AUBURN — Community Little Theatre has assembled a talented and experienced directorial team to stage the musical tour de force “Gypsy.” Written in 1959 by Arthur Laurents with music by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim, “Gypsy” tells the story of famous striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee. Told from the perspective of Mama Rose, Gypsy’s hard charging stage mother, the show takes us from Gypsy’s early days in vaudeville up to her career as a headliner in burlesque.
The director for this production of “Gypsy” will be Paul G. Caron. Known to CLT fans primarily for his work directing music (just recently for “Chicago” as well as CLT’s “Gypsy” in ’92), Paul “crosses over” every few years to direct. Rebecca Caron, an established CLT music director (and Paul’s niece) will be serving as the music director. Adam Blais will be responsible for the choreography, bringing the “bump and grind” front and center. Brandon Chaloux will serve as assistant director to the production. Completing the directorial team is Kay Warren serving as producer. She also serves as CLT’s executive producer.
It takes an array of people to stage a production of this size. The stage manager for “Gypsy” will be Jackie McDonald. Stephen Brakey will serve as assistant stage manager. Jackie and Stephen will be assembling a team, including Ashley Gallagher and Kim Gagne, to ensure that set changes happen quickly and fluidly, keeping the audience very much in the moment as the show progresses from location to location. Karen Mayo, CLT’s executive director, will be undertaking the task of costuming the cast — which means finding period costumes ranging from suits to stripper outfits. Karen, too, will have a team to assist her in finding, adapting or making over 100 costumes. Sound and lights will be designed by CLT’s popular technical team, Tom Anderson and Richard Martin, respectively. Tom will also run the sound board while David Marshall runs the lighting board. Sophie Wood will handle the spotlight.
Producer Kay Warren will be wearing an extra hat — undertaking the locating and organizing of props. She will be assisted in this task by Sue Caron. Local architect and CLT board member Bill Hamilton will be designing the many and unique sets, ranging from interior apartments to burlesque theaters. These sets will in turn be decorated by Jessica Henson. Completing the crew, CLT artistic director John Blanchette will manage the print publicity and CLT marketing and PR chair Danielle Eaton will manage the digital media.
Among the crew members for “Gypsy,” are Paul G. Caron, who will serve as director; Rebecca Caron, seated, who is music director and Kay Warren, who will serve as producer.
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