Live Band SCREAMTACULAR Behind-the-Scenes Peek
Get some behind-the-scenes previews of what we’re bringing to The Cat’s Crawl stage this September 27th
Poster art by Miss Munster
Usually, our SCREAMTACULARs are more generally “dark and sensual,” but I asked our soloists if we could go full horror this year and when they said yes, I was ELATED!
But, taking the show in a new direction means a LOT of brand new acts, props, costumes, and ideas. I’m a huge horror fan, so I kind of couldn’t help myself with some of the ridiculous, campy, over-the-top production elements we have planned.
It all starts with casting…
The first step is always to lock down our guest performers, get music and act ideas from all soloists, and start thinking about which acts would be best supported with dancers.
For this show, many of the soloists’ acts were truly made to be solo. But, we do have 2 brand new acts that were perfect for dancers to support, and I’ll be reworking my SCREAMTACULAR act from last year which already has two dancers.
Plus, we’re doing a ridiculous Slasher Group Dance inspired by Scooby Doo chase scenes and 80s slasher realness and we have a M3GAN dancer trio that I think is going to make a killing 😈
Check out the assortment of masks I got for our group dance. We had to alter some by adding padding, cutting eyeholes bigger, etc. Can you name all the movies (and 1 TV show)? 😏
Once we have all the soloist acts and their music selected, we start having conversations about choreography and I start casting the dancers. Here’s the general process:
Phone call with soloist to discuss act outline with dancers
I create and share a table with time stamps, blocking, and general movement ideas
We have a second call to finalize the act outline
I choreograph the entire dancer parts in my garage
We have 1 rehearsal where I set the choreography on the dancers
Somewhere around here I acquire costumes, or we set costumes that the dancers will provide themselves
We have 1 rehearsal with the soloist to block them into the act and work out any kinks
We have 2 more rehearsals of each act where we run the entire show
Showtime!
Here’s an example of an act outline table that the soloist and I use to more easily discuss choreography before it’s set.
One of our acts, Pansy St Battie’s act, to be specific, also has a costume sponsored by Marcie Belk. She’s creating a custom Jonesie costume (from Alien). Here’s the sketch (though we’ve since slutted it up a little bit).
Sketch by Marcie Belk
You can learn more about what the process of working with Marcie has been like in this reel I made:
Want to see more behind the scenes, including rehearsal clips and some production element spoilers? Join our membership to read the whole blog AND join us online or IRL for our invite-only member rehearsal this Saturday (9/13)!
