Comics Night at the Theater

As of September I've lived in Vermont for five years now, and that got me thinking of all things I hadn't done yet even though this is such a small state. Like, I still haven't done the Champlain Chocolates tour or been to the Fairbanks Museum, or seen a show at Northern Stage, even though they're just down the street from me!

I'd also recently read about a program in Portland Oregon called "Comics Night at the Opera", where cartoonists where invited to the Portland Opera's dress rehearsals to sketch the performance. The idea was to give the performers a rehearsal audience, the cartoonists a chance to practice life drawing and see a show they wouldn't be able to otherwise afford, and for the theater to generate publicity for the show.

So, I decided to give it a shot and e-mailed Northern Stage with the idea. Luckily, their Community Engagement Manager, Kyle Silliman-Smith, didn't think I was crazy and totally made this happen. It was a blast!

Here's my sketches:





Here's the cast:

Glinda/Aunt Em, Jane Brockman
Elvira Gulch/Wicked Witch, Catherine Doherty
Professor Marvel/Oz/Henry, Jason Guy
The Tin Man, Robert Koutras
Dorothy Gale, Veronica J. Kuehn
The Scarecrow, Kevin Loreque
The Cowardly Lion, Ken Prymus
Toto, Sprinkles

About 20 CCS Students, Alumni, Faulty and Staff made it to the events. Here's some of their impressions:

Jen Vaughn
A couple people brought watercolors to sketch with, which was an awesome idea! I love Jen's drawings of the Lady Gaga-influenced tree and Oz citizen costumes.

Lena Chandhok
Lena managed to capture one of the costumes from the "Jitterbug" song, which was an fantastic dance number. I didn't draw anything during that scene, too busy sitting there all slack-jawed in amazement.

Bryan Stone
Bryan actually manages to keep an almost-daily sketchblog (a feat unto itself) and his sketches went up in what seemed like minutes after the performance was finished.

I'll add more links as they come. But in conclusion- this event was great, you should see the show if you can (it runs until Jan 2nd) and I really hope that CCS and Northern Stage can do this again.

EDIT:
There's another post and more link here!