Production Case Study: Annie

The Drama Teacher Podcast

Episode 201: Production Case Study: Annie Where do you start with a play? How do you come up with a vision that spans across character development, light, sound, set, costuming? How do you execute on that vision? And then how do you put all that into an entertaining musical? Listen in to this production case study on the musical Annie. Show Notes Drama Teacher Academy The Myths at the Edge of the World The Perils of Modern Education Episode Transcript Welcome to the Drama Teacher Podcast brought to you by Theatrefolk – the Drama Teacher Resource Company. I’m Lindsay Price. Hello! I hope you're well. Thanks for listening! This is Episode 201 and you can find any links to this episode in the show notes which are at Theatrefolk.com/episode200. Today, I am talking to a dear friend here at Theatrefolk Global Headquarters, a man who wears many hats, for us and for others – Matt Webster. Matt has been in the classroom. He’s taught students to become drama teachers. He’s a playwright. For this podcast, we’re going to talk to him in his role as a director – specifically, what it’s like to direct the musical, Annie. It’s a production case study! So, let’s find out if the old adage is right that you should never work with animals and children. Let’s find out, shall we? See you on the other side! LINDSAY: Hello everybody! Lindsay Price here, and I am talking to Matt Webster. MATT: Hello everyone! LINDSAY: Now, usually, I ask where people are in the world, but we happen to be sitting right beside each other. MATT: Side by side in Cedar City, Utah. LINDSAY: But where do you usually hail from? MATT: I hail from Charlotte, North Carolina. LINDSAY: Very nice. We are here today. We’re doing a production case study. We’ve done a number of these and I really love being able to talk to folks about the process of putting on a production. We have so many people who listen. I have to put on many, many shows in a year. Some people don’t know where to start, right? MATT: Absolutely. LINDSAY: What show are we talking about? MATT: We are talking about the show “Annie, the Musical.” LINDSAY: Awesome. You didn’t do any Junior. You did the full-on Annie? MATT: We did the full-on Annie. LINDSAY: The first thing is this wasn’t your choice. You were hired to direct Annie. MATT: Yes, I was hired as a director for a local community theatre company and one of the reasons that they chose me was because I have a background in theatre for youth and working with children. they wanted to have children in the cast as orphans, including small children. That’s why I was offered the job. LINDSAY: So, what was the age range? MATT: I ended up casting a 5-year-old as the youngest who turned 6 during rehearsal which was one of my most brilliant things I have to say because she was adorable. But the range was from 6 to 60 is the cast range. LINDSAY: Awesome, awesome. Let’s start with your first steps in working on a show. One of the reasons I know that a lot of schools do Annie, but I know too that sometimes the teachers are in a position where they’re putting on shows that they might not necessarily like. I know a lot of teachers who are in the position where they know they have to do musicals, and musicals just aren’t their bag. As a director, what was your first step in approaching the script and the score? MATT: With Annie, there’s a really interesting challenge and that is we had to figure out which version we were using. The problem is that we were not allowed to get the script more than two months in advance or we’d have to pay extra. So, a script was found, but there are multiple versions of Annie. There’s the original version. There’s a rewrite in the 80’s and then a newer version. In addition, online, the choreographer and the music director and some of the actors who were cast looked at some of the music online and some of the scenes online and the...