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Wednesday, October 12, 2011

The Art of the Musical

This holiday season the PIP is bringing you an improvised musical set in the magical landscape of the North Pole and Santa's Workshop. Each night we will have a Special Guest Star playing the role of Santa, while all the elves and woodland creatures will be played by puppets.

Though the PIP has created puppet musicals in the past, this show will be unique in its focus.  We are trying some new skills with that will make it unlike any other improvised puppet musical we've done. First, we are really focusing on character development and will be creating puppet characters that will have a life of their own outside the show.  We are doing this by developing character histories, and working closely with a small cast who will consistently play the same puppet character(s) throughout the show.

In addition to building our character skills, we are bringing in Susan Dias -- a veteran Sesame Street writer, and NYC musical theater improvisation instructor -- to help train the cast to strengthen the "book musical" quality of the show. We also hope to be joined by a few new musicians and musical guests.

"Elf Employment" (title by Valerie Ward) is directed by Sara Farr, who will join the cast in playing in the show. Other cast members include: Kate Bojanek, Topping Haggerty, Howard Katz, Patrick Knisley, Amy McKenna, Jesse Overright and Chadwick Smith.

The show is presented by Gnap Theater Projects in their mainstage show for the first 3 weekends in December. For more info and tickets, visit the http://www.gnaptheater.org website.