Cinderella, Inc. Brush-Up

Now with our first performance down, the Cinderella cast seems to have made an incredible amount of progress. The more reticent members of the cast have experienced the rush of performing in front of a live audience and are now finally warming up to their characters. Today's rehearsal was much more light-hearted than usual as the actors explored and stretched their characters to find the humor in them. The prop collection process that I have experienced throughout the entire rehearsal portion of this project has been relatively easy going. As long as you are organized, props can be easily dealt with in a timely fashion. I felt that doubling as property manager and stage manager really employed my troubleshooting skills. A lot of the time, theatre amounts to making due with what you have. Something that we can never forget is that theatre is live and that every performance is never the same. Things will go wrong beyond your control and all you can do is simply roll with the punches. As a property manager, one such problem I ran into was a chimney that Cinderella would have to emerge from in the beginning of the performance. I pondered the idea of constructing a chimney from cardboard while racking my brain for other options that would be more feasible. Eventually, I remembered a sandwich board with a brick facade that was used in one of our school productions. Considering the playful and magical tone of the performance, I realized that the sandwich board chimney would only add to the fantasy of the play. Rolling with the punches. It should be the new slogan for theatre.