News
After first production draws capacity crowds, Marshall Button hopes musical becomes an annual event
MADELAINE KEENLYSIDE TIMES & TRANSCRIPT
The director of Moncton’s successful musical production of The Sound of Music is hoping the collaboration of local talent will become an annual event.
Marshall Button said the performances from Feb. 18 to 21 at The Capital Theatre drew capacity crowds and exceeded his expectations.
“We’re pretty happy with ourselves,” he said. “It seemed to be the perfect storm of the right people, right time, high calibre. What I wasn’t prepared for was the whole sense of (that) this was coming from our own community.”
More than 6,000 people attended the musical, which was staged by the The Capitol Theatre and Tutta Musica, an ensemble of professional musicians with Sistema New Brunswick, a program of the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra.
The production had a budget of $140,000, consisting of a one-time $85,000 provincial grant, funds raised by the theatre and donations from sponsors. Ticket sales alone garnered $160,000. Button said any profit will be invested into future projects.
“It was one of those things where everything just came together,” Button said.
This includes the talent of professional and local performers, including area students, the calibre of the show, and the smooth transitions between scenes allowed by the innovative digital screen technology used as part of the set. The tall, movable digital screen can be separated into pieces or connected to a wall and saved up to 30 minutes of set changes, Button said, adding that it was the only technology of its kind east of Montreal.
“It could be (arranged into) 60 different 20-inch screens,” he said. “It can be configured any number of ways.”
For The Sound of Music, the screens were spread out across the stage in four vertical strips, making set changes as easy as switching from one projection to the next.
Button had high praise for the musical direction of Antonio Delgado and Tutta Musica.
“There are times it just takes you away to another place,” Button said, about the music.“You forget you’re in a theatre, you get swept away. So often now these performances are done with recorded music, with CDs.”
The marriage of traditional practices with new technology interests Button, as does drawing on local talent. The 75-person cast and crew were all hired from the Greater Moncton region.
“I’ve always maintained there’s probably as much talent on your street as you would find anywhere,” Button said. “There’s probably someone who could draw, or someone who could sing or be coached into acting a scene the right way. It’s just a question of recognizing it.”
The world is full of people from Metro Moncton who are successful in the arts but haven’t been able to work in their own backyard, he said.
Shediac-born actress Josée Boudreau played Maria in the production.
“For all her success, (she) never had the opportunity to perform at the Capitol (before this),” he said.
Discussions are being held on what steps to take next.
“We’ve received lots of feedback from audience members, even about other productions we could use the screens with,” he said.“There seems to be a taste for it.”
