Spicy and Sassy…Miss Industrial Northeast
Up next for the Pageant the Musical contestant feature is Max Cadillac who portrays the vivacious Miss Industrial Northeast, Cosuela Manuela Rafaella Lopez.
What makes your character a winner?
Consuela is bright and bouncy with a big personality and even bigger smile. She’s “living la vida loca” and loco for her loving family and friends!
How did you prepare for this show?
Besides twirling and dancing around my living room since birth, I’ve been researching and talking to pageant friends, as well as watching pageant movies like Miss Congeniality and Drop Dead Gorgeous.
What did you learn about beauty pageants that you didn’t know before?
I learned how hard it is to wear and change jewelry and accessories so often and so quickly. There are so many times where I needed to wear diamond rings, earrings, or bracelets. Luckily, most of the fashion jewelry was inexpensive so I didn’t have to worry so much about being careful with the pieces. I even remember a time when I wore these cheap gold chains with a diamond pendant hanging and I was expected to take them off and change it with another piece of hip hop jewelry in 15 seconds!
What will you never do on stage?
I will probably never play the king in The King and I, but one can dream.
Do you have a role model?
My role models for this show are Sofia Vergara, Cindy Crawford, and Bianca Del Rio.
What inspired you to be an actor?
My biggest inspiration came from seeing my first show on Broadway when I was 5.
What is your favorite part of a show?
This whole show is my favorite, but I must say strutting down the runway in a bathing suit really makes my night!
What is your favorite part about working at Cygnet Theatre?
Cygnet is such a fun and intimate theatre space, I love getting to really engage with our audience.
The Set Design of Cabaret: Part 1
Cabaret as an Alcoholic Beverage
Last year, Sean Murray asked me to work with him on Sweeney Todd. It was our seventh production together. Working with Sean and co-director James Vasquez was
possibly the most freeing experience that can be asked of a designer for a musical theatre setting: we threw out all preconceived notions of the staging, we started from scratch and found our own voices in the piece.
And I discovered that doing a musical on a thrust stage means that, despite the amount of decorative flourishes I may apply to a setting, my eye always becomes inexorably riveted to the performer. Out there on that thrust surrounded on three sides by a rapt audience, and commanding a story. In one breathless moment, I can forget about everything I’ve been hired or trained to do as a designer, as I sit back and watch energy flow. Continue reading
Sweeney Todd Music Rehearsals
We celebrated the opening of Sweeney Todd last night. The performers were all outstanding, and the audience responded with a standing ovation. Afterwards we enjoyed a wonderful post show party hosted by gracious folks at Casa Guadalajara.
Over the past couple of weeks I have caught glimpses of the show in rehearsals, and watched as the entire collection of artists, one of the largest we’ve ever assembled at Cygnet, have come together to create an exciting evening of theatre. During that time I managed to also capture some video of the rehearsals, including the first time the cast and band rehearsed together, and the first rehearsals on the completed stage. Please enjoy this peek behind the scenes.
A Sweeney Blood Rehearsal
In order to test drive the special blood effects designed by resident artists Peter Herman, Shirley Pierson, Bonnie and Nick Durben for our production of Sweeney Todd, we held a little blood-letting one night at our rehearsal space.
We have two different methods of producing the Grand Guignol style blood moments in the show, depending on which character is being killed at which moment. Without trying to give away too much of the mystery, it took a little trial and error to much hilariously ghoulish laughter from the actors! Check out the video James Vasquez shot of our experiments. It’s a little gory, but a lot of fun.
Check the teaser on youtube!
Hedwig past and present
Wow does time fly. I can’t believe it is already June and Summer is almost here. What is even more amazing is that we are about to start our 7th Season. When Sean and I started Cygnet, I never realized that it would put my life on the fast track and the years would start to fly by. It’s been so much work and fun. Nevertheless, I don’t think I would change a thing that we did. The mistakes we made were as valuable as the great successes we had.
The first production we did was Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It seemed like the perfect first production for us, it was obnoxious and loud with great music and would make a statement but also, we hoped, attract the kind of cult audience that The Rocky Horror Show enjoyed. It seemed to work, we received a lot of attention and the production was very well received. We were on our way.
It seems like yesterday when we built the Rolando space and put on that first production. Now this Saturday we will be opening our last production at the Rolando space. The last production will once again be Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It seemed like the right choice for us. It’s really a fun show, a little twisted, and music is just wonderful.
I think Sean would agree that this a bittersweet time for us. We put so much of ourselves into the Rolando theatre and will definitely miss that great space but in life the time comes when you need to move on. Hedwig was a great start for us and I can’t think of a better swan song for the Rolando space.