What it was like to be an Assistant Director

During the fall of 2019, I applied to be an Assistant Director for Great Oak Theatre Company's production of CARRIE: The Musical. Thankfully, I was chosen to be assistant to Director Creighton Morrison alongside my co-AD, Danica Frey. It was . . . stressful. We were on a pretty intense time crunch, with starting the entire process in december and having opening night the first week of March.

Rehearsal in the black box

DEC: Due to certain events, we had to cancel our in-person auditions planned for December. The director decided to set up video auditions via email. However, they created issues. A lot of people had trouble sending their videos and/or weren't sending it to every email address needed. After winter break, Co-President Tori Cline of GOTC set up a Google Form for people to re-submit their audition tapes so that way we can all access them, Directors, Singing Coaches, etc.

JAN: GO TIME! with two months to go until show week, we had to get started. The Director believed we did not have time to get a dance coach, so we had to choreograph musical numbers ourselves. I'm no dancer and I've never been in a musical before, so I had no idea what to do. Let's just say, the first month was a bit of a mess. We struggled with blocking and the Director was sick for a week. I blocked out as much as I could on paper to review with the Director, in hopes of getting a stable ground for when we have rehearsal. Luckily, Emily NIghtingale, who played as Margaret White in CARRIE, stepped in to be our choreographer because she wanted to add more intriget dances to the musical. The creative team set up a calendar with deadlines for blocking of specific scenes.

Choreography for musical number "CARRIE"

FEB: Opening night in one month. It was a long month. We had two saturday rehearsals lasting a long time with a lot of rehearsals during the week going overtime to try and squeeze ever scene, dance, song, tech necessity in. We had co-AD and Jack Norwood working on costumes for us and Stage Managers Raven Brewer and Emma Storkerson working on stage, props, lights, sound, etc. etc. with their amazing tech crew. My favorite aspect of this month was our saturday rehearsal where Raven Brewer and I blocked out and directed the Destruction Scene at Prom, later to be perfected and detailed by the Director, Creighton Morrison. It was a stressful, crazy month. I practically gave up doing homework and working on school just to work on this Musical day and night.

MARCH: OPENING WEEK! It was the most stressful week of my life. Rehearsals went late, dances still needed help, lights needed to be added, a lead was sick, etc etc etc. But, by opening night it was beautiful! I'm so happy with how it all pulled off, and I was so extremely proud of everyone that worked on this production! A M A Z I N G !

I will miss you GOTC, this was my last production with the company since I am a senior graduating. Love you all, Thank you for a beautiful last performance <3