Doing Our Best to Make Things Jolly

March 21-29, 2003. The second annual production of the Rice Light Opera Society. If I may be permitted to overdramatize, this was in some respects the culmination of much of my college life. This was a big deal. It wasn’t my first time directing, but it was in some sense my first time directing ‘for real’; Butter-Battle (link eventually!) had been a cool project; this was my take on a Gilbert & Sullivan production. It was my senior year at Rice; I had founded the Rice Light Opera Society in order to do G&S, and in my last semester there, I was directing. My best friend, Emily Senturia, was music directing, and another good friend, Dave Price, was in charge of technical stuff. We were prepared to do anything.

I have no idea how I’m going to manage to write enough to get to the point where I feel I’ve written enough. Maybe I’ll just keep coming back to it and adding, as thoughts strike me.

I was both directing and performing in this thing. That’s not an ideal scenario — especially for an inexperienced, well, both, but particularly director, like I was, but that’s the way things go sometimes in college theater. I played Strephon, which is a smaller role than people sometimes realize, which was good, because it gave me more opportunities to see what was going on onstage.

I was really privileged to be working with an outstanding group on this show. Emily and Dave were, among the ranks of undergraduate college students, the best I can imagine anyone being at their respective jobs. Stagecraft and technical theatrical magic was (and is) far from my area of expertise, so I was very fortunate to have someone as competent as Dave to take over that realm of the production. And Emily and I interacted very closely on the many connections between music and action. When I think back on my experiences in various shows, it is surprising to realize that Iolanthe was the only time Emily and I worked together as stage director and music director; in my mind, we were a much more experienced team.
I have many fond memories of cool things we brought to that production. I’ll mention only a few of them here. For one thing, we had a real running waterfall for Iolanthe’s entrance. Understand that we were very much on a shoestring budget; I think we were playing with something like $1500 for the entire show, with the idea that if we do ok we’ll make it back in ticket sales. So the cool technical things for which RLOS developed a tradition over the three years I was there was pretty impressive.

A favorite bit of business, which I repeated when I directed Iolanthe again at Brown a few years later: during “In vain to us you plead,” our Celia and Leila magically stuck one of each peer’s feet to the ground; they were trying in vain to escape, and the spell was reinforced with each “don’t go!” At the end of the number, Mountararat has the bright idea to leave the stuck shoe behind, and walk away. Then the fairies collected and cherished the remaining shoes, much to the Fairy Queen’s indignation. I thought it was a really cute idea. I’m sorry to say that I now forget whether this idea was my own innovation, or whether I heard it from somewhere else — the likely medium being Savoynet. If this is your idea that I copied, please let me know and I’ll give you credit! I honestly just don’t remember any more.

I re-wrote “Oh Foolish Fay.” I try to avoid re-writes more than some do, but in this case, I think it’s easy to justify: the audience just won’t know what you’re talking about when you sing to Captain Shaw. Even “Ovidius Naso” is pushing your luck. I replaced Captain Shaw with a very well-known and personable administrator at Rice, the then-Vice President for Student Affairs, Zen Camacho. He was maybe the one person at Rice that literally every undergrad knew. And “Camacho” fits really nicely into the “I wonder” slot at the end of the second verse. It was a hit.

What else… there was some cute business with a sheep for Strephon. The stuffed sheep who played Strephon’s sheep was named “Snuffles”, and he still lives with me. Snuffles reprised his role at Brown.

The cast was, I think, superb, with lots of G&S veterans. Joe White was a belivably bustling and excitable Lord Chancellor, and Evan Tessier and Alex Hemsath were a great pair of leaders of the House of Lords, who worked marvelously together. I enjoyed playing opposite the lovely Elizabeth Good. And a marvelously talented freshman, Lauren Holmes, played Iolanthe. Lauren grew up to be president of RLOS and direct (me in!) Patience in 2005. We brought in Houston G&S Society Member Shelton Alsup to play Private Willis.

This was around the time when I first started to realize how much more there was to G&S than funny plots and dialogue and catchy music.  I had just read Gayden Wren’s book, which helped me to see more thematic issues, and it influenced this production quite a bit.  In retrospect, I think that some of the things I did were a little bit clumsy, but I’m actually pretty proud of the vision that I had for the show, and when I approached the task of directing it again more recently, although my perspective had matured quite a bit, my basic approach was the same.

I lost all my pictures when my computer died last year! RLOS friends, help me out — do you have pictures from this production? I want to put them up here. But here, anyway, is the entirety of the program:

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And here is our review from The Thresher, the student paper at Rice, including a couple of pictures.
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This entry was first written March 25, 2007.