Little Shop of Horrors
An excerpt from the Director’s Note:
It’s a tricky dilemma–how do you stage a piece of theatre that has been produced countles.§.times before? I’m not attempting to say that Little Shop of Horror~”is Shakespeare or: the Greeks, but it has been done a lot. A LOT This famWarity oft~n leads to a pressure to take the piece and rework it. Wheit I first decided to direct Little Shop (or LSOH), people kept asking me what I was going to do with it. I would say, “I’m doing LSOH” and they would repeat, “Yes, but what are you going to do with it?” Over the years, there has seemed to be an underlying competition between productions of this show· how lifelike and spectacular can the plant be? How thick and cartoonlsh can Audrey’s accent become? How much like the movie musical can this piece of theatre be? What we wanted to accomplish with this production was the exact opposite–from the start, our team has set out to return to the heart of the story. The performers have been extremely supportive of this idea and plunged into intense work with the script and score, finding the emotion of each individual moment and working to develop something at least partially “real” within an environment that seems in many ways absurd.
I have been incredibly lucky to work with both a cast and creative team in which each member is unbelievably creative, responsible, and passionate about his or her individual position. With their support, my focus has been able to rest solely on storytelling, finding the core aspects of LSOH. I truly believe that not every restaging of a theatrical work has to approach it frorn a new angle (although sometimes it does fantastically). It is the main job of any production to tell the story in the best way possible and this is what we have worked towards. Now I ask of you, the audience, the same thing that I have continually asked of the production team and cast: put aside your ideas of what this piece should be and allow yourselves simply to watch, engage, and enjoy For those of you who already know LSOH, I hope you fall in love all over again as I have. For fIrst-timers, you’re in for a treat. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this production. It has been a oncein-a-lifetime collaboration for me and I have been affected and inspired by all of your brilliance. Enjoy the show and thank you for your support.
–Emily Kaplan
Little Shop of Horrors played in the Spring 2009 season in Lerner Black Box.
Playbill
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Cast and Crew
Cast
Sarah Dooley (BC ’11) as Audrey
Justin Grace (CC ’10) as Mr. Mushnik
Tobin Mitnick (CC ’10) as Orin Scrivello
Eva Peskin (BC ’09) as Chiffon
Sophie Ragir (BC ’11) as Ronnette
Michael Seaman (SEAS ’10) as Audrey II (Manipulation)
Austin Smith (CC ’10) as Wino #1 and Audrey II (Voice)
Connor Spahn (CC ’10) as Costumer, Mr. Bernstein, Mrs. Luce, Skip Snip and Patrick Martin
Jenny Vallancourt (BC ’11) as Crystal
Benjamin Velez (CC ’10) as Seymour KrelbornCreative Team and Crew
Director: Emily Kaplan (BC ’11)
Assistant Director: Rebecca Victor (CC ’12)
Producer: Erin Byrne (BC ’09)f
Assistant Producer: Hillary Kritt (BC ’12)
Art Direction and Set Design: Caroline Englander (BC ’10) and Heather Englander (BC ’10)
Musical Directors: Melanie Michel (BC ’09) and Caroline Ott (BC ’09)
Choreographers: Gilli Messer (BC ’10) and Alex Shaw
Technical Director: Jimmy Fry (CC ’09)
Stage Manager: Leslie Skalak (BC ’09)
Assistant Stage Manager: Caroline Gleason (BC ’12) and Sarah Probber (BC ’12)
Light Designer: Bill Sheehan
Light Board: Edwin Mercedes
Sound Design: Joel Kennedy
Costume Design: Madeline Compagnon (CC ’10) and Ope Omojola (CC ’12)
Make-Up Design: Sydney Kump (BC ‘10)
Props Design: Emily Cheesman (BC ’10)Band
Joseph Michael Barakat (SEAS ’12) on Guitar
Matt Star (CC ’12) on Bass
Media
Production Photos
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Press
The Spectator wrote a preview of Little Shop that can be found here.