Annie's Opening Weekend

Gardner Community Theatre’s 2010 Production of Annie opened over this past weekend. I went on Saturday night at it was the first time I’d seen the production in its entirety. As you can tell from the bottom picture, Dawson didn’t actually enjoy being at the dress rehearsals. He did have fun running up and down the aisles and clapping when other people clapped, but he didn’t like being sat down, hindering my ability to take pictures. And since my memory card became full during the 2nd Act on Saturday evening, I haven’t photographed the entire show nor video’d all of Erin’s songs yet. But I’ll get that done this next weekend.

The good news is that with another three performances still ahead this next weekend, we’ve already matched last year’s ticket sales! Saturday night I also got to talk with Danny Clinckscale of Sports Radio 810 who was there to watch his daughter. Danny thinks the Union Broadcasting Foundation might be interested in sponsoring GCT in the future, which could be great for us. There's no guarantee that would happen but it would be cool to have my favorite radio station sponsoring our local theatre.

I don’t think I’m just speaking out of my personal bias when I say my wife really shinned onstage. When Erin was in college, her voice teacher was trying to convince her to make a career out of singing. That obviously didn’t happen but her training from over a decade ago was evidenced in her voice soaring during the numbers with the rest of the chorus. After Sunday’s show a director from another community theatre preparing to do Annie told Erin she should try out for their show.

While these past two months have been one of the busiest times of our married life and I never could’ve been in the show, I did really miss it while hanging out with the guys in the dressing room and during the curtain call. Oh well, the show will go on next year (though I probably can’t do it next summer, either) and for years after that. This is GCT’s 5th season and to quote our president, “We’re just getting started.”
If you’d like to come this weekend, check the above GCT link for show times and directions to GEHS. Or just show up at GEHS with $8 per ticket at 7:00 on Friday or Saturday or 2:00 on Sunday afternoon.

Oh, and two more interesting stories...
While buying my wife flowers in the GCT "marketplace" before Saturday's show, I met the mom of the girl who plays Annie. She was so excited to find out I was Erin's husband, "We just LOVE Erin, she and Emily's chemistry on stage is so wonderful - she feeds off Erin's sweetness...." She just kept going on about how much she loves Erin. I said, "Yep, that's pretty much Erin's normal sweet disposition - unless she's mad at me."

Before Wednesday's dress rehearsal, Erin came out and saw Dawson. She was wearing the cape you can see in some pictures and had her hair pulled back with pins and clips, large clips sticking out from her hair. She was holding Dawson and talking with him, but he didn't go for it. "Who is this lady who sounds like mommy but doesn't look at all like mommy." He started screaming and went for our friend, Annie whom he at least recognized, since she's babysit him. It was kind of sad but mostly funny.