Hey babe,

Hope that’s not moving too fast; I know three weeks isn’t long, but I thought we really had something.

Anyway.

“Puppets are like movie stars: they like to be seen, not touched”

We stopped in for a matinee performance of PuppetART Detroit’s rendition of Sleeping Beauty in ballet form. Yes, that means dancing puppets.

And they must be classically trained because they were quite graceful. Watch out Ethan Stiefel; these guys don’t even have to stretch.

We bought the $10 and took our seats. As the audience filtered in, the demographics did not defy expectation: mostly white, seemingly middle class to upper middle class, ranging in age from a babe in arms to a grandfather. They almost exclusively came grouped in families; Ryan and I were probably the only ones not escorting children.

Director and Artistic Director Igor Gozman (who we met Day 18) definitely understood his audience. The play ran a little less than an hour and he included some hilarity after the more gruesome moments, keeping them from getting too scary.

The kids loved the whole thing. Before the show only two little girls danced excitedly to their seats after inspecting the miniature throne room set. Afterwards though, you couldn’t see the stage through the throng of children that crowded around to see the puppets. It was incredible!

Not to mention the normally $8 puppet-building workshop was free!….we didn’t stay…but how awesome is that?!

They were sure to mention before the show that they serve three distinct functions: as a theater, a museum of sorts with a collection of puppets from many different eras and cultures, and as an educational institution.

Wish we could’ve learned how to build a Pinnochio of our own, however sadly we had to go.

“MARIA!”

But we happily made the forty-five minute drive to Ann Arbor drive to see West Side Story. This production took place in the University of Michigan’s Power Center and was put on by Ann Arbor in Concert, “a performing arts organization, that focuses on bringing 100+ members of the community together to perform musicals in a concert format. Each show involves a full volunteer orchestra, principal actors, and a large choral/dancing ensemble. While A2IC is based in the city of Ann Arbor we welcome performers from all over southeast Michigan…A2IC is proud to devote a portion of all ticket sales toward funding annual scholarships that will benefit the performing arts education for students in the local community” from their website.  Many of the lead actors are cast from the University of Michigan’s wealth of talented Musical Theatre majors, but others were cast from general auditions.

We learned about the production from a fellow SC Governor’s School alumni Wonza Johnson who played (and rocked) the role of Riff (two words: Gov School).

Of course, his was one of many exceptional performances. It was very valuable for us to see the show; if we move here we would be lucky hire out of the U of M Acting and MT programs. There were over 1,200 people in attendance. Tickets were pretty reasonable – $15 each for our seats in row T, but people paid top dollar for seats in row A.

Musical Director Eric Lofstrom after the show

We got a table with Wonza at the after-show get-together and picked his brain. When asked about Detroit, he said “I never say no” because you never know what opportunity will come from that job (work begets more work). He said he wouldn’t necessarily want to move to Detroit, though, which further endorses the idea of doing a summer season until we’ve raised enough interest to plant our feet here. Further, he thinks other students from his program would be interested in working with us as well.

Great news, very heartening. Ann Arbor is close enough to commute for auditions for a summer stock company, which we could build with U of M students, UNCSA students, and other well-known BFA programs as well auditioning local talent in Detroit; of course, we would provide housing for out-of-towners.

Wonza was even nice enough to introduce us to the director of the show, Mike Mosallam, an alum of the U of M Musical Theatre program. Since graduating, he “has produced and directed over a hundred theatrical productions…After eight years in New York and Los Angeles, Mike returned to Michigan in 2009 to head a new initiative, the Wayne County Film Office…In 2012 he moved to Los Angeles to head up the production development arm of Sunset Gower Studios, where he works with shows such as “Scandal,” “How to Get Away with Murder,” and HBO’s “Looking” and “Togetherness.”” (Yes, copied straight from his bio).

Given that, we definitely wanted to get his perspective.

“For a while I was really drinking the kool-aid” Mike said. But when Detroit’s film industry was experiencing “a true renaissance for the history books” it sabotaged itself by saying“no” to all of this interest. He is talking about the state cutting back on their film incentives, capping them at $50 million (not a lot when talking about rebating big budget films).

“Everything is being filmed in LA, except when it’s in New York. And if they’re not filming there, they’re in New Orleans.” We’ve heard very promising things about New Orleans, since Louisiana has one of the highest-paying film incentive programs of any state in the country.

He also gave us a list of locations to check out.

For film: Vancouver, Toronto, Florida, New Mexico, New Orleans.

For theatre: Chicago, Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., Houston, New York, Denver.

As we continued talking, he zeroed in on a balance we’re trying to strike between making great art and making a living. He leveled with us: “You always have to pick between commercial purposes and artistic purposes. A friend of mine says “you do some jobs for the honey and some jobs for the money”…or something like that.”

That is basically what our choice has come down to: do we choose Detroit, where we can buy/rent a space cheaper than virtually any other American city? Or do we go someplace with a plethora of talent and resources? Can we find a place that provides the honey and the money?

We have more to see. We leave for Chicago on Friday and plan to investigate New Orleans before the end of the summer.

We’ve been a little perplexed about what to do with our domain name if we blog about other cities. We’ll probably keep it the same, even if that gets confusing.

Take it easy,

R&R