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Re: “Mommy Dearest”
The orchestra is not recorded.
A live orchestra, with Rick Lewis as musical director and Reece Marshburn conducting, complements the production beautifully. The orchestra is behind the set, and that, along with brilliant sound design by Casi Pacilio, makes the music easy to hear without overpowering the singers. Every instrument's contribution is clearly appreciated in the score, and works in partnership with singers better than on any musical I've heard in town before.
Re: “Portland Center Stage, In Reeling Economy, Takes an Ax To Its Staff”
My name's Mary McDonald-Lewis, and I'm an independent contractor for PCS.
There are some terrible things being said by anonymous folks here, some directed at my comments along with Sam's. I can't help but wonder -- do I know you? Do we go to the same shows, hoist a drink with the actors afterwards? Do I audition you, or have I directed you?
It makes me sad to think that someone who might be a colleague holds folks who are asking for moderation here in such seething disdain -- to be hired by people you think so little of would be hypocritical and the mark of a coward, would it not?
So, sign your names, fellas -- it'll keep you honest.
Re: “Portland Center Stage, In Reeling Economy, Takes an Ax To Its Staff”
Sam, you beat me to it. I had just composed this for pdxbackstage, but I'm going to post it here instead... or maybe in addition to.
MM
+++++
Mead and Megan's loss will be deeply felt at PCS and in our community at large, as both lose the place where they most broadly shared their great, great gifts with us, and with the theatregoing public.
I know that passions will run high at this news, and there will likely be some hotly-held opinions about who is to blame for this; certainly the comments on Stephen's site bode darkly in this regard.
And I sure understand the anger, and I sure respect folks' right to express it here; I support Stephen's right to write about it and commenters' right to comment.
Ours, though, is a complex web of community, and so as you amass along the borders of opinion, supposition, fact and fancy, remember: there are plenty of folks who read this who also work at PCS and who are both living with the loss of their friends and co-workers while striving as hard as they know how to support this arts organization with their professionalism, and their own good craft. Keep them in mind as you work this through, can you, and contemplate how their own community rending their own employer from limb to limb may make a difficult time even more difficult for them.
I also wonder how savaging the organization serves those who've had to leave, too; what I know of them does not include a taste for blood in that way.
Yes, I work for PCS as an independent contractor, and of course I'm grateful and pleased to be doing it. And though it is not my intention to speak on behalf of folks working there, I'd write these words whether I was occasionally there or not... because every time I walk through those doors on 11th Ave, I see the faces of people I so admire, and who I know are devastated by this. These same folks need to go to work tomorrow and keep on doing what they do, and speaking only for myself... I don't want to make that any harder for them.
I don't have an opinion about Mead and Megan leaving PCS that's attached to "rightness" or "wrongness" that is the least important and least interesting part of the tale. What I feel about all of this is just plain sad. For them. For us. For art.
MM
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