DIGITAL IMAGES or FINISHED PRINTS! Images are now available as digital downloads. Select the Digital Download option for each image you wish to purchase. Please read this before ordering.
This is your gateway to photos of Blake Stage Company productions starting in 2012 when Addison moved into high school, infected by the theatre but that found its way into her blood in middle high under the direction of Erin Lorenz. Ally is following suit, having been onstage with Addison in Legally Blonde The Musical. I’m working to get all of the shows into a consistent format, but they’re no less consistent than they were on the old site. You’re looking for production stills, though, and not a beautiful web site.
Introducing this theatre program in a few sentences is like trying to capture Disney in a few photos. This constantly arriving and graduating troupe, under the direction of Mr. Michel D’Anna and backed by the artistic set stylings of Mr. John Ovington, amaze audiences show after show.
Blake’s four-week Summer Theatre Institute adds to everyone’s chance to hone their singing, dancing and dramatic skills by adding a third major production to school-year spring and fall shows. Summer session also brings in student-actors from schools throughout the area and as far away as Nebraska. The Institute has also brought in talent including professional acting and voice coach Harry Winter, collegiate acting coaches and Blake alumni Charles Harper and Richard Muhammad, and choreographer and Blake alumnus Michelle Carter to make the theatre experience even more spectacular for both actors and audience.
A four-week middle-high version of the summer Institute under director Michael Kelley gives budding thespians as young as rising sixth graders a chance to experience the big stage and decide whether the spotlights or stagecraft are calling them.
Quite a few of you have asked about purchasing show photos. Thanks for your kind words! My primary goal was to give our thespians something to look at and show off after the Institute was over for the year. I’m an old school film photographer, though – from the days when we enjoyed prints by making them big and hanging them on walls – and have decided to make these available as both digital images AND real photographic prints. Not the ink jet kind of print, but ones from a real pro lab that will look as amazing as the shows themselves.
Theatre Lobby Postersfor many of our shows are ready for your walls. Additional posters will appear from time to time, so check back occasionally!
Blake Summer Musical Theatre Institute – Middle High session
WARNING: Looking at these photos on your phone’s screen will cause you to miss unspeakable amounts of enjoyment. Being a musical, most scenes have a lot of cast, who look like ants on your tiny pocket-size screen. Find a real computer with a real monitor – there has to be at least one in your house – to enjoy all you’re about to see.
The cast’s challenge was learning lines, blocking, songs and dances in four weeks. The crew’s challenge was turning lumber, foam and paint into a castle in about half that time. My challenge was bringing you photos of a play I wouldn’t be in town to shoot. By the end of the final dress rehearsal, the cast was doing a fine job being silverware, wolves and villagers, the scenic team had a move-in-ready castle onstage, and I had what amounted to a study of three days in the life of Blake Summer Musical Theatre Institute.
From Wednesday’s photos through Friday’s – covering three short days of dress rehearsal – you’ll see, if you have the patience to go through them all, not only a dramatic increase in the cast’s self-assuredness and stage presence, but some of the direction and coaching that got them there. You’ll see Mr. Bowerman and his assistants very actively demonstrating and developing in their young entertainers a wide range of stage skills that included ballroom dancing, fighting, swooning, tough-guying, rabble-rousing and sneaking into a beast’s castle.
As important to the show as Gaston being a pompous he-man and the developing chemistry between Belle and the Beast, are the expressions and reactions of the Ensemble to what leading characters say and do. Love-struck for Gaston and heartbroken over his pursuit of Belle, dismay and disgust over Belle’s love of books, and the whole village hitting the deck after one of Gaston’s mighty roundhouse blows are all things that look completely natural to us when they happen, but would stand out like a beast in a beauty pageant if they went missing. Ensemble cast learned well from their coaching, indeed.
Most of us see the show for the first time from the house (where all the seats are) on opening night – and a lot of us every night until final curtain. I hope you enjoy this rather lengthy backstage look at the three days that led up to opening curtain. Will you see photos very similar to others you just saw? Absolutely! This was Blake’s best-attended Middle High Summer Musical Theatre Institute that I remember, and my goal is to give every actor and actress photos of their performance to show off.
Wednesday’s photos present a good look at the onstage directing. Highlights from Thursday and Friday will give you the plot points, and the Thursday and Friday sections show the increasingly polished performances of both casts. You can share links to the photos from within the collections, and I hope you’ll find a photo or three worthy of your wall, scrapbook or special project. 25% of all purchases goes back to Blake Stage Company to help keep this dynamic program going strong.
WARNING: Looking at these photos on your phone’s screen will cause you to miss unspeakable amounts of enjoyment. Being a musical, most scenes have a lot of cast, who look like ants on your tiny pocket-size screen. Find a real computer with a real monitor – there has to be at least one in your house – to enjoy all you’re about to see.
All show and tech photos are online now for your viewing and reminiscing pleasure. The Tech section also contains Beauty and the Beast because the creative and production crews were largely the same and this makes them easier to look at. Come to think of it, the production crew was also creative team. Now that’s versatility!
Try to put the musical numbers with the photos!
For something else to do while you digest the hundreds of FOOTLOOSE! 2017 photos, before you leave your booth at the Burger Blast, enjoy some scenes from the way-back, when the Blake Summer Musical Theatre Institute show in 2013 was – you guessed it – FOOTLOOSE!
Sure you need a hero, but Momma says Where the H@%& is BOMONT?!!!
Just another four weeks of summer vacation. With one little exception. They all showed up on Monday morning – some complete strangers to each other – met, broke the ice, and started running lines, singing, dancing, building, painting, lighting and costuming their way through the incredibly short month to open FOOTLOOSE! a little over three-and-a-half weeks later.
Enjoy this look back at another show in the very impressive catalog of Blake High Summer Musical Theatre Institute productions!
What does one get when one adds a racy script from an English bedroom farce called Nothing On, an inept but amorous play company, and its frustrated director to an elaborate rotating set? One gets three first acts of the funniest play one has seen in quite some time. Did you ever wonder what went on backstage at that high-end show you got all dressed up to enjoy in its fancy theatre? Noises Off exposes it all, and those of us who have seen it here or anywhere else will never watch a play in quite the same way ever again.
The comedy was a show within a show, and the complete rotation of the set between Acts 1 & 2, and back again between 2 & 3, made for a fast-paced night of hilarity.
The Making the Magic collection offers a rare peek backstage at a bit of what went into the fabrication of the immense two-story set that kept playgoers in their seats through intermissions just to watch it spin between production and backstage environments. The cast was also the crew; everyone who wasn’t onstage for the night – double-cast performers on their off-nights, and even the sound and lighting crew – jumped into position at the end of each act to do their choreographed, well-rehearsed ballet of disconnecting, spinning, nudging and reconnecting the multiple pieces of the magical world, and cleaning up sardines and liquor spills, to ready the set for the next first act.
Many thanks to the highly-talented and dedicated cast, crew and directors who brought us this uproariously funny Michael Frayn creation. No actors were critically injured during construction or performances, but not one missed going home late in the evenings covered in Styrofoam, sawdust, primer, bangs, bruises and/or paint. Rumor has it that some of the paint we saw opening night was still wet…
Oh, just a reminder that what you may have been fortunate enough to enjoy live, or here for the first time through photos, was the work of a HIGH SCHOOL stage company.
The BLAKE HIGH SCHOOL STAGE COMPANY!
Enjoy the photos, and be sure to catch Noises Off if it comes to a town near you! Check BlakeStage.org for news of upcoming Blake Stage Company and Blake Children’s Theatre productions that are the best entertainment buy in the land.
Trivia challenge: Spot Rapunzel’s tower from Into The Woods on the set.
More photos are on their way. Also more coming for Bye Bye Birdie. Stay tuned.
The run has finished in front of the largest audiences in years; cast parties had, and set struck. That doesn’t mean that you can’t either relive, albeit sliently, your favorite moments from the one-to-five shows you enjoyed. Didn’t make it to a performance? Please take a few minutes to see how professionally staged Blake’s shows are, and keep checking BlakeStage.org for show dates for the spring performances of the Drama Desk Award-winning Noises Off! and the Blake Children’s Theatre production of McQuadle.
Charming isn’t Sincere and Nice is different than Good. Red looks smashing in Wolf after escaping same. Fairy tales converge, everyone has a Giant time and a few learn something about themselves – if they live…
This is a rather lengthy but fast-paced musical, full of enough plot and unforgettable characters that you’ll wonder where the time went. It runs 2:40 including a 15-minute intermission so you can go to the lobby and get yourself a treat. Act II is the missing act you never saw in the Jr. version in middle high, and you’ll understand why. You’ll see a little theatrical fog on the stage, so be aware. It adds to the sometimes tense moments in the woods, but pay attention and you’ll learn that moments are what woods are for.
This will be difficult while you’re sitting there lost in their uncertain world, but on your way out after the show, let it dawn on you that Blake Stage Company cast and crew are really high school students and not touring actors. This isn’t television that allows as many takes as it takes cast to get 20 seconds of lines right; this is theatre – real acting – that demands cast and production crew deliver a complete show, without do-overs, every time, or suffer the consequences. These young people of the critically acclaimed Blake Stage Company, a remarkable production company by any standard, put everything they have on the line, and on the stage, to transport us for a few hours, as my Blake Stage alumni daughter says, from our world into theirs.
These teenagers learn the story, rehearse their lines, choreograph their movements, get filthy and painty and sometimes a little banged up turning plywood, sheets of foam, canvas and paint into stone prison towers and larger-than-life story books with tiny rooms inside. They figure out the art of juggling 18 microphones whose volumes must go up and down at precisely the right moments, practice queuing giant footsteps and burps that have exactly one instant in time to happen, and condition their minds and fingers to create day and night, set your mood, and direct your attention with dozens of lights. And they do it all while going to school full time with the associated studying, testing and you name it. Remember school?
Now play a game. Spot the thespians before you in this or any other Blake Stage production who, in addition to creating theatrical environments and becoming their characters, are routinely covered in paint – brushed and spattered. Spot the student business director of the Stage Company. Spot the student choreographer. Spot the student costumer. Spot the cast and crew who are also swimmers, gymnasts, equestrians, dancers, oratorical competitors, ball players, student Ambassadors and members of student government, church youth leaders, community volunteers and participants in other endeavors about which you do not have the patience to read. These are the young people who have you in awe that you’re watching a show brought to you by people too young to vote and, in many cases, drive!
None of these musicals, dramas or touring Childrens Theatre productions would happen were it not for our talented and oh-so-highly dedicated artistic and technical directors who, like cast and crew, have families and lives outside of Blake and still make copious time to guide, encourage and otherwise mold our young into actors, actresses and theatre technicians capable of bringing the show to us. The calling to create first-class theatre from the raw material we parents send out our doors in the mornings surely requires a unique blend of the conflicting Sense of Urgency, and Patience.
Notice Mr. D’Anna and our other professional staff during shows. Watch what they do. They watch. They don’t direct, because by the time the curtain opens, it’s too late for that. You may occasionally see one of them at the controls of some technical thing if there aren’t enough students to cover all the bases, but for the largest part, they are audience. They trust that the cast and crew will deliver the show for which they have prepared during the previous six to eight weeks. They also expect them to make the occasional misqueue invisible with spontaneous creativity, because that’s what they teach, because there is no Take 2.
Come out to Blake High School in Silver Spring at 300 Norwood Rd. through November 19, 2016 and take in this hilarious – in places – production brought to you by the Blake Stage Company, under the direction of Michel D’Anna. Tickets are available at the door, and reserved tickets are online at ShowTix4U, and are, without a doubt, the best $13 entertainment bargain in town. The set alone is impressive enough to make the trip, and a show is included! The story books, Rapunzel’s tower and Grandmother’s house are stagecraft at a high level.
Bring your friends! Tell your neighbors! They’ll thank you after the show.
Photos are ready for two dress rehearsals and the first Saturday show. Rehearsal photos are your look into a tiny little bit of the incredibly hard work that goes into the making of these grand productions so that all we have to do is show up and escape reality for a few hours. I’ll photograph and post at least one more show to showcase the characters who are double-cast.
What do you get when you bring together 50 middle high actors, actresses, production staff and the talented Michael Kelley for four weeks? This year we got Lion King Jr! Enjoy these photographs of Mufasa, Simba, Nala, Pumbaa, Timon, Rafiki, wicked Uncle Scar and his hungry hyenas and a cast of other creatures.
You’ll see a LOT of photos here, some very similar to others, but my goal is to show your actor or actress in their best light – even when there was very little light on a dark scene! I hope that some will find their way onto your walls or into your scrapbooks. Digital files are now available in addition to classic prints.
More photos are on their way. Thanks for your patience.
Boy pins his steady girl. Army-bound musical heartthrob comes to town. Girl almost kisses heartthrob on national TV. Boy decks heartthrob. Boy and girl live happily ever after. Audience lives happily in the moment as the Blake High School Summer Musical Theatre Institute dazzles audiences for another summer with its production of Bye Bye Birdie.
Written by Michael Stewart, with lyrics by Lee Adams and music by Charles Strouse, this Tony and Emmy Award-winning Broadway play – turned TV movie – turned Blake Stage production ignited audiences with familiar and new-to-most songs and comedy. Enjoy some moments from the shows. Don’t panic if a sequence just stops; more photos are on the way.
“Though she be but little, she is fierce!” – Hermia
Blake thespians and audiences got more than they bargained for – Shakespeare twice in two years! After a successful futuristic
Hamlet, Blake Stage Company amazed audiences again with the comic A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photos currently include a dress rehearsal and the first part of Friday’s opening night. Check back for more after you’ve gone through these.
And you’re correct if you thought that a few of the fairies were a bit small to be Blake regulars. Director Michel D’Anna added a youth ensemble as an extra treat. Many thanks to our elementary and middle high cast members who added so tremendously much to the mainstage atmosphere!
Big monitors work better for these – trust me. You’ll miss a lot on your phone’s screen – even a large two-handed one that works fine for Angry Birds!
“Everything always works out in musicals. In the real world, nothing ever works out and the only people who burst into song are the hopelessly deranged.” – Man in Chair
Running through November 21 at Blake High School in Silver Spring, MD, this Tony Award and Drama Desk Award winning Musical Within a Comedy by Bob Martin and Donna McKellar, with music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison, is a must see. The show was written as a wedding gift to actress Janet Van Degraaf and Robert Martin, who happen to be its two leading characters to this day.
“We got no troubles …life is the bubbles under the sea!” – Sebastian
Don’t try to tell one stubborn little mermaid named Ariel that the seaweed isn’t greener on the other side of the surface.
Director Michael Kelley’s Blake Middle High Summer Theatre Institute brought the Little Mermaid and her sisters, her dad King Triton, Sebastian, Flounder, Scuttle and company to Blake’s mainstage to cap off their four-week 2015 summer session. The Theatre Institute, one for middle high and one for high school students (browse the Legally Blonde photos after you’re finished here!) introduces budding and experienced actors and theatre technicians to a lot of the aspects of creating a show from set construction to singing, dancing and acting, to a taste of directing their own skit, to some improvisational comedy in front of the hundreds in the audience.
And there’s one seriously unpleasant sea witch, Ursula, who makes deals with unsuspecting people and then collects – and sings about – those poor unfortunate souls.
Rehearsal and performance photos are combined in story order for Little Mermaid for a little better continuity. Lighting was more dramatic for the shows when I was tethered to the back of the theatre, but I was able to roam around freely during rehearsals for closeups in more even lighting. I hope the mix presents you or your actors and actresses in everyone’s best ‘light’.
