I miss doing shows

2003-04-03 - 10:16 a.m.

Last night I went to the Drama Tech performance of Guys and Dolls. I gotta tell you, I was really, really impressed.

First of all, their set was AMAZING! It started out all done up like a New York City street, as you would expect. But it had light up signs, one that said "GIRLS", that blinked in various patterns. There was also a big, light up cross on top of the mission. Part of the background opened up to the inside of the mission, another part had these stage stairs come out and became the hot box. There were rotating pieces on the side that had city stuff (newsstand on one side, Roxy on other), then they rotated to give Adelaide's dressing room and something else, then the third side of each one was Havanna, and when you took pieces off of Havanna, you had the sewer. It was something else.

It must be nice to have your own space that's just yours.

Of course, since DS also did the show, I had to compare. Their set beat ours, hands down. But like I said, they have their own space, not 2 weeks in Bissinger. Their Adelaide was awesome, outside of being a really sexy, curvy blonde, she could sing. Sarah Brown was also incredible, though nowhere near as pretty as Christina. Sky and Nathan were also incredible, and seemed to have real Chemistry with their ladies, though Dutch was way hotter than this guy :-P. Their hot box girls were about the same as ours, maybe not as pretty but probably as good. Our gamblers were much better dancers, but then, all of theirs were men.

I should probably comment on their costumes, since that was my baby in the show. The men's suits were very subdued compared to ours. We were much more colorful. But theirs worked, too. Their hotbox dancer costumes, I suspect, were all rented. All very cute. Their "Bushel and a Peck" were more milk-maid-y than farmer slutty. Their "Take Back Your Mink" costumes were done as 2 piece dresses, with lace up bodices and slit skirts that velro'd off. On the bottom they work old fashioned bloomer style panties. It was cute and sexy, but not as sexy as our girls :-P. Adelaide was not a skinny girl, and it was great. That's not to say she had a weight problem. She had those Marilyn Monroe proportions that women back in the day would have killed for. She had the whole small waste, full hips, thighs and breasts. All in all, I was impressed.

Drama Tech has a really nice set up. They have a nice blackbox theater that's theirs. It's just a big, black room with lots of bars hanging from the ceiling. The bleacher seats are movable, so they can orient the set however they want. The build the set on some risers. And it's ALL THEIRS! Nobody else uses it. They hang out there during the day. There are comfy rooms with comfy couches and they listen to music, play cards, work on homework, etc. It's their home.

The only problem is that the theater doesn't hold an incredible amount of seats (about half of what Bissinger held for Guys and Dolls). But they run their show for 2 weekends in there and then move everything over to the nice theater on campus and perform it there (where they have I think 2000 seats).

Either way, it's a nice set up. Any Atlanta folks, I suggest you go see it. It's playing on campus at the DT theater tonight through Saturday night and next weekend at the Ferst Center. You can get more information at www.dramatech.org.