Posted in Empress Theatre
I've been somewhat remiss in not blogging our current show. Tonight will complete the second week of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. There has been so much going on with the show, our move and a movie shoot outside of the Empress, plus a couple of other minor diversions that I've not had time to write anything for a few days.
While Drood has been playing inside the theatre, a local film production company, Salty Productions, has been shooting a made-for-Disney-channel movie on the outside. The movie, which has a working title of Dadnapped, is using the Empress and Magna Main Street for principal exterior locations. If I have it correctly, the Empress actually becomes the "scene of the crime." The plot revolves around a McGiver type kid trying to rescue a writer dad who has been kidnapped from a comic book convention. The Salty crew have completely redressed Magna Main Street from about 8950 W to 9180 W as the town of Mercury. I will try to get some photos of the set uploaded at some point.
Mirinda and Damia have been picked up as extras for the shoot, and spent Thursday and Friday of last week with the production crew. They missed out on a chance at 4 more days because they didn't act fast enough getting Amy's or my permission. Stacie Brown and Travis Olson and several other homeschoolers or Empress kids have also been involved in the shoot.
Having all of the Empress kids involved in the shoot, combined with the filming going on outside the theatre on Friday was near maddening. First, Salty dressed the front of the building and put a "plug" in the window/door area where we normally put our now playing poster. Not a problem, except they covered the only door that operates with a key. I went out early Monday morning to do some touch up on Drood and couldn't get it until they moved their plug. We had them install a lock on the back door.
With all of the teenagers from the Empress being extras in the movie, we ended up thinking we'd have some personnel issues for Friday's performance. Mirinda was scheduled to usher, so we planned to let Lessa cover for her while I ran the light board. Except that Stacie (who is my stage left Follow Spot Operator) also needed a substitute (which she didn't tell me about until Friday morning!). Adam, the other follow spot operator, wasn't an extra, but he was working in Park City and expected to arrive late, and Heidi had scheduled with me in advance to miss the performance. Douglas had his last client call in Layton, and didn't get away from their until after 5:00. I didn't find out that Michael Harmon was an extra in the film until I got to the theatre. It looked like it was going to be me and Kelly, plus Carrie Cripps who we'd called to come assist. Three people to cover six positions! (Not to mention that we had to get the audience in without distrubing the shooting out front, and Douglas has let Chaz and Joel borrow the head amp we've been using for the stage monitors and we I had to get it wired back into the system and readjusted.)
Here's how it played out: We ended up with a couple of extra ushers, so I pulled Lessa back to lights. We put Carrie on the mixer to cover Michael. I took sfx playback. We trained someone to operate the followspot last minute, and Douglas managed to make it in time for the show to start. He took the other follow spot.
Adam arrived shortly after the beginning of the show and took over his follow spot. Salty released the extras about 7:30, and we got Stacie back to take over the follow spot Douglas was running. Carrie stayed on the mixer (Michael never did show up... he was getting a bite to eat and kissing on Mirinda. Hmmmmmm) I stayed on sfx.
One again, I think marketing has dropped the ball. We have a professional director (John Williams) and a pro to nearly pro cast, but our audiences for the first two weekends have been sparse and mostly comp tickets. We should be packin' 'em in.
