Podcast appearances and mentions of rachel rockwell

It all began with an unexpected phone call. Actor/singer, Missy Aguilar, shares an ultimate career-defining moment. This episode is dedicated to the memory of Chicago’s own, Rachel Rockwell.

Social Media: Facebook: Faith Trust and Pixie Dust - Podcast Email: 1stgeek411@gmail.com Twitter: @FTPD_PodcastPersonal Twitters: @Sparkle_Fists @SpilledXWater @deanna790Check us out on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Spotify!!!Shoutouts to: Tory, Dom, Ray for support and comments and Ashley for sharing some cool art...and potential future cosplay motivation.● “Feature Film”○ Bedknobs and Broomsticks○ Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a 1971 Disney film starring Angela Lansbury and David Tomlinson set in WWII England. Charlie, Carrie, and Paul are children displaced from London by German bombings and are put into the reluctant care of Miss Eglantine Price - an apprentice witch learning her craft via a correspondence course.○ The children find out Miss Price’s secret when they see her flying on a broom and attempt to blackmail her. Miss Price buys their secrecy with a transportation spell that allows their bed to travel anywhere in the world and explains that she is trying to use her powers to end the war. However, in a bit of an ironic twist, it appears as though the war has put a premature end to her course. Still determined to use magic to end the war, Miss Price and the children take the bed to London to find her teacher, Professor Emelius Browne. They find Mr. Browne, but it turns out that he is nothing but a street magician turned con-artist who had no idea that his “spells” actually work. When Miss Price asks about the spells, he says he got all of them from a book he found - but he doesn’t have the entire book.Delighted at the prospect of his spells actually working and the idea of a duo performing act starring himself and Miss Price, Mr. Browne leads the group to the Portobello Road marketplace in hopes of finding the rest of the book - in their search they come across the mysterious criminal the Bookman - who has the other half of the book, which reveals that the spell is written on a medallion on the mystical Island of Naboombu.Our group takes the bed to Naboombu and meet the King - who is wearing the sought-after medallion and is very upset that they don’t have a referee for their soccer match. Mr. Browne agrees to referee the match and attempts to use the opportunity to get a better look at the medallion.After a chaotic soccer match, the group manages to retrieve the spell and return to England. The “substitutiary locomotion” spell makes inanimate objects move in a lifelife way, and as the group returns and finds a Nazi invasion in England, Miss Price uses the spell to create an army of inanimate objects and fend off the Nazis. Afterward, she is pleased with her success, but has decided to give up magic and continue looking after the children. Mr. Browne is inspired to do something more important and joins the army (promising to return to Miss Price after ;) )○ Fun facts: ○ Weird relationship with Mary Poppins - Bedknobs repeatedly shelved○ Stage musical -2019???? Rachel Rockwell - director/choreographer. Release date now TBA● Segment: This week in Disney history “Once Upon a Time”○ March 7, 2010: Disney-Pixar's Up wins Best Animated Feature Film at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards.○ March 9, 2018: 2018: The live-action science fiction film A Wrinkle in Time is released by Walt Disney Pictures.● Segment: Misc “Whosits and Whatsits Galore”○ CAPTAIN MARVEL!!!!● Segment: News/Announcements “The Newsies Banner”○ Disney + is in the news - predicted 160 million subsciptions○ Maleficent: Mistress of Evil announced for October 18, 2019○ CAPTAIN MARVEL!!!!● Segment: weekly top 4 (secret from each other)”Let’s get down to business”● Top 4 WORST Disney movies:○ Hunchback of Notre Dame 2○ Maleficent○ The Haunted Mansion○ Ella Enchanted Next Week: Movie: Captain Marvel!! Top 4: ?

Long time friend and Gary's collaborator on the legendary Klub Kokomo joins us in the Booth to talk about that amazing production and his career as an actor, director, producer, and coach to trial lawyers. Richard directed and Gary was the stage manager for Paul Stanley's production of this wild show in 2000. Read about it here. Our producer was there and has never seen anything like it. A few highlights: They transformed the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts into a nightclub. The show was environmental and interactive (including working bars). Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and the Raiders fame played a 15 minute set at each intermission. Wish you could have seen it. Richard draws on his background as a theatre artist to train lawyers on presentation skills for the courtroom and depositions. In his business, Speaking Legally, he works with partner Kevin Theis  (episode 58) on coaching performance skills. Chicago Litigation Consultants brings actors into law firms or law schools to portray clients or witnesses to train lawyers in trial practice. Sounds like fun and interesting work. Gary asks him if he's ever had a hopeless case. No, but Richard describes a very interesting challenging client. Thanks once again to awesome friend of the show, Nancy Needles, we learned about an amazing "Urban Glamping Experience" at The Gwen Hotel here in Chicago. You must check out the glamorous details. We think $5,500 per night is extreme, even if you are allowed to share it among 7 people. Still, it's a fun thing to imagine doing. Gary tells us about our friend Jennifer Engstrom's marvelous performance doing exerpts from her Dorothy Parker show at A Red Orchid's fund raiser (which we attended the night after she was on the show).  Jennifer is the real deal, in so many ways. We were thrilled to get to witness some of Frank's mentorship of Jen in action. Richard is an official Tony award voter - first on our show! He and Gary did some fun predictions and we will let you know how that went. Big love to The Band's Visit! A heartfelt thank you to Carnegie Mellon and the Broadway League for recognizing Melody Herzfeld, the remarkable drama teacher at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas high school, with a Tony award. Will write more about that next episode. We, like so so many others, loved Rachel Rockwell. The point of this part of our show is to celebrate and honer someone we admired. Listen to his lovely tribute that includes some beautiful quotes about who she was and her work from her dear friend and collaborator, Rick Boynton, as well as from her dad. Read Chris Jones' obituary here. We were fortunate to be able to spend an afternoon with her as our guest on episode 57.                    

Gary welcomes actor, director, producer, choreographer, casting and teaching professional Stephen Schellhardt to the co-host chair of Booth One this week. Longtime listeners to the program may remember Stephen as a panel guest when we recorded our all-things Sondheim Episode 38 before a live audience at Writers Theatre. His recent production of Urinetown received glowing notices. See a review here. Stephen will next be seen as Melman the Giraffe in Madagascar The Musical at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, directed by friend of the show, episode 57 guest Rachel Rockwell. More details. Stephen is about to begin a position at Northwestern University where he'll be teaching Musical Theatre. We're going to put that knowledge to the test in this Episode 60! Gary and Producer Betsy just returned from a whirlwind trip to New York City where they saw 6 Broadway shows in 5 days! Here's a rundown of the cavalcade: Sweat - Terrific play with a fine ensemble cast. Khris Davis! This show will have a lot of legs on the regional circuit with one set and important timely subject matter. Sadly, the 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning play just closed in NY, but it will have a long and profitable life after Broadway. Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 - Lavish, interactive spectacle of a production, but we found it curiously un-engaging, despite having the best seats of our trip. Gary never found the emotional heart of the piece, though the last 20 minutes are very moving. Still, it's a long slog to get to those final moments and it's not a show we can highly recommend, except for the fact that you'll not see anything else as lavish as this anywhere, and Josh Groban is exceptional as Pierre. A Doll's House, Part 2 - Laurie Metcalf deserves all the acclaim she's received for this performance in Lucas Hnath's imaginative sequel to Ibsen's classic. The rest of the cast - Jane Houdyshell, Chris Cooper and Condola Rashad, all nominated for Tony's - round out this genuinely entertaining and thought-provoking dramedy. Maybe a bit too short and some unexplored themes, but it's for Metcalf that one should see this particular production. Gary likens her star turn to what it might have been like to see Hepburn or Davis on the stage in their heyday. A true American theater treasure! The Little Foxes - Seeing Laura Linney and Cynthia Nixon in this searing Lillian Hellman play was to see acting at it's finest. Perfectly cast and superbly staged, Gary and Betsy were also very impressed by Richard Thomas and Michael McKean's performances. We saw the version for which Linney and Nixon were nominated - Regina and Birdie respectively. Stephen comments that the two actresses believe this combination plays against their types. That's what acting is all about, and what a pair of powerhouse actors they are! As of this publication, this show is also now closed, but it's a theater-going memory that will live in our minds for a long time to come. Come From Away - Words cannot describe the heartfelt joy and spontaneous enthusiasm this show engendered in us. It's a musical that shouldn't really work, given its subject matter and minimalist plot. But it was perhaps our favorite show of the whole trip. This as well will play beautifully in "the provinces", and crowds should certainly adore it as much as the one on the night we saw it. A terrific score and fantastic staging. With a cast of ordinary-looking townsfolk and air passengers, the show utilizes just a single stationary set (with a small turntable), a couple of tables and a dozen or so chairs. When it comes to your town, run, don't walk to experience this gem of a musical! The cast album is on repeat in Stephen's car! The Play That Goes Wrong - For sheer fun and entertainment, here was a show that we went to on a whim with half-price tickets from the TKTS Booth. This play features a great ensemble of physical comedy actors and a set that fully deserves its Tony Award for Best Scenic Design.

Booth One welcomes the amazing Rachel Rockwell to our studios amidst her action-packed schedule. Her beautiful production of Shakespeare in Love has just opened at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, and she has about a million other irons in the fire. As a choreographer, Rachel was nominated for Joseph Jefferson Awards for The King & I (2007) and A Chorus Line (2011). As a director, she received Jeff Award nominations for Miss Saigon (2009); The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee—Best Musical (2009); Ragtime (2010) and 42nd Street (2011). For her acclaimed Drury Lane Oakbrook Theatre production of Ragtime (11 Jeff nominations and seven awards), she received the Joseph Jefferson Award as Best Director of a musical. As Director, Jeff Award nominations (2012) for Best Director and Best Musical: The Sound of Music and Sweeney Todd at Drury Lane Oakbrook Theatre; and Best Play: Enron at Timeline Theatre Company. In 2013, her production of Oliver! received a Jeff nomination for Best Musical. In 2014, she received Jeff Award nominations (Director, Choreography and Best Musical) for the revival of Brigadoon at The Goodman Theatre and Les Miserables at Drury Lane Oakbrook. Her production of Brigadoon was named Best Musical and she was named Best Choreographer for that production. She won the Jeff Award for Best Choreography for her production of Billy Eliot in 2015. In 2016, she won the Jeff Award as Best Director for her production of Ride The Cyclone at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre.[22] She has directed notable Children's Theatre productions at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. At CST, she also choreographed productions of The Merry Wives of Windsor, Romeo and Juliet, and Measure For Measure. Since the mid-nineties, Rockwell has directed and choreographed dozens of productions for such theaters as: Steppenwolf, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Drury Lane Theatre Oakbrook, Marriott Theatre Lincolnshire, Paramount Theatre, Noble Fool Theatricals, Fox Valley Repertory, Apple Tree, The Little Theatre on the Square, SIU Summer Theatre and McCleod Summer Playhouse. Rachel is also working on writing and developing new musicals. Look out world!!! Booth One has a couple of ideas we may be passing by her desk. Rachel is the third musical genius to come on our show who hails from Indiana. Beckie Menzie and Danni Smith, both past guests and friends of the show, cultivated their talents in the Hoosier State. We're wondering what's in the water over there!? Rachel credits her success to a long line of mentors and teachers, including Buzz Miller, who danced Bob Fosse's brilliant choreography in the seminal "Steam Heat" on Broadway and in the film of The Pajama Game. Rachel was Dance Captain in Mamma Mia on Broadway and the National Tour, and she gives us some backstage insight about what a difficult and important job this is. She choreographs in her car(!) and counter-clockwise in her living room to avoid the coffee table. So yeah, kind of a genius. Deb Acker, the production stage manager at Chicago Shakespeare, says Rachel is the most prepared director she's ever worked with. Rachel tells us why she prepares so thoroughly. Gary and Rachel talk the 2017 Tony Award nominations and Rachel particularly recommends Come From Away. Martha Lavey,  a mentor to us all and a huge force in the Chicago theater community, is our Kiss of Death segment this week. There are no words. But these journalists come close: Hedy Weiss for the Chicago Sun Times Chris Jone for the Chicago Tribune New York Times        

The title of Brigadoon, the 1947 musical by Lerner and Lowe, refers to a mythical Scottish town that appears for only a single day every 100 years. Though not quite as seldom seen as the town, Brigadoon the musical — the first hit by the team that later created the legendary shows My Fair Lady and Camelot — hasn’t had a Broadway revival in more than three decades. But it has been given a big new production, now extended through Aug. 17, at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. The show is directed and choreographed by Rachel Rockwell with a revised book by Brian Hill. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood went to see it and lets us know whether Brigadoon — the show — deserves to be so elusive.

On Tuesday, December 4, 2012, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society hosted a panel on women directors and choreographers in Chicago with panelists Rachel Rockwell, Joanie Schultz, Kimberly Senior, and Leigh Silverman, moderated by Michael Halberstam. Together, the panel and the audience strive to answer the question, "How can all of us - our collaborators, theatres, service organizations - support the growth and furtherance of women as directors and choreographers?"