Favorite Musicals

Hi, my name is Linda Boullion and I’m the Music Director for Little Shop of Horrors. It has been my privilege to be a part of the joint endeavors of the Norfolk Community Theatre and the Northeast’s Theatre and Music Departments for the past six years of musicals. I don’t think I can tell you which musical I liked the best in the past six years, but a few stand out. The first production, Fiddler on the Roof was amazing and My Fair Lady and Brigadoon had great songs. Then Adam told me we would be doing Sweeney Todd. I wasn’t real sure about this musical. But it was challenging and fun, turning my opinion completely around and I loved it! I have worked with a lot of great talent on the stage during these musicals!

I thought I would let you know how the musical process for this production worked. My part of the production began before auditions, simply working through all the music, checking the vocal ranges for each song, and determining the voice range necessary for each character. Then it was time for the auditions. Each person auditioning not only went through an acting audition, but they also needed to be prepared to sing a short song.

After the cast was determined the fun began. I scheduled as many one-on-one practice sessions as possible with the actors. One night a week we had a music rehearsal; going through individual solos and/or group songs. For this production we added drums and bass guitar, so that meant extra rehearsals for just the “band”. Finally about a month before the opening night, we began putting everything together on stage. This all added up to a lot of hours of rehearsing (I don’t even want to calculate the actual number of hours)!

I really enjoyed working on the Little Shop of Horrors, there is so much talent in this cast! I always enjoy working with Adam; his patience and leadership skills are impressive!