My First "Album"

On a recent visit home, my grandmother brought the first "album" I had ever created for her.  In all it's cassette tape glory, created and sent by 6th grade Kirsten, it featured solo vocal tracks from Christmas music to classical Latin, piano solos, flute solos, and a card to mail back to join the Kirsten Fan Club.

Who says twelve year olds don't know anything about branding?

Ciao, Carmen!

A Summer Show

I'm excited to announce that I will be playing the role of Jean MacLaren in Music By the Lake's summer production of Brigadoon.

The production will be two performances only, July 30th and 31st on beautiful Lake Geneva.  More details coming soon.

A Spoof on Carmen

Doing a student matinees for Carmen this week and came across this hysterical video spoof.  It's a good laugh for a week of three matinees where the downbeat comes at 12:30!

Phantom Backstage "Secrets"

A neat, although short, video about the production aspects of the Broadway version of Phantom.  I also learned from this video from the Chicago Tribune, that the original touring production that came to Chicago almost a decade ago,  cost around 11 million to produce originally in the early 90s...which meant with inflation it would have been around 35 million!  And that was still in the mid 90s!

And of course the tour had 230 costumes and 175 wigs.  Now that's a show!  

Another thing I love about Phantom?  You get to sing your first of many high C's on page 6 of the show!

See the production I'm in April 29th - May 14th!

My First Phantom...

Today we had a sing through of act one of Phantom.  Listening to all that beautiful music again made me remember seeing Phantom for the first time.  It was the year 2000 and I LOVED it.  It was hands down the best musical I saw on Broadway during my visit.  We sat in the 7th row and I could feel the heat from the pyrotechnics!

Here are some of my memories from the show...
*When Carlotta started singing "Think of Me" I was confused, I thought - no way, she doesn't look like Christine at all!
*Piagini struggling and failing to get on top of the giant elephant...hysterical.
*Candles...lots of them...with REAL flames and appearing as if from no where.
*Utter awe and astonishment at the Phantom appearing on top of the proscenium facade at the end of act one.
*I had no idea the stage was part puppets and not all actors during Masquerade.
*Tears streaming down my face at the end of the show, all the while thinking how sad it was because the Phantom just really loved her.

It makes me want to see the show again!  Hopefully all these fabulous memories and more will be formed in my upcoming production.  I can't wait to start staging.

Image from broadwayworld.com

Save Broadway Sketch

A little laugh for your Friday.  I remembered how much I loved this clip when it was on a rerun the other night...one of my favorite SNL sketches ever.