The Sandspur

Issue date: 10/2/06 Section: News

Media Credit: Megan Borkes Cast members of Annie Get Your Gun are in costume and ready to perform.

For an actor, nothing is more exciting than an opening night. The lights dim in the audience, the pre-show music dulls to silence and finally, the stage lights fade up, warming the dark surface where an actor will take his first steps out to perform in front of a packed house.

It's do or die, right at that moment when the actor speaks to the audience. A connection is made, and the way an audience reacts is all riding on that connection. Will they laugh or cry? Will they feel sympathy for the characters on stage? Or will they fall asleep? Everything is held in those first few moments of a performance.

This past Friday, "Annie Get Your Gun" opened its doors to a paying audience for the first time. After four weeks of grueling rehearsals, late night touch ups and hours upon hours of technical work, the cast and crew were more than ready to share their story with the audience.

The seats were packed that night, and the energy was flying all around the Annie Russel Theater. About two and a half hours later, the show was over and the cast re-emerged to thunderous applause. Afterwards, the cast's families and friends all huddled around the stage door of the Annie, bearing flowers and enveloping the stage-high actors in tight hugs.

"There's nothing like an opening night," says Joseph Bromfield, a sophomore, who plays Colonel Buffalo Bill Cody in the show.

Jospeh was given the job of saying the final word to the cast and crew in a nightly pre-show meeting known as 'green room.' In green rooms, the stage manager of the show gives out notes to the cast on what to improve upon and what to keep in mind for the next performance, and it's also the time when the director of the show can come in and talk to her cast and crew.

Jennifer Cavenaugh is celebrating her first directorial project with "Annie Get Your Gun", and is so impressed with the way the actors have taken responsibility. "I was a director for about 20 years in other places, so I thought I knew what to expect when I came [to Rollins]. But these kids work incredibly hard. A lot of them even do their own research. It's surprising to see someone walking around with a biography on Buffalo Bill." Since Annie is based on historical facts and characters, the actors did have to do some research to make the show true to history.

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