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Archives for : theater

Big News!

Posted by :Dan Pelletier On : October 30, 2013
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Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on setting up my next big venture, and since it is now official, I can finally announce it. I have signed on to mentor FIRST robotics team 3467 of Windham High School! FIRST was a huge part of my life during middle and high school, and I am delighted to be returning to my roots. My time as both a student and mentor of FRC Team 241 at Pinkerton taught me leadership, teamwork, and responsibility. The team is run by one of the former Pinkerton mentors, Scott Kukshtel, who is now the engineering teacher in Windham. The team is entering only it’s fourth season, and has already accumulated many prestigious accomplishments.  The team is hoping on capturing FIRST’s top achievement: The Chairman’s Award. The Chairman’s Award recognizes a team that personifies the FIRST values, betters its community, and is an role model for other FIRST teams to follow. The award involves a series of essays, presentations, and video creation. This is where I come in; it is the plan of Scott and I to have me help the students with their presentation and leadership skills, as well as using my eight years of experience working on FIRST teams to help them reach their biggest goals.

I attended the meeting on Tuesday to introduce myself to the team, find out who they are, and get a feel for where my talents can be best utilized. I observed the students working on their normal tasks, paying close attention to their dynamic interacting with each other (as well as the other mentors), and took notes on what I thought I could help the team with. Towards the end of the meeting, I pulled the team leaders aside and began working with them on what my expectations were for them, and how I plan on getting them to the level they need to be at to win the Chairman’s Award. The team overall has a solid crop of students, and I am eager to get to know them over the next couple of months.

In other news, “The Taming of the Shrew” opens next Thursday, and we have load-in this weekend. Soon we will be getting to test my abilities as a designer, and I am confident that the lights will come out as planned. It’s nice to have a safety net in Sam (the director) who has a fair amount of lighting experience herself. Between now and opening night I will be advertising the heck out of the show, as I am very impressed with the quality of performances being given at the rehearsals I have attended.

Last Friday night, I attended New Hampshire Theatre Factory’s performance of “Ghost Hunting: The Musical Murder Mystery.” NHTF is a new theatre group, and the show was an original production created by their artistic director, Joel Mercier. The show was lots of fun, and very charming. I hope NHTF continues creating enjoyable productions like “Ghost Hunting” as they grow into southern New Hampshire’s newest professional company.

I’m pretty sure that’s all I have to say this week. Still attempting to read three books at the same time, as well as trying to cut down on my enormous stack of comic books that I have fallen behind on. On top of load-in this weekend, I will also be seeing “The Odd Couple” at Seacoast Rep, and “Anything Goes” at UNH, both of which should be fantastic nights of theatre.

Until next time…

Due Dates and Insomnia

Posted by :Dan Pelletier On : October 23, 2013
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So in case you didn’t know, Dan-Pelletier.com is now 100% live! The website came out better than I could have imagined, and I would like to once again thank my life long friend Tommy McCarthy for helping me put it together. It still needs a few updates, but nothing major. Thing that made me kinda chuckle was the day after we go live, I’m scrolling facebook between reps at the gym, and I see an article on “Backstage.com” entitled: “7 Items for a Successful Actor Website.” I open the article, look over the check list, and I already met every one of their criteria for a good site! With a few minor tweaks, this page will be the ideal model for an actor’s website. Yay us!

My “The Taming of the Shrew” light plot is due tomorrow, and after a few hours of sketching it out, I’m very pleased with how it turned out. The space the show is taking place in is not the easiest to light, and we will be cramming 28 lights on a 30 foot truss, with a few other lights on off stage booms, but the plot is actually very clean and I didn’t have to sacrifice any lights due to physical limitations. My ambitious color usage should look beautiful on Sam’s set, and I’m eager to start the next phase: making all the cues. This one is a little nerve racking, as everything I’ve designed to this point has been manual cues with sliders, and we will be using programmed cues. I signed on to this project to get experience creating much more complicated designs than anything I’ve done before, so I can’t wait to get started.

Last night, for no apparent reason, I really couldn’t sleep, and I didn’t feel like reading either of the books I’ve been working on (Taking Stock or Superman:Birthright) but did want to read something, so I grabbed off my shelf the famous Uta Hagen text Respect for Acting. I purchased it back in May, but had not gotten around to reading this quintessential theatre text, and now I regret it. I plowed through the first fifty pages of this book without blinking. Every thing she had to say about her passion and respect for the craft of acting and the broader world of theater spoke to me on so many levels. I think between innings of tonight’s Red Sox’s game, I’ll look to read even more, and hopefully finish it before the weekend.

I hate to drag on longer than three paragraphs, so I’ll wrap up with a teaser for my next big announcement. I have currently signed on for a project like I haven’t worked on in many years. All I’ll say for now is that I will be getting to share my craft with those who would most likely never consider themselves theater people.  To find out who, you’ll have to check back next week!

 

Getting You Up To Speed

Posted by :Dan Pelletier On : October 20, 2013
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Hello!

My name is Dan Pelletier. I am a twenty three year old holder of a B.A. in Theatre looking to be the next big thing in arts and entertainment. I hope to use this blog to keep everyone updated on all of my ongoing projects, life experiences, and general happenings. For more info on my background, I hope you’ll explore my website: http://www.Dan-Pelletier.com

As for what I am doing right now:

My biggest project at the moment is designing lights for “The Taming of The Shrew” directed by my good friend, Samantha Smith. This is probably the biggest production I have lit to date, and I’m excited to push the limits of my knowledge and skills as a designer. Today I’ll be finalizing my color selection, and tomorrow I will be venturing to Durham to watch the first stumble through of the show. Sam has a brilliantly talented cast, and I can’t wait to see what they’ve put together in the two short weeks they’ve been in rehearsal.

On the entertainment side of things, wedding season is winding down, and it as been a wonderfully adventurous year at Sowa Entertainment. Each wedding I MC’d this year was very unique, and I love that I’ve gotten the honor and privilege of making people happy on the most important day of their lives. 2014 is already looking to be just as fruitful as 2013, as my calendar is filling up very quickly. This weekend I’ll be at the Strafford School Friday night for a K-5 and a middle school dance, and then Saturday we will be providing the entertainment at the Bow High School Homecoming Dance. Swapping from weddings to school dances is a fun change of pace and mindset.

Towards the end of the summer, I set a series of goals for self-improvement on a personal and professional level. These goals include getting in better shape, getting my website up and running, writing a new play, revising an old play, reading five text/theory books, seeing ten shows, and reading twenty plays. I’m making good progress on all of them, but still have a long way to go to achieve them before the end of the year.

So far I’ve read:

The Odd Couple
The Taming of The Shrew
The importance of being earnest

I’ve seen:

Annie – Prescott Park
The Burial at Thebes – TheatreKapow
Our Town – UNH

And the books I’ve finished:

Backwards and Forwards – David Ball
Solving Your Script – Jeffrey Sweet

Solving Your Script was amazing, and I already want to read it again. Sweet’s ability to analyze and (more importantly) teach the craft of playwriting, as well as breaking down what makes a good play,  a good scene, and a well written character, has been immensely useful for both writing and directing. I’m currently reading Taking Stock: The Theatre of Max Stafford-Clark. I read a brief passage in another book about Stafford-Clark’s directorial process, and was intrigued by the amount of table work and discussion he does with his actors before ever getting them on their feet. My hope is this text will dive further into the explanation of how and why he does this, which I plan on utilizing in my own productions.

Well, I think that’s enough for now. There is much work to be done after I return from the gym and the comic book store, so I best get going!