Learning the Fezziwig Dance

By Megan Delaney, Belinda Cratchit and Fan in A Christmas Carol

One of my favorite scenes is at Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig's party where we get to dance. We started learning the dance on day two of rehearsal. Ms. Susan and Ms. Robyn are our dance teachers. They are both really great and have tons of experience. The first day we did everything in a line, learning moves like one called “sevens” and two types of jigs. The one called sevens is really fun because it moves really fast with seven steps in one direction or the other. On the second day they gave us partners. One thing that is a bit uncomfortable at first is dancing with boys because in fourth grade, girls and boys don't usually dance together nowadays. Back in 1860 it was more normal. But after the first few times dancing I remembered it is my character dancing and then it becomes fun.

I am a Fezziwig guest so in the show I dance at the party. My partner is Grant who plays Boy Scrooge and Peter Cratchit. By the third rehearsal everything came together and you could really see how it would look on stage. We have rehearsed the dance scene five times and it seems like we are ready now for the show.

One part that is fun is that the character Belle starts doing the sevens dance and we have to pretend that we don’t know how to do sevens even when we are good at them! After I pretend to learn the dance on stage, I then get to act like I am teaching Eric who plays Young Scrooge to do the dance the sevens. When he starts to dance on his own, he does really bad! It is fun to be the kid who teaches an adult how to dance even if it is only pretend.

Becoming Fan

By Megan Delaney, Belinda Cratchit and Fan in A Christmas Carol

It is fun to play someone in a play because you really get to become them. It is interesting to learn more about who they are and what they did back then.

Fan is one of my characters. She is Ebenezer's little sister. Even though she is younger than him, she tries to be really grown up. She loves Ebenezer very much. They grew up in a house with a really crabby dad. Their father seems like he was also very controlling of his money. He wanted to save money so he wasn't even going to have his son come home for Christmas. In the play, Fan is so excited because she got her dad to say "yes" to letting Ebenezer come home. She also felt grown up because she got to take a coach which is a horse and buggy ride to go pick him up.

My parents won't even let me walk three blocks alone and Fan had to travel really far away with a stranger taking her. It is incredible to think how the kids back then had to grow up so fast.

Fan dies when she has a baby at a young age which is one of the reasons Ebenezer becomes mean when he grows older. He forgets how to love and how to be happy.

Digging into Chekhov

By Neena Arndt, Literary Associate and Dramaturg for The Seagull

It’s easy to put on a Chekhov play. Lots of people do it. What’s hard is doing a Chekhov play well.

We who work in the theater know that. We know that Chekhov’s characters can seem out-of-date, that their meandering dialogue and inactivity can have a soporific effect on even the most avid playgoer. We have been put to sleep by Chekhov plays ourselves. We also know that the problem with most Chekhov productions is not Chekhov’s writing. The problem is that his writing is so subtle and nuanced that it is difficult for theater artists—especially those living in a culture and time period wholly different from Chekhov’s—to interpret. Even for those with talent and skill, Chekhov is hard. We who explore Chekhov are like ’49ers. (I mean the gold-seeking ones, not the football team, but feel free to invent your own Chekhov-is-like-football metaphor.) The ’49ers knew there was gold under the ground. They armed themselves with the best tools they could find. They worked hard. Some became dazzlingly rich; most did not. In Chekhov’s text, gold gleams underground. But it takes a skilled digger, and maybe a little luck, to shovel it up.

For those reasons, The Seagull is a brave and daunting choice. With our exceptional cast, led by intrepid director Robert Falls, it seemed from the beginning that we had a fighting chance at putting up a good Seagull. But not without a lot of work.

Over an extended rehearsal process, we dug deep. We explored character, we analyzed text, we used research to understand the society that the characters inhabit. We had a dance consultant, Béa Rashid, teach us Russian folk dances. Seasoned actors explored the play in ways they had never explored any play before. Some days, the exploration seemed to be going nowhere. Other days, we surged ahead, pulling shimmering nuggets from the ground one after another.

On stage, you will see the results of those weeks of hard work. We lay our gold before you.

The First Rehearsal

By Megan Delaney, Fan and Belinda Cratchit in A Christmas Carol

Today was my first day at A Christmas Carol practice. I got to see and meet all the cast members. I was amazed at how all of them were so funny and nice. Three of the Cratchit kids have red hair, just like the actress who plays our mom Mrs. Cratchit.

The first practice is when you read through your lines. Everyone sat around a table and did their part. It was amazing to see how all of the actors could read their lines sitting down but actually sound like they were on stage. They were perfect! Can you believe that the reading of the play only took 31 minutes, but the play is actually two hours long? That means we will use up another 90 minutes with action. The other thing we learned about today was the set. Alden the stage manager walked us through the set design using a miniature mock-up. It is a little dark box that is only 18 inches long and wide but it looks just like the real set. I felt like I was playing with a doll house. The detail was perfect. They had all the back drops and props. It was amazing.

We also heard from the director Mr. Brown about the meaning of A Christmas Carol. He told us the writer, Mr. Dickens, was so brilliant because even though he wrote the story in 1860, it still is true today. Do you know that England was at war with Afghanistan back in 1860? And there were coal miners then, too. I learned A Christmas Carol is about the fact that there is bad in the world but there is also good. There is hope. Bad people can turn good.

Today was my favorite day ever. I can't wait until my next rehearsal because we get to dance!

The Year Before I Was Selected

Posted by Megan Delaney, Fan and Belinda Cratchit in A Christmas Carol

It's early November, and rehearsals for the Goodman's annual production of A Christmas Carol are in full swing! Young performer Megan Delaney (left, with young performer supervisor Meg Grgurich) tells us about her journey onto the Albert stage.

Just one year ago I decided to audition for A Christmas Carol. After the audition I wrote a speech for school about my experience. The speech went like this:

“It was my first audition and a big one at that. I have always wanted to be in A Christmas Carol at the Goodman and so I begged and begged for my mom to let me audition. She finally said YES!

I was so excited and prepared very hard for my monologue and solo. I did a monologue from the book Chrysanthemum and sang the Christmas carol “Jolly Old St. Nicholas.” I thought the audition went well because one of the men said “Bravo! Bravo!” I found out later that the man who said this was the big director.

I was excited to hear they called me back for the part of Fan where I had to learn the Queen’s English in two days. It was so fun. There were three people at my callback including the director, assistant director and casting director. I had to act with a boy trying out for Young Ebenezer Scrooge. Afterward, the director asked me to change one part so I did. I felt really good about the audition because the people were all so nice and positive. The assistant director even hugged me before I left and the director told me “good job.”

In the end I didn’t get the part but I still was so excited and loved being a part of the audition. I told myself that next year my goal was to play Fan. Dreams come true with hard work. That is why I am here so I can grow as an actor. Thank you.”

Wow, dreams do come true because this year I did go back to audition again and I got the part! I am so excited to play Fan and Belinda in this year’s A Christmas Carol. I learned from this experience that this business requires a lot of auditions to get your dream part. Don’t give up. Believe and keep trying!

Sherpas, Space and the Social Scene

By Clayton Smith, Audience Development Coordinator

Sherpas, rejoice—3G cell phone coverage is now available on Mt. Everest! That’s right. Next time you scale the world’s tallest peak, make sure to bring your iPhone, because even though the air may be too thin to breathe, you’ll still be able to tweet. Mt. Everest FTW!

Can you believe it? Cell service at the top of Mt. Everest. And even that’s not so impressive when you consider the fact that last month someone checked into Foursquare from outer space. With all this in mind, I think it’s safe to say that social technology is officially everywhere.

Everywhere, that is, except The Melting Pot on Dearborn. Cozily ensconced in a trendy, subterranean setting, not even Sprint’s widely-touted 4G network can penetrate this wonderful fondue hot spot. I learned this the hard way at last week’s Scene subscriber preshow reception, when I tried to check into Foursquare from The Melting Pot’s chocolate fountain.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Goodman’s Scene subscription, it’s a subscription series package designed for young professionals that includes three Owen Theatre performances preceded by three swanky pre-performance receptions at local restaurants. The reception at The Melting Pot was the first of the season, where the cheese flowed like wine and the wine flowed like…well, like even more wine (much to the delight of the theater-loving subscribers).

A few weeks ago, I overheard (and by “overheard” I mean “awkwardly eavesdropped on”) an interesting conversation about the current state of the performing arts. The general gist of the discussion was that unless live theater as a whole comes around to working social technologies into its very fabric, the art form is doomed, destined to a dismal decline on some darkened shelf labeled “passé.” As the new audience development coordinator at the Goodman, one of my responsibilities is to work with our social media outlets to develop a strong social community network around our organization.

If popular studies are to be believed then an amazingly high percentage of our friends at The Melting Pot were in the right age bracket so as to be incredibly tech-savvy individuals. After The Melting Pot dinner and drinks soiree, they continued the evening at our production of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, a three-hour nineteenth-century Russian classic that—in this production—barely utilizes props, much less any sort of social media technology. The evening began in an underground space and transferred into an intimate 350-seat theater, and over the course of the evening, not a single one of the 100 cell phones, 97 Facebook accounts, 72 Twitter feeds, and 38 Foursquare accounts were accessible. More importantly, not a single person seemed to care.

Social technology is terribly exciting to me (I get downright giddy at the knowledge that I could check in at the North Pole). But even so, last week’s Scene reception was a great reminder that no matter how far we go with social media, nothing will replace the vivacity of socializing in person, making new connections over cheese fondue or experiencing a full-blooded live-action drama up close and personal.

Besides, you can always tweet about it later.

The Seagull Takes Flight

After 10 preview performances, The Seagull officially opened last night. So far, audience reaction to Robert Falls’ powerful new production of the artistically-demanding classic has been overwhelmingly positive. How can it not be? Chekhov’s unforgivingly honest characters are brought to life by a stellar cast of some of Chicago’s best actors, whose complete embodiment of the varying shades of humanity pervade the intimate Owen Theatre, in a chaotic and engrossing theatrical experience—one that has already raised eyebrows at the Chicago Sun-Times, Time Out Chicago and the Chicago Tribune.

Have you seen The Seagull? Did you have a favorite scene? Tell us about your experience.