Last week, I shot Rochester Civic Theatre’s production of Mel Brooks’ hilarious first Broadway show, The Producers. It’s a show that holds a special place for me, as it’s the first show we saw on Broadway, and we saw it with the original cast (Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in the main roles). Also, we saw it less than a month after 9/11, when Broadway and all of NYC was trying to recover from that horrible act.
RCT did a great job with the show, assembling a terrific cast.
It’s an incredibly complex show to put on. The sets are tough, the costumes are involved, the lyrics are fast and crazy. But RCT came through and managed to fill the house for nearly all the performances. And, the show still went on when we had our record-breaking 14″ May snow storm a little over a week ago.
Lynne worked on props for the show. There were many, and many of them were complicated, too. Complicated to make or complicated to find. It’s interesting how much effort can go into a prop that the audience sees for just seconds. Yet, they can still be important.
One of the more complicated sets is Max’s office – not because there’s a lot to it, but because it has to be transformed from its original appearance for the second act. So, there are many set pieces duplicated and plenty of work for the back-stage crew.
The shoot went well, but all the sets and costumes made it run long. The cast was accommodating, though. There are lots of roles, so many in the ensemble appear multiple times as different characters. And each character has at least one costume. Certainly, one advantage to a live shoot is you avoid all that. But, we can reposition and ensure specific shots are taken with the special shoot. Pluses and minuses.
Lots of fun lighting, colorful costumes, and involved sets makes for an interesting photo shoot for me. Just a tiny sample here of some of my favorites. The King of Broadway shot at the top probably grabbed me the most. I find that I love these big number closing moment groups. The directors are great about building a visually stunning assemblage of the cast that I just need to photograph well. Then I can look at it and say, “Yeah, I took that. That was me!” Hah!
