Twenty Years of Rock N’ Roll
Mar 15th, 2009 by Alex
For over a decade February and March have been busy months for me, mostly due to my involvement with Rock N’ Roll Revival at Severna Park High School. For these two months, a lot of effort is expended by our tech crew — along with numerous alumni and parents — to put forth an excellent show long before the cast ever steps foot on the stage or the band picks up their instruments.
This year I set out to document the entire process rather than just taking a few pictures of the completed set. I wanted to do it in such a way that our respective families, friends and loved ones — who don’t see a whole heck of a lot of us during the production season — could see what exactly we’ve been doing this whole time. Many of them end up seeing the show, but that doesn’t always translate into what we put into it. The audience may see the flashing lights and hear the vocals, but they don’t see what it took to hang and aim the lights, build the stage, or paint the set.
After two months of annoying students and alumni alike with my flash and interrupting work to get cleaner shots, the result of my effort is over 500 photos and a handful of videos that span 30 working days. From the clearing of the stage to the beginning of the sold out opening night, it’s all here. There have been one or two work nights that I’ve missed, but for the most part what I’ve got is a fairly thorough account.
For those who have been involved in the show (or any large stage show), this is all old hat but you might be interested to see what all has changed since you were involved. We’re renting line arrays now, for example. There’s a lot of technical and gadget-like photos that might be of interest to those in the technical arts. For those in the cast and band of this year’s show (or past shows), it’s a glimpse of what had to happen to ensure that your talents could be seen and heard.
It’s been a great year.
Note: We opened this past Friday. If you plan to see this year’s production and like everything to be a surprise, don’t follow the link above until after you’ve been to the show.
All I can say is WOW! I had no idea the amount of effort that went into those productions. Your pictures were fantastic!