Cast changes are plentiful in every show. Lives intersect with scheduling, better offers come up, etc. It’s to be expected. Nonetheless, the struggle is over and we finally have our Smith!  Ian is a member of the Actors' Equity Association. We are excited to have him as part of our journey.  And not a moment too soon!

 

Blocking a show that has an audience on three sides presents a unique problem for those performing – the actors are going to be in the way of sight-lines sometimes, and will have their backs to the audience on occasion. So, what to do?  Nellie discovered through working our scenes that the partial solution is to simply keep actors moving around and utilizing the available space. Then, the challenge becomes having motivation for their stage movements. Justification, if you will. Like Highway 37 on weekday afternoons, the area becomes chaotic unless traffic is allowed to move freely.

 

As we rehearse, we’re making a point of doing a host of diction exercises. Tongue twisters, such as, “Are you copper-bottoming those pots? No Mum, I’m aluminum-ing ‘em, Mum!” and “The lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue.”, all spoken carefully with clean No. 2 pencils held between the upper and lower front teeth. The pencils are then removed and the phrases repeated. These exercises are done to help combat Andrews Hall's frenzied acoustics and prepare the actors for what is to come.

 

We look forward to seeing you as we set off on a voyage filled with intrigue, suspicion, passion, and murder!

Thank you to everyone who came to see 'The Two of Us'. Photos from the show and cast party will be posted soon. Another big thank you to Irma Kay for the kind review on KSVY, and to all of you who made another show possible!

Now, the big news: We've joined forces with Sonoma StageWorks as part of a summer/fall theater series in Andrews Hall at the Sonoma Community Center. The aged room was once an elementary school auditorium. Now mainly used for plays, church services, and banquets, the hall is abuzz with the sound of change as it gets a little revamping...new risers! New chairs! Fresh paint!  The excitement is building, and we are thrilled to do our first show in a new setting. Sonoma StageWorks is comprised of several theater companies, and each will present a show during the series. Ours,  Agatha Christie's Murder On The Nile, is the final show in the series. The show opens September 9th and runs three weeks, closing on the 26th.

Rehearsals are now underway. We are preparing to set sail down the river Nile, in search of answers...all aboard!

In the Backstage Theater, the audience is so close to the performing area that, if a tall customer thrusts his legs out, a cast member might trip on them. This claustrophobic atmosphere could be a problem. Luckily, the play Gaslight is quite claustrophobic itself, with its portrayal of a woman trapped in a dark, shabby Victorian household. Even her fear of her own impending madness helps create an intimidating atmosphere.

During the intermission, at our first performance, a woman audience member said to a Concessions volunteer: "This is bringing Sonoma theatre to a whole new level!"

Exactly our goal, our vision! We could hear no sweeter words.

Or at least, that's what we thought, until Sylvia Crawford's smashing review appeared in the Sonoma Index-Tribune.

From then on, every perforamnce was sold out, with many people on waiting lists.

We could have extended for an extra weekend, if the Backstage Theater had been available.

Thank you, Sylvia! Thank you, Sonoma Index-Tribune! Thank you actors, director, stage manager, costumer, lighting designer, stage crew, set designers and builders and painters and graphic designers and photographers and our videographer, our gourmet cookie maker, our box-office manager, and all the volunteers who helped in countless ways! Thank you, City of Sonoma!!!

You are the best in the world!

 

 

Notes from the Director

 

Welcome to Silver Moon Theatre’s inaugural production of Gaslight by Patrick Hamilton.

 

From the arrival of the most wonderfully fitting actors to fill each role; to the gracious people who showed up to stage manage, build and paint the set, videotape, manage the box office, bake cookies, design the print materials, photograph, design costumes, run lights, assist with make up and hair; to the enthusiastic sensibilities of the producer, prop designer and velly fine dialect coach; to the flexibility of the Sonoma Community Center staff – timely and uncanny solutions to every challenge have transpired in the production of this play that are proof positive of the magic of stagecraft.

 

Gaslight, written in 1938 as Angel Street, is one of the longest running non-musicals in Broadway history (1,300 performances from 1941-44) and lunched Vincent Price’s career. Patrick Hamilton penned Angel Street after being crippled by a drunk driver and experiencing other personal tragedies. His play created a new genre – the psychological thriller – providing the blueprint for dozens of noir-ish thrillers including Wait Until Dark and Sleuth; along with a compelling archetype in the character of Jack Manningham.

 

Hamilton not only created an impeccable plot in the classical arena of the drawing room who-dunnit, he explored themes including deceit, greed, courage, truth, justice, dignity, freedom, and the resilience of the human spirit. Hamilton’s script doesn’t preach, however, and the holes he exposes in the social fabric of Victorian life are merely there to assist the plot as it twists and turns, giving the audience (we hope!) an entertaining evening of thrills and chills.

 

And now the lights go up on the Manningham household on Angel Street, an indistinct district of London in 1891, where things are not quite the way they seem…

 

Thank you, God bless, and Enjoy!

 

Nancy Noleen

While all this purchasing was going on, Nancy Noleen was devoting her energies to directing. With her clear vision of the play, she guided the actors through the three acts with a sure hand.

 

Gaslight is a play of suspense. Bella Manningham fears she is going insane, and that her husband Jack is trying to protect her and take care of her. The audience must be led to believe this, too.

 

So the actor playing Jack has to play the solicitous husband, affectionate although concerned for his wife.

 

When Sergeant Rough appears, toward the end of Act I, the audience should doubt his motives. The audience should wonder whether he is lying, whether he is perhaps trying to achieve some criminal end.

 

Thus, when clear evidence of Jack’s heartless scheme is found in the desk drawer, relief sweeps over everyone, not only Bella.

 

The gaslights dimming and then brightening again add special tension.

 

More suspense: what will happen when Jack returns? Will he see the broken desk drawer? Will he realize he has been found out?

 

It is the middle of the night. The stage is nearly dark. Suddenly, Jack Manningham flings open the double doors and strides into his living room.

 

He has come home to torment his wife Bella for the last time, to drive her into mindless incoherence. Then he will have her committed to an insane asylum. (Imagine the insane asylums in the Victorian era! “Bedlam”, meaning “a place of wild uproar and confusion,” entered the language as a shortening of St. Mary of Bethlehem, the principal asylum in London.)

 

Jack rings the bell for the maid, Nancy. She is ready for anything. She runs upstairs to summon her mistress Bella.

 

What happens next?

 

…and that is the meaning of the word, “suspense”.

 

It was one week - only seven days! - before we were to move the set into the Backstage Theater. Still no sofa, no armchair.

 

Nellie went to Sunday brunch with treasured members of her family. She left at about noon and had a strong message from the universe: “Go to Sebastopol and buy the sofa and armchair.”

 

These things don’t happen, and she knew that. Still, the situation was becoming dire. So she drove to Sebastopol.

 

Nellie knew there were several antique shops along Highway 116, because she’d visited them with her daughter. She parked and walked into one, FFT Antiques. There, in front of her, was the perfect armchair, handsome dark wood framing a yellow velvet back panel and seat cushion. Sturdy arms and legs. Even a rather forbidding design, with an angular shape to the top of the back.

 

She asked the price. It was well within the budget.

 

“This chair is sold,” she told the pleasant man behind the counter. “Don’t let anyone else buy it. I’m going to look around for a little while.”

 

Nellie didn’t find anything else she “had” to buy, so she went to the counter to pay. “That’s the perfect armchair,” she said. “I only wish you had a sofa to go with it.”

 

The pleasant man smiled and said, “It’s over there."

 

There it was: a matching sofa to the armchair, with burgundy velvet instead of yellow. It had been hiding under cushions and shawls. Only four feet long. It was miraculously ideal.

 

A week later, Lisa, the Stage Manager, drove her pick-up truck to Sebastopol with Nellie and retrieved the sofa and armchair. They arrived back in Sonoma in time to help with the load-in of the set, at 3:00 p.m. that afternoon. The sofa and chair assumed their rightful place in the tiny Backstage Theater, where they served faithfully and brilliantly throughout the run of Gaslight.