True Tales of Oz

Janna and I had the opportunity of performing in the orchestra for Christian Youth Theatre's production of The Wizard of Oz for a couple of weekends in March. After attending a band reunion/ showing of the film of Wizard, I re-discovered this post in my drafts folder. :O Sorry it's late...hope you enjoy my rambling!

First off, it was really cold in the building. After shaking and shivering through a couple of rehearsals, we had one night with the heat system on. Everyone was elated - until building management said it was too expensive to run the heat! Then, one night, we got to the building and all  the music stands were gone. Worse, two musicians had left their parts on their stands. So, after a quick trip home for stands the rehearsal got underway. The music was retrieved, but we never got to use those stands again. We didn't make it through the whole second act that night, but, no worries, there is always the final dress rehearsal for that. The final dress rehearsal came and, uhmmm, we didn't make a full run through of the play. Needless to say, some of us were more than a little concerned about opening night! It actually went amazingly well. As a bonus, the heat was on! Yay! We discovered that we needed some scene change music towards the end - but, hey, how were we supposed to know that? We'd never run through those scenes!

We made it through the first weekend successfully; each night the music improved. We added scene change music, got cues figured out, and our percussionist improvised some fabulous sound effects!

Then, there were the school day shows. These were edited versions of the play where school children came to see the show. About half the orchestra musicians came to play. It was a blessing that we had enough instruments to carry the vital parts! The first school day show started at 9:30am. I think this is way too early in the morning for a performance, but, I went happily enough, and played. The edited down play felt like touring a house without ever seeing the living room, but the children in the audience enjoyed it nonetheless. During the second show the Cowardly Lion's hairpiece fell off! It was all I could do to not fall out of my chair laughing. The Lion played is part admirably. When he fainted, he clapped his paw on his head and did the backward somersault all the same! When he sat up his ears were a little askew, but the scene went on otherwise unaltered.

Friday night of the final weekend was really delightful. The actors were great, the music was great, and the audience had a blast. Saturday night the audience was even more high-energy. They cheered for Toto, clapped in time during the Entr'acte and erupted with cheers at their favorite moments. Sunday afternoon was bittersweet. The last show with all my orchestra friends who had persevered through long cold rehearsals and eight shows with me! It was a wonderful performance.

~Kathrina

 Janna, Stephanie (the musical director) and I

A few members of our orchestra!