Patina Miller and cast Raise their Voices to Heaven!

Ladies and Gentlemen Raise your Voices to Broadways next rising star Patina Miller! This show is her Broadway debut and she is on fire! Her fierce performance as Deloris Van Cartier makes this show a smash hit. Her stage presence is a very unique. I just wanted to her to keep going and going because its a real treat to sit in a theatre and see her do her thing. The one thing in particular I love about Patina is her voice. So much spin and diction going on when she sings. Its in a nice place where she can riff and do what she wants with the music. 

During the performance what really interested me was that they did not put all the songs that were on the Sister Act cd in the show. Honestly I thought that it was a smart move. The songs How I got the Calling and Do the Sacred Mass are unessirary in my opinion. Take me to heaven, I could be that Guy, Raise your Voice, The Life I never Led, Fabulous Baby (Reprise), and Sister Act were all great story telling numbers in the show. My favorite numbers were The Life I never Led and Sister Act. They were very touching and moving numbers. The communication and the choices made by Patina Miller and Marla Mindelle (Mary Robert) were strong choices that made their performances rememberable, engaging, fabulous, and moving. I look for strong communication in theatre and I saw many strong choices being made by the cast the entire night. 

Some of my problems with the show were the light designs. I feel that the lighting designs were great, but I feel the choice of color, and the connection to the music and the story line could of had a stronger impact to the piece. Light and color are so important. It impacts how we feel in an environment. I wish that when the Nuns were doing their numbers at Mass that the design team would of used more color and lighting that they used on the stain glass. 

Overall, Sister Act is a hillarious, joyous show that I would go pay to see again. Patina Miller really makes this show and I feel that if she was not in this show that Sister Act would not be the Sister Act that we all know. The Nuns were awesome and I want to start a Sister Act in Utah! Raise your Voices! 

* If you want more information about the show, You can email me or call me. 

The Book of Mormon Is Something Incredible!

There is a reason why The Book of Mormon won 9 Tony Awards this year! Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells make this production an absolute success! Their connection, focus, singing, dancing, and acting were genius. It is not everyday you see a perfect pair on stage together. My best description of the performance is a ping pong war! I love when I see actors are playing off each other because its when actors are at there best! 

Most people in Utah and the Utah theatre community believe this musical is about making fun of the LDS Church. Lets first clear this up. The musical is not making fun of the church! It was very informative and very funny, and full of jokes only people from Utah would get! There were times during the performance I was the only person in the entire theatre laughing my head off! 

This Musical has helped the LDS Church in many ways and I will back this musical to my grave! Because of this musical LDS church was able to start I am A Mormon Campaign. This campaign has clarified who Mormons are and was allowed people to understand that Mormons are just like anyone else. 

In act one, you get very accurate details of how the LDS church runs the mission field. I would say if you are a conservative person, then this is not a show for you. I am sure you would leave by the fourth number just because of the vulgarity. I feel I should clarify that the song Hasa Diga Eebowai is not for shock value just because South Park can shock people! This scene is when the Elder Price and Elder Cunningham arrive to Uganda and are experiencing culture shock. Anyone would experience culture shock if you went into another culture that is the exact opposite of happy bubble Salt Lake City, Utah. 

Act two is full of Mormon myths. I personally had an absolute hoot seeing this! It is clever way to poke fun of what people see Mormons as. The Myths are all set up by Elder Cunningham. Elder Cunningham has never read the Book of Mormon and is asked by Nabulungi (Nikki M. James, 2011Tony Award winner for Best Featured Actress) to teach her tribe the Book of Mormon. The song Making things up again sets the rest of the act up. The Tribe learns Elder Cunningham’s version of the Book of Mormon and Baptizes the tribe into the church. He also gets Elder Price to learn to be humble and gain his faith back. That moment was by far one of the most touching moments I have ever seen on the stage. It really sets the tone of what religion and faith is. When the Mission President comes to see what the Ugandan Mission has done, everything that everyone thought Elder Cunningham did comes a reality in telling of the story of Joseph Smith the American Moses. I honestly think that number is by far one the most funniest things I have ever seen. Everything that Elder Cunningham taught falls apart and you have a happy tribe thinking that their AIDS is going to be cured and a Mission President that is freaking out. It was a very colorful comedy that I wish I had money to see again. 

Overall, this musical is a very creative. The music and acting were fabulous! The Choreography could be taken to new levels, but works very well as it is set now. I also think what the media has displayed about this musical has gotten people way to worked up. This musical is not the must vulgar musical ever produced. If you can handle any PTC or SLAC shows, you should be able to handle this show. I am a Book of Mormon fan for life! This is God’s Favorite Musical! 

*If you want a more detailed description of the show. You can email me or call me and I would be gladly to answer your questions. 

The Beauty is....

Before I even start I am going to warn you that I am going into deep thought. And no, I am not going to talk about Light in the Piazza. Not a musical theatre post today I am entering the waters of art. So I'm currently taking an art class at the U of U called Language of Color. Its quite interesting how color is used and how one may perceive colors and the application. The class talks about how color is applied in art and how we perceive, interpret, and analysis a piece of art according to culture, media etc... Within this class we read a book by David Batchelor called Chromophobia. This book is by far one of the most interesting books of I have ever read. It really has forced me to ponder a lot about color and its impact to our world. Its alive and organic.

In the first few pages of the book he talks about this house out in Great Britain. The outside was a red brick victorian look to it but when you went into the house he describes it like entering another universe. The inside was completely white. The white was describe as so pure that no other colors besides grey and black would even look good within the house. What also fascinates me about this house as well is that he describes overall the idea of the house as an inside of an egg. How cool! I highly recommend people reading this book but I am warning you that you need to have an open mind.

This next part I feel is quite important. Thinking of how something as simple as a rainbow can have more inner meaning than we can imagine has always fascinated me. Look beyond what we already know.

Mark Twain states “We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.” His statement I feel is in this sense "prying into that matter" refers to youth verses adults. Youth describe color in marvelous ways. When I talk to kids about color they make it sound like color is alive and moving in an organic and linear matter. We loose that as we grow older sadly. The rainbow is a seven colors of wonder. Youth strikingly find the inner meaning to color. They find life in it. Some kids even live color. As an artist I wish I could have more of that in me. 

The rainbow is a source of many meanings. Though ones interpretation may be different we all come to verbal understanding of what we think through communication, science and art. Verbally, Mark Twain statement. "We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter." shows a very important matter to how we communicate what color and the rainbow is. Prying into organic, natural, pure, inconsistent matter sometimes looses the depth of energy. Color is independent. A universal phenomenon. I feel that cannot fully be explained in words because its has life of an unknown semiotic form. There are somethings in this world that cannot always be explained and answered. The rainbow being one of them. We know the basics of Newtons discoveries with the prism and how systems have been made for colors but what if we could look into it even deeper. Understand the feeling, energy, life of color. Even imagining living color. How cool would that be?! If I could understand the rainbow that way I feel I would be living color.

We all will have a different idea to what the rainbow means to us but look at the Beauty of the rainbow. A natural phenomenon that engages the world in so many ways. Appreciate color and live your life with color.