Last night was the opening night of the musical that I’ve been a part of for the last two months. It’s a rock musical based the The Who’s album, “Tommy,” and it’s called, appropriately enough, “The Who’s Tommy.” The show follows the story of Tommy, a young boy who experiences induced catatonia because of a traumatic childhood event. The story details his amazing journey as a deaf dumb and blind child, his parents search for a cure, and Tommy’s inner battle to be heard by the outside world. In the show, I play Tommy’s cousin Kevin, a bully who takes advantage of Tommy’s deaf, dumb, and blind state to indulge his sadistic desires. This is definitely a difficult part to play for me because I usually play heroic type character, not villains, but it’s been a fun experience to work with this type of character. Over the past two months, the cast has been working hard to learn music, choreography, and blocking to make the show the best it can be. It’s been a lot of work, but I definitely feel like we’ve accomplished quite a lot.
However, I wouldn’t say the show opened without a hitch. Last night there were a lot of technical difficulties. The show is a rock musical, so the band consists of two guitars, a bass, drums, and two keyboards, all connected to amps (with the exception of drums obviously). At the last minute, we decided to replace one of the pianos with another keyboard. For some reason, this caused the power to go out throughout the show. This meant that at random moments, the lights would go out and the music would stop. This made it very difficult to continue singing as we couldn’t hear to music or see what was going on onstage. Hopefully all the technical kinks will be worked out by tonight. If you’re in the LA area you should come see the show. It’s playing tonight (10/29) at 7:30 and 11 pm, tomorrow (10/30) at 7:30 pm, and Sunday (10/31) at 2:30 pm in the Massman theater on USC’s campus. Check out the facebook event for more information.
