Legally Blonde: The Musical at Gateway Playhouse

For the past few weeks, we have been preparing for and performing Legally Blonde: The Musical at the Gateway Playhouse on Long Island. Based on the movie "Legally Blonde," starring Reese Witherspoon, the show tells the story of Elle Woods, a blond sorority president at UCLA who follows her ex-boyfriend to Harvard, and finds her own path on the way. Our production was directed by Tom Kosis and Leah Hofmann.

All photos taken from the Gateway Playhouse Facebook page

Ruby Lewis portrays Elle's surprisingly touching journey very well. As my father said when he saw the show, you find yourself rooting for Elle, despite the fact that she's rich, from Malibu, and gets into Harvard with nothing but a cheerleading routine.

The Harvard acceptance is, however, the only part of the script that sticks out for me as positively ditzy. I learned I would be running the light board for Blonde and was apprehensive at having to watch and listen to the show every day, sometimes twice a day, but I've been pleasantly surprised by how not-tired I am of the songs and the story. It moves along at a fantastic pace and with a huge amount of scene and character changes by almost all of the cast, it's impossible to be bored.Our production also stars Brent Michael DiRoma as Emmett, Ruth Pferdehirt as Paulette (and Matt Nolan as Kyle the UPS guy, together they perform some of my favorite parts of the show!) as well as Kristin Wetherington as Vivienne.

As an electrics intern on the show, I worked on preparing some light-up set pieces called portals (basically false prosceniums) by embedding different colors of rope light inside of them. They are used during the show in several cues, especially the pink (of course!) with a glow that adds to the scene. The scenery was designed by Robert Andrew Kovach for the Ogunquit performance of Blonde in August, where our sets are moving next; we worked closely with Kim Hanson, our lighting designer, to get the lights in place and focused and into cues.

Running the light board means that I come in before the show and turn on the power, unlock backstage doors, turn on all the lights, and go through one at a time to make sure everything is working. Myself and the other electricians- one of whom is running spotlight, and one of whom is our deck electrician to keep an eye on things from onstage during the show- will fix things if needed before the show begins. Then during the play the stage manager calls the light cues for me and I watch from the booth for any surprises, in electrics or otherwise, being one of the only people who can see what the audience is seeing. It's a lot of responsibility, but I love it.

To see Legally Blonde at the Gateway Playhouse, check the website here. Also visit the NY Times review of the production here.