And like most other holiday traditions, this one includes many, many baked goods.

Our director, Troy, often jokes that baking some of my signature sweets is part of my contract. I don't want to take the risk of finding out that this isn't a joke, and so...I bake! But I also bake because I love it, and because, I think and hope, my fellow cast and crew members do, too.

So far, I've made Spice Cake Whoopie Pies with Eggnog Cream Filling and Egg Biscuits. There will be Red Velvet Cake Balls, Chocolate Covered Oreos, Snow Ball Cookies and possibly even Chocolate Cinnamon Croissants in the near future.

But I must admit, with rehearsals, the commute and other obligations, I don't have much time to do everything from scratch. So I thought I'd take this opportunity and use this platform to share my first two (semi-scratch) recipes of the season with you, Dear Reader!

Spice Cake Whoopie Pies

Cake:

1 boxed cake mix (I used spice cake!)

3 eggs

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup vegetable oil

Combine ingredients and use a small ice cream scoop to place spoonfuls onto a lined baking sheet. Bake at 350 F for 10-12 minutes. Let cool completely.

Filling:

3/4 cup powdered sugar

3 oz. cream cheese

3 heaping tblsp. marshmallow Fluff

1 stick butter

1 tsp. vanilla

1/4 cup eggnog

Combine ingredients until smooth. Spoon between two cooled whoopie pie halves. Eat and enjoy!

And for the sweet, moist and yummy...

Egg Biscuits (my Nana's recipe)

Combine:

1 8 oz. package cream cheese

1 1/4 stick of butter (softened)

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

2 1/2 tsp. baking powder

Slowly add 2 1/2 cups of flour. You can start with a hand mixer, but then you might want to do it by hand. The dough will be very sticky!

Once combined, form into balls, press onto a baking sheet and bake at 350 until cooked, 10-12 minutes. Biscuits should not brown.

While baking, make the icing. Combine:

1 tblsp. melted butter

1/2 tsp. vanilla

1 cup powdered sugar

2-4 tblsp. milk

When the biscuits are done baking but still warm, spread on the icing. I top mine with rainbow or red, white and green nonpareils. Great when they're still warm, but just as amazing once cool!

Hopefully, I'll be baking and sharing more recipes soon. But that's all for now!

Cheers,

Kim Kalunian, cast member

Day Off

At the end of the “work through” of A Christmas Carol in the Hanover Theatre rehearsal hall yesterday there was a buzz of excitement because, not only had we successfully pieced together the show, but we also knew what was coming – A day off!

Now, I don’t know about the rest of my cast mates, but my day off isn’t going to be spent lounging around in my pajamas, eating Munchos, and watching ‘Parks and Recreation’ on Netflix. No, sir. There are lines I have to learn, harmonies to think about learning, and lyrics review.

There is also a blog that I was asked to write -- which, of course, will wait until after all the above things are completed.

The theatre is a tough job, man. And not just for the actors. I know Troy (our talented director) is trying to figure out where we can add pyrotechnics this year, Ilyse (our smart choreographer) is coming up with new dance steps – We are adding a number called “Scrooge’s Dream Ballet” featuring Kevin Hadfield as Scrooge, and Carola (one of the best Stage Managers there is) is coloring in her script and trying to stay within the lines. Like I said, it is a job that takes focus -- even on days off.

I would go into much more detail, but reruns of 30ROCK just came on and I am getting distracted. I also need to get out of bed.

Until next time -- Peace and Hairgrease!

Tyler Bellmon, Cast Member