Bye Bye Birdie
From Mchs Theater
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Bye Bye Birdie
The first Spring Musical for MCHS, Bye Bye Birdie was performed in March of 2003. Middle Creek had just opened up the previous fall, so the student population was very long on enthusiasm, but short on experience. Matt Scialdone had stepped into the breech to teach technical theater while the program was getting started. Initially, the students and faculty were disappointed - the first MCHS show was supposed to be Grease, but unexpectly, a touring production of the show was coming through town. This prevented Middle Creek from getting a performance license. Bye Bye Birdie was put forward as a substitute. Although the Baby Boomers easily remembered the movie with Ann Margaret, the show was not familiar to most Middle Creek students. Some of the references, like the veneration of Ed Sullivan, were a little hard to appreciate! It took a while, but the cast eventually warmed to the show.
Established theater departments have stack of stock platforms, costumes, and reusable materials to pull from. MCHS had nothing, and the team was not yet experienced enough to be handed a sketch and the instructions "Go make me one of these". But everyone stepped up. Theresa Crawford assembled a 'Costume Army' of dedicated adults who scrounged and sewed all of the costumes. Matt Scialdone and other adults did on the job training in stagecraft for the emerging student crew. The few set pieces went together slowly.
In parallel to the technical efforts, the actors were being introduced to the discipline of being in a high end high school production. Mike Gilliam had enlisted the services of Elizabeth Grimes-Droessler, who worked the dancers very hard and brought out talent that some didn't know they had. Also, Mr. Gilliam knew what he wanted out of the actors and didn't let up until he had gotten it. He also instilled important lessons like being quiet and disciplined backstage, respect for the work of others and the constant drive for improvement. Middle Creek actors have passed on these values down to successive generations.
Middle Creek's first show was far from perfect, but it set the initial expectations and started to build the experience base needed for future show.
Cast
< Cast list goes here
Crew
- Lighting Design: Erik Minton
- More needed......
Production Staff
- Director: Mike Gilliam
- Technical Director: Matt Scialdone
- Pit Band: Tammy Holder, John Ruggero, Alan Booker
- Set Construction: Cody Janek, ......
Bye Bye Birdie Stories
First day of construction
I remember the first day of construction when I looked at the pile of brightly colored scaffolding that the Sun Belt rental people had dropped off. It looked like a huge pile of teenage sized Legos and despite my previous theatrical experience, it was very hard for me to image that this was going to be the set of Bye Bye Birdie. But, we just started putting the pieces together and slowly the platforms took shape....... Al
