Once on This Island is a musical based on the book My Love, My Love by Rosa Guy. Ti Moune is a young peasant girl, who falls in love with a grand homme. The show is phenomenal and I am proud of everyone involved. I experienced the show in many ways. From blocking to costumes, to hair, to makeup, to props, to cues and many last minute surprises, I loved this show and everyone involved. I am sad to move on. The week leading up to the show was the smoothest show week I have experienced. It is a difficult show that involved a high level of participation and solid performance from everyone. I am thankful for everyone’s participation especially because people were sick and we suffered from snow days. In addition, the crew was the most involved I have ever worked with. They were so creative and I refuse to think what the stage would have looked like without their ideas and beautiful execution. However, I wish we could have run the show with lights a few more times before opening night. The lighting and sound cues bothered me. They caused problems in all of the performances. This most likely did not impact the audience (except when the thunder didn’t sound-twice), but as the person relying on the lights to give cues to the actors, I thought the lighting could have been more reliable. More times than should have been necessary, I had to speak over the headset asking about the cue. Furthermore, the lights came up early a few times and had a few added blackouts. I know from experience that the technology is not always reliable, but a few more rehearsals may have allowed us to adapt.
Another fear I had was whispering. With many people involved, time off of the stage and mics, I feared more whispering would occur. This was only the case on Sunday, which is very impressive. The only major problems were the mics being muted, and people occasionally forgetting lines. Neither of these seemed to be very apparent to the audience. I picked up on several other tiny mistakes, but I was probably only one of two or three people watching who noticed.
I have heard many reviews of the show, both of biased parents and students and faculty. Everyone seemed to enjoy the show. As the stage manager, I am most proud of the look of the show. I organized the majority of the costumes, including coming up with costumes the day of, and heard that many people found the vibrant colors of the show to be aesthetically pleasing. It was difficult to organize the costumes because they needed to match in a way that did not really match. They had to seem of similar status for the peasants, but the pieces could not fit perfectly together. I walked a tightrope of what looked good and what looked strange, but it seemed to work out.
Overall, the show was one of my biggest successes and I am going to miss going to the black box everyday to work with the amazing cast, crew, and pit of the show, but I know the show will always be a part of us. (Both in the memories and the songs we will never get out of our heads:))
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