Stephan Roselin makes his Playhouse debut as Mitch in TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE

Continuing with our week of lead up excitement to the opening of TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE, The Playhouse is excited to welcome Stephan Roselin into The Sunset Playhouse family. Stephan makes his debut at The Playhouse with this production, and we certainly hope it is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Roselin Stars in TUESDAYS

When Stephan Roselin says he has been an actor “forever,” he isn’t kidding. He was three years old when he first appeared on the air. His parents produced public service announcements and often recruited him for roles.

“I was the baby in the bike safety message,” Roselin said. “I got the acting bug from doing those announcements and kept at it through the years.”

Roselin plays “Mitch” in the Sunset Playhouse production, TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE, March 11 to April 3. Mitch is the former student of Morrie Schwartz, whose wit and wisdom has endeared him to legions of theatergoers.

An internship with the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre brought Roselin to the city in 1991. The New York City area native had completed a master’s degree in Fine Arts at Case Western Reserve University and was looking for an opportunity. He found that Milwaukee had wonderful theatre companies and many other advantages.

After his internship ended, a stint as “Andy,” the host of the Fox Kids Club on WCGV TV, led to promotion and marketing work for local television. As the result of a role with the Shorewood Players in A FEW GOOD MEN, he became a co-founder of the theatre company, Bialystock & Bloom. The group was part of the Milwaukee scene for 11 years, providing a niche for new talent and producing theatre with provocative themes.

“It was a chance to do everything—direct, act, produce—I really became immersed in theatre. It was really fun.”

Acting is a true love, says Roselin. He has played a variety of parts with Next Act Theatre, Renaissance Theatre, First Stage Children’s Theater, and other Milwaukee groups. He also does commercials and voiceovers.

“You find a balance,” said Roselin, who is the Promotions Specialist at Time Warner Cable Media where he develops events and campaigns that support advertising efforts. “I have been able to stay in touch with my artistic side over the years.”

--Kay Tierney

tuesdays with morrie: entering tech week

Yesterday was our first official tech day for MORRIE at Sunset Playhouse, and we managed to cue-to-cue the entire show and run sections of it in a nine-hour period--not bad for a first technical rehearsal!

The set looks incredible--it amazes me how much happens overnight when no one else is around to see it. Michael Desper, our resident set designer, really outdid himself on this set, if you ask me. Everything has this ethereal, dreamy quality to it, and the light design really emphasizes that.

This was the first tech experience I've had where I could spend the entire rehearsal sitting in the lightbooth, watching the process, and it is thanks to Nina, one of our stagehands, that that could happen. She sat backstage on headset and directed actors via myself and Matt Daniels, the show's director, and did so with much goodwill.

This was definitely one of the most fun tech rehearsals I've ever been part of. Not only did we accomplish things, we also made jokes and talked about things outside of the theatrical world, to give us a small break when one of us would become slightly stir-crazy.

The best part of the evening? By far trying to figure out how to differentiate from "Morrie" and "Mitch" in the visual/audio cues for lights to be called in the SM script. In blocking notes, I'd been writing "Mo" and "Mt" (as though they were scientific elements--which, I suppose, actors are, in a way, in the world of a play) but there wasn't enough room in the opposite margin for that as well as the cue number as well as the moment to anticipate the cue. But problems were solved, glow tape was laid down, revolve problems (yes, the stage revolves!) were solved, and today we go into our first tech/dress with fingers crossed.

I think things will go swimmingly--we've already been doing full runs of the show for nearly two weeks. Stephan and Don are just racing along with this show, and so far it's been a fun ride.

-Erin B
Stage Manager
Sunset Playhouse

Don Devona--he was born to play Morrie!

Starting today, we're featuring some profiles of folks working on our production of TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE that runs from March 10-April 3 as part of our Furlan Mainstage Series. We thought you'd enjoy learning a little more about some of the folks creating the work on this really wonderful stage adaptation of Mitch Albom's best-selling book of the same name.

We begin today with a profile on the wonderful actor and charming Sunset Playhouse volunteer Don Devona who plays Morrie in our production. Thanks to Kay Tierney, a superb new addition to our volunteer corps for this insightful profile. Enjoy! (And get your tickets now for TUESDAY WITH MORRIE by clicking this link.)

Don Devona Plays “Morrie”

Actor Don Devona brings some valuable experience to the role of “Morrie” at Sunset Playhouse. He already has played the feisty, ailing college professor in TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE, at Milwaukee’s Soulstice Theatre in 2009.

“I am delighted to have the opportunity to do the play again,” Devona said. “Morrie’s attitude is so positive. He is trying to make people think more about getting along…he is interested in helping people become better.”

Sunset is staging the acclaimed play March 11 to April 3. Based on the best selling autobiographical novel by Mitch Albom, the story centers on the wit and wisdom of Morrie Schwartz. Albom describes a series of weekly visits to his former teacher that became a last class in the meaning of life.

Critics have called the play moving, powerful, and packed with humor and insight. The NY Daily News described it as “a touching, life-affirming deeply emotional drama.”

Devona says the play has an uplifting spirit despite Morrie’s impending death from Lou Gehrig’s Disease. The script is filled with gems such as one of the actor’s favorites: “Love is the only rational act. Without love we are like birds with broken wings.”

Devona has been involved in theatre since he was a teenager. A teacher overseas for many years, he participated in drama groups wherever he was working. He played in “The Foreigner” in Italy, “Our Town” in Germany and in a number of other productions.

When he moved to Milwaukee in 1998, Devona took an acting workshop that led to an offer of two small parts in ROOM SERVICE at Next Act Theatre. He has been in 22 local plays since that time, playing Truman in GIVE 'EM HELL, HARRY, Kris Kringle in MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET, Norman in ON GOLDEN POND, and other roles.

He also has had major singing roles in a number of musicals including JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, THE KING AND I and MY FAIR LADY.

--Kay Tierney

SURVIVOR: TECH WEEKEND

I am happy to report that the cast and crew of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE have survived tech weekend. We are moving forward into tech week with Monday and Tuesday the last remaining days before we have an audience. Come Wednesday, our final dress rehearsal, we have people in the seats ready to see the story come to life.

With Thanksgiving Day off, we lose one day of tech rehearsal. (Tech rehearsal? What’s that?) The week before an opening of the show is when all those pieces finally come together. The set is built (or nearly finished), we run the show with all of our costume/wig changes, use real props, real furniture, the lights change, there are sounds effects, music is playing, the whole shebang. One week. And then we’re off and running! We’ve got to be absolutely solid on lines, entrance cues, because a lot of new sights, sounds and costumes will be thrown at us, and the show must go on!

Tech weekend is for tech – not necessarily for actors. The actors have to be at beck and call for running cue lines and scene changes. The orchestration of these scene changes can be complex. Actor A and K are moving upstage panel to gray while Actors F, G, and H are rotating the platform and Actors J, B and L move the furniture. I am most proud of our young actors who have been patient, quiet and focused. It is difficult enough for us adults to stay on task.

It is this weekend that most beautifully showcases the collaborative nature of the art of theatre. There are a myriad of individual who collaborate to put on a show. Everyone is given a specific task and responsibility to help tell the story:

• Actors have lines and physical movement to portray the character of the story
• Costumers dress the actors appropriately staying true to the time period of the show
• Scene designers gives the story a physical space
• Technical crew builds, paints and decorates the set
• Lighting designers makes sure to light the set with appropriate colors and intensities
• Sound designers give us music and make sure our telephone rings
• Props masters (or mistresses) give actors the necessary objects to use onstage
• Stage managers makes sure everything happens at the correct time
• And the director makes sure we’re all telling the same story :-)

Obviously there is much more work that goes into each of these roles that simply could not fit in this limited space. Hundreds of VOLUNTEER hours (you read that right, volunteer cast, crew, costumes, props...) have been logged for IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE.

Maybe it's your favorite movie, maybe it's not, but I hope that each you reading this entry makes time to come and enjoy the story that we have been working diligently on for the past four weeks. Yyou have 19 opportunities to see the show – no excuses :-)

It really is a beautiful story of struggles, hope, and friendship. Personally, this story reminds me that no mater what choices you make in life, no matter what circumstances you find yourself in, your friends and family are worth so much more. Even if you don't feel like you've made a difference, you definitely have impacted the lives around you in ways you might not even know. A simple hug can mean more than thousands of words; simply saying "hi" to a stranger can make the world of difference; a "Thank you" can brighten someone's day. And sometimes it is in adversity that we can truly see what a Wonderful Life it is.

I hope to see you soon. Have a great Thanksgiving!

-Sarah T (Violet Peterson)

Wonderful Life, Part Two

“Hasn’t Sunset done It’s a Wonderful Life before?”

Ah, how quickly they forget! I’ve been getting this question, or some version of it for weeks now, and the answer is YES. Sunset Playhouse previously produced Wonderful Life in 2008, under the direction of Howard Bashinski, and it was a fine production. Like every show I’ve ever worked on, though, there were certain aspects of the show that I loved, certain aspects of the show that I felt were just OK, and certain aspects that I’d rather forget.

What’s really interesting for me is that after 70+ productions at Sunset Playhouse over the last 9 years, this is the first time that I’ve had to re-design a show. We’ve come close a few times. Escanaba in Love was the prequel to Escanaba in da Moonlight, and was set in the same hunting cabin only 40 years earlier. Both of those were directed by Sunset Artistic Director Mark Salentine, and we were both happy with keeping the same design but simply making it newer-looking with older furnishings.

A few years ago, we produced Oscar and Felix, which is Neil Simon’s modern re-telling of The Odd Couple. Sunset’s 2001 production of The Odd Couple, directed by former Artistic Director Michael Duncan, was my first design for Sunset, and I chose to re-create the design with only minor modern updates for Oscar and Felix.

Our 2010 production of It’s a Wonderful Life is a completely new production, directed by Mark Salentine, with a different concept and therefore different designs throughout. The holidays are all about tradition, and one could say that tradition is basically doing the same thing with just a few differences year after year after year. We hope you’ll come see what we hope will become a new tradition for us!

As a bonus for those of you that remember the last production of It’s a Wonderful Life, here are two behind the scenes photos of our new production for your enjoyment.

J. Michael Desper

Resident Scene Designer/ Technical Director

Lessons from a Frog and Two Witches

As the Administrative Assistant at Sunset, I do a little bit of this and that for almost all of our productions, so I feel some ownership for all of our shows. That said, I do play favorites: as a mom, I find that I most enjoy my experiences through the School for the Arts. Over the summer, my daughter attended our summer camp for two weeks, and she loved every second of it. Our whole family got a kick out of seeing her on stage for the first time, barking like a dog, in the camp’s final production, and she can’t wait to go back next year. As a parent, I was impressed by how much fun all of the kids had, while still learning a little about the theatre experience; as a staff member, I enjoyed hearing the kids chatting throughout the day.

Besides the School, we also have a series of interactive childrens shows called bug in a rug. All of the bug in a rug shows are originals, from the genius of Erika Navin, our School of the Arts director. This weekend we premiered SWITCH WITCH, the story of an unlikely friendship between a good witch and a bad witch. The show was also about something all kids need to hear and re-hear: that being yourself is the best way to be, even if being yourself makes you different. As a parent, I appreciate being able to take my children to see a show where they will laugh and help cast silly spells and still come away with an important lesson. Especially when the lesson is taught to them by a frog and two witches.

So as a mom, and as a staff member, I just have to say: to the SWITCH WITCH cast and crew, to Erika Navin, and to all the staff and volunteers who help behind the scenes and with craft time, thank you for creating such a fun show and for reminding all of us that being different is just fine, and for reminding our children- and us parents, too- that we should value ourselves, no matter how different we may be.

Michelle Tucker

Administrative Assistant

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR ACTOR

Take a person, give them all the words they need to say, tell them when they need to say the words, then tell them where they need to move, put them on a stage and what happens? They forget how to be human. Movements are rigid, almost robotic; words come out but are not convincing; people walk into furniture, into walls, even walk backwards up stairs. Or my favorite, the phenomena that occurs in group scenes where the actors somehow end up shoulder to shoulder in a straight line across the stage rather than clumping together. (this mysterious force is often lovingly referred to as a chorus line, kick line, or dummy line).

The actor’s job is equally tough: take instructions from the director on where to move and how to say a line, and make them seem real. Sometime actors are given a place to move to and the freedom to figure out how and why their character will move. This can be a wonderful, creative endeavor – or a creative nightmare:

“Sarah you need to counter-cross down stage right when he says that.”

“Okay! Um, why would my character move over there? That doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Good question. Well, we need to move your character down by the settee, so figure out some sort of motivation and make it work.”

“Okay so I could decide to get a book and read?”

“Sure”

“Or I could decide to look at the vase of flowers”

“That’s fine”

“Or could I look out the window?”

“There won’t be a physical window there, but if you want to pretend, sure”

“Ooo what If I realize that my forbidden feelings for him are too strong and that even looking at him causes me excruciating pain?! I could stumble towards the bench, in agony because he doesn’t know I love him, then look longingly out the window reaching towards the heavens asking my dead mother to give me strength to carry on as I have a single tear run down my cheek right before I pass out. ”

“Uh…No. I think reading a book will be just fine.”

No question the director’s job is a tough one: guide and train actors to take the playwright’s words and the pre-planned movements and have them perform it all in a spontaneous, realistic manner. An effective and most trusted method director use to help actors overcome the “I’m-going-to-walk-to-this-spot-turn-45-degrees-towards-the-audience-wait-politely-for-the-other-person-to-stop-speaking-and-then-deliver-my-line” syndrome, is repetition. If you repeat it enough, muscle memory steps in to make the words and movements seem to flow naturally.

Another unrealistic, but potentially effective method, would be to put up electric fences. The director could zap the actors when they step too far upstage, come on too early, miss a line, or when groups of actors form the forbidden dummy-line. This practice would most assuredly be frowned upon.

The earlier the actor memorizes his lines, the more he/she can practice with the props and “explore his character” (fancy theatre term for trying out a variety of ways to say the same thing and picking which is best). The first few weeks of rehearsal are always the most interesting. Actors are studying their lines at home and trying to get memorized enough to actually hold props during a scene. However, with a script in hand it’s rather difficult and almost comical. Imagine trying to answer the phone, while holding your purse, bags of groceries and a child all while trying to read your lines from the script you have wedged between your elbow and the sack of potatoes.

So, for now, we’ll set the props aside (until we are "off book"), work on memorizing our lines and stick with repetition, repetition, repetition. Working, re-working, adjusting here, tweaking there, try again, go back to the top of the page, to the top of the scene, to the top, act over and over and over again so that this carefully orchestrated masterpiece will be audience ready in as little as four weeks.

Cheers!

- Sarah T (aka: Violet in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE)