happy halloween weekend!

happy halloween weekend!  i'm looking forward to handing out candy on sunday to the trick-or-treaters who come to our house.  leko's already on the lookout for those trick-or-treaters!

happy halloween!

love, laurie 

on the lookout

someone is already on the back porch on the lookout for trick-or-treaters!

love, laurie

my cute supervisor

i sat down in front of the couch the other day to do something.  i turned my head to the left and saw a cute little supervisor balancing on the edge of the couch foot rest watching me very intently.  eventually he got tired and tucked himself into a tiny little loaf!

love, laurie

mom, are you doing this right?

when mom comes home from the grocery store and restocks the kitten food cabinet, you must get deep into the cabinet to supervise that she is doing it correctly.

love, laurie

"escape"

this weekend we had a journey tribute band at the theatre called "escape" and we were happy to have them back.  they performed on our stage back in march of 2019 and they were great.  this show has been rescheduled four different times because of the pandemic!

you can check out more of my photos from the show on the theatre's facebook page here

love, laurie

onto the next shows . . .

another weekend, another show . . . well, shows.  ryan has music concerts at the university friday, saturday, and sunday in addition to the journey tribute show i have at the theatre on saturday.  it's another packed weekend!

love, laurie

"schoolhouse rock live"

several months ago, i wrote a grant in hopes of of bringing a children's theatre production to our stage.  i was thrilled when i found out that the county awarded our grant and happy to have the opportunity to team up with a touring group of college performers from a new jersey university.  

on sunday we finally brought the production to our stage and they put on the show "schoolhouse rock live" which was based off the old tv show.  it was fun and the audience enjoyed it.

you can see more of my photos from the show on the theater's facebook page here

love, laurie

"the sweet caroline tour"

on saturday we had a neil diamond tribute show at our theatre.  i've been working on this show for 2 years now since i originally booked it.  it was another show that was postponed from the pandemic, so i was thrilled that we finally got to do it!  

jay white is a las vegas headliner who has been performing as neil diamond for over 3 decades!  he looked like neil diamond, sounded like neil diamond, and even talked like neil diamond. 

the real neil diamond himself said that jay white is the closet thing you can get to him!  it was a spectacular show, easily one of our best ever.  

you can see more of my photos from the show on the theater's facebook page here

love, laurie

"wake up with the arts"

on friday morning, our county arts department held their annual "wake up with the arts" event.  arts organizations in our county are invited to make a centerpiece for the tables.  two years ago, we themed our centerpiece with a children's show we had going on at the theatre.  this year, i did a fall theme so that i could reuse the fall decorations to decorate our box office.

the event was virtual last year, so we were happy to be back in person this year.  i didn't get any photos during the actual event, but i did snap one photo of the centerpiece on thursday afternoon when i set it up.  the chalkboard says: "fall in love with live theater this autumn at the theater at north!"

love, laurie

happy anniversary, mom and dad!

this has always been one of my favorite pictures of my mom and dad (taken back in 1979, one year before they were married).  today is their 41st wedding anniversary!  i'm blessed to have two amazing parents who are such wonderful role models.  

happy anniversary, mom and dad!

love, laurie

"when we dead awaken"

it took me awhile to sort through all of the photos from the play we did last weekend at the university where we work.  i shot over 400 photos during the photo shoot at dress rehearsal a few days before the show opened.  i finally narrowed them down to a manageable 85 for the theatre department to have.  here are just a few . . .

love, laurie

twinning

for the play at the university last weekend, we dug all of our old university theatre swag out of storage in the basement.  we were twinning on friday in our marywood players polos.  when we put them on, ryan looked at me and said "oh my god, these shirts are older than the students!"  it took us a minute to ponder, but it was true, our polos were older than the university students who were in the show!  when we told the kids that, they got a kick out of it!

love, laurie

look, ma, we're in the paper!

our local newspaper has a feature called "out and about" which runs on sundays and wednesdays.  staff photographers from the newspaper go out to local events happening around our area and take photos of people at those events.  a photographer showed up at our production of "the rat pack" last weekend and snapped some pictures of our audience members.  while he was there, he took one of our crew too.  it ran in today's paper!

love, laurie

make sure dad is clean!

when dad comes home dirty from a long day working in the theatre, naturally you need to clean him up!

it always makes me laugh when leko decides he needs to lick ryan's hair, but when he makes up his mind that's what he's doing, there's no stopping him!

love, laurie

we survived!

we survived the long weekend of shows and strike for the play we were working on at the university.  we used to have a tradition when we were students of taking a "we survived" photo of the cast and crew after strike.  we took our own in the car yesterday after finishing strike.  super proud of how well everything went and the work we did on this production!

happy monday!

love, laurie

behind the light board

in his natural habitat . . . behind the light board.

love, laurie

it's showtime!

it's opening night tonight for the show that ryan and i have been working on for months at the university where we both work/teach.  this show has been a wonderful challenge and even though the script is an odd one, i'm very proud of the way the show turned out.  it was a good team of people from the design team to the production crew to the actors.  

this one has been a labor of love.  i'm proud of the costume design that i did and very proud of ryan's lighting design and the set that he constructed.  ryan also served as the production manager and technical director too, so he really had his hands full but did such an incredible job. 

a video production student chose to make a documentary about the show for her senior project.  she has been filming all of us for weeks as we've been working on the show.  the documentary won't be done until the spring semester, but in the meantime she took some of our rehearsal footage to make a promo video for the show.

i'm excited for everyone to see the work that went into this show.  here we go . . . opening night!

love, laurie

"the rat pack"

on sunday we worked another show at the theatre that was reschedule so many times because of the pandemic (i think it was like 4 different times!) so we were happy to finally get the show happening in person.  it was a rat pack tribute and it ended up much better than i ever expected which turned out to be a pleasant surprise for me!  you can see more of my photos from the show on the theatre's facebook page here.  onto the next one!

love, laurie

another show

as if i needed one more thing added to my plate this week, i worked the load in of the broadway musical "rain" since broadway touring season is back in swing.  it was funny to work this show right after having done our other beatles tribute show.  i'll be back over there to load out the show tomorrow night, then onto the next one!

love, laurie

getting closer

oh man, we're getting closer and closer to the show we've been working on at the university.  after many months, wardrobe is finally done and we're ready to start dress rehearsals.  i can't believe opening night is thursday already.  this project has certainly been a labor of love.  i'm exhausted. 

love, laurie

hello, october

wow, how is it october 1st already today?!  we've been so busy with work that we haven't even decorated our house for fall yet (which we traditionally do the beginning of september each year).  i mean, it's not like we're ever around to even look at the decor anyway. 

we made it to friday.  it's going to be another long weekend again.  maybe one day we'll get to rest!

love, laurie