Go WildCats!!!

I have spent the last three months my entire summer in fact buried in Disney’s High School Musical. Now before you hand me a gun or blunt object so I can put myself out of misery. I have to say it really hasn’t been that bad. Yes it is a campy and cheesy show, yes the show itself isn’t particularly good, but it has been fun. I haven’t had to see the show every night for weeks on end I have only seen 5 or 6 times. Now don’t get me wrong that is still almost 5 times to many for one life time but I gotta give these kids their due props. They have been up there every night of these performances singing their guts out and putting their all into this cheesy show.
Here in the StG there were 2 different productions of High School Musical that I was involved in. St. George Musical Theatre was first and I built that show and they wanted “automation” (moving platforms) There were 5 platform units that would track in with a hand crank pulley system for the different locations in East High.
The next version was with the Tuacahn Center of the Arts education program. This was a much simpler set there were no moving pieces and a much smaller space to work in as well. Each group has done a great show I cant think of what might have made either show better and I’m not going to say which one I liked more. I feel that both productions were very well done and enjoyable to watch at least once. Having said that…..it’s still High School Musical and no adult should have to endure it more than once in a lifetime.
Surprisingly Disney’s High School Musical is one of the biggest grossing shows in production right now. Every high school and local theatre group across the country is lining up to get the rights to put this show on. There is such a demand for this ho right now that Disney is working on turning a stage version of HSM2. In fact Disney has approached Tuacahn recently to see if they would like the honor of hosting the world premier of High School Musical 2 on stage next summer.
I haven’t heard yet if this is happening or not. Stay tuned, as I will try to update more regularly and keep you all informed of the happenings of the Innes Gang in St George.

Settling in …….. again!!

Well it seems that we have been settling in here in the StG for quite a while now. Well the reality of it is that we now at it again or still depending on how you want to look at it. When we first moved down here we were under the gun in finding a place to live and ended up in a way too small place. This little place was decent but we just didn’t fit in it. We were cramped in every room. There was absolutely no room to any of us to do anything without being on top of someone else. But for whatever the reason we needed to be in this place, and we made it work for the school year.
This school year brought a number of changes to the Innes gang. The biggest and most important was the newest addition to the gang. Bauer joined us Apr. 15 weighing in a solid 10lbs. and now that he is 3 months old he is close to the 20lb and still getting bigger and cuter everyday.
Cooper is an animal he is all boy he turns everything he picks up into either a ching-ching (sword) or a pew-pew (gun). He can’t wait for his little brother to get old enough to play, and all day long he hears the word NO! Most of the time he doesn’t try to be mean, but he often does enjoy teasing his sister and everyone else.
Morgan loved preschool and is really excited to go to kindergarten this fall. Well honestly it depends on the day you ask her some days she is really excited and other days she says she that she is not ever going to school. She turns 5 in a few weeks and I am wondering where the last fie years have gone. It seems to have gone by all so fast.
Corben is going into the 10th grade and he too starts at a new school. He will be attending the brand new Desert Hills High School. He understandably has mixed feeling about yet another new school, but fortunately it won’t be all completely different he has some friends that will be attending the new school with him. We hope that this is a good experience for him.
We recently moved out of the shoebox and into a house. We have a yard and a pool now. The kids especially Morgan are way excited about having our own swimming pool but more importantly we are all excited about more room. We have quite a lot more space than we had in our first St. George address. Hopefully we will be here at least until Corben graduates high school because none of are very thrilled about the thoughts of moving again in a year or anytime in the near future. So really we are still settling in again. We have more room to spread out and not be on top of each other all the time like we were but so far we are still in a pile of boxes. It just doesn’t look like as many as it did before.

Professor

I made it through my rookie year as a professor, and I enjoyed it. It was everything that it was supposed to be. There was of course a learning curve but you should expect that in anything. My course load was pretty good I taught 3 classes during the fall and 2 during the spring, as well as supervising the shop, and work calls, designing lights for 3 out of 4 productions and sets for one. Here’s a semester by semester break down of my rookie year. Fall The week before classes started I spent in meeting after meeting, college meetings, department meeting, division meetings, and production meetings and on and on. I was so disoriented after all these meetings I was sure my head was going to explode, and honestly I don’t recall what any of them were about, I just remember that they were long. Which is great because in a few short weeks I get to do it all over again for the new school year. Go team!! I taught and will again this fall semester Stagecraft, Set Design, and Sound Design. The stagecraft class I have been teaching as a grad student for a few years now and I enjoy teaching that class. While I have done set and sound design it was a whole different ballgame to teach those classes. I didn’t have a clue where to start so I tried to tailor the class to model some of the classes I took. I took some of Dennis, and some of Shawn and some ideas from Amy Critchfield and made a set design class. It seemed to work out well enough to use the same model again with just a few adjustments for this year. The sound class I shamelessly just stole from Bruce’s sound class. We spent a great deal of time of the engineering of sound, and touched on elements of design. The highlight of the class was of course the tempest mix at the end of the semester; we had some really creative projects come out of that, including the interior sounds of a porno if you know what I mean. It was really funny and very well done. We did I Hate Hamlet and Sweeney Todd this semester and both shows were great I design lights for both, I Hate Hamlet was first and it was a simple 1 location set that changed from night to day a few times. Sweeney was awesome, the concept was inspired by the old black and white horror movies, and every element was in tones of black and white, the set, the costumes and even the make up. My lights are what made the set and characters come alive. It was an amazing experience and even more amazing show. We were all disappointed to hear that we were not taking it to KCACTF but my student makeup designer rode it all the way to DC and after inning the national honors ended up in NYC for a week as a guest at Ming Cho Lee’s Clambake. So here we are little Dixie State College in the middle of nowhere making waves at the national level all in my rookie year. I don’t know how I am going to top that or even match that this year but we sure are going to have fun trying. Spring Semester This semester I taught light design and stage management. I was sure that the stage management class was going to get me fired. That class got so out of control at times it really was funny but it was almost dispruptive everything around us during most classes. The lighting class was much more subdued and easier to handle. From each of these classes I now have a pool of students I can throw in to Stage Manage a show or assign as a light designer. This is the goal to create working opportunities for students so that can get enough practical experience to be able to get a job in the field. Our first show of the semester was “As you Like it” in the black box. We set it in the forest and made a canopy of leaves over the black box so as you entered in the theatre you felt like you were going into a forest, complete with trees and the fall leaves overhead. Not long after the first show closed we loaded up the vans and took 18 actors and 2 tech/designer to LA for the regional KCACTF where none of the actors made it past semi finals but Guy rocked the makeup design world with Sweeney. Our trip to LA was stressful but we all had a great time we even hit Disneyland and had the amazing Bryan Richards tour of insider information. Just a few days after returning from a sleepless but victorious LA trip I was on a plane headed out to the land of Aloha to help Bruce with Aida on the army base. I spent a week in Hawaii working for the most part but of course there was some play. You just can’t go to Hawaii and not play some come on now lets keep it in proper perspective here. Our final show of the semester was “A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum” this was my set design. That was a challenge mostly because my brain wasn’t into as much as it should have been. But we pulled it together and made a good show out of it. Morgan actually came to 2 of the dress rehearsals with me and loved the show; she sang “pretty little picture” for weeks after that. It was during the run of this show that Bauer showed to join the gang. We were all so sure that he was going to be a little girl. We purposely didn’t find out that he was to be a he. Morgan wanted a little sister so bad she almost cried when she found out but like everyone else her disappointment didn’t last long and she quickly became attached to her new baby brother. And there it is the nutshell recap of my rookie year as a professor