First Date book by Austin Winsberg, lyrics by Alan Zachary & Michael Weiner

This show takes it audience on the kooky first date of Aaron and Casey. Their worst fears, insecurities, inner critics, and support systems come out as hallucinations (graciously played by the other patrons of the bar) to help guide them through their night. Complete with show stopping musical numbers from the bartender, heart wrenching conversations, and a few awkward pauses, this show truly is one of a kind.

The environment

For this show, my assistant (my bestie Bethany Cantrelle) and I were in charge of set dressing for the bar as well-- which means we washed over 250 of donated alcohol bottles. We sorted (and resorted and sorted one more time), filled, found lids for, and hot glued all 222 bottles that ended up on the wall. The ones not drank by cast were dyed to mimic the liquor's color, while the ones drank by actors were unsweet tea, water, or grape juice.

Musical Instruments

During The Awkward Pause, we had a merry band of folks come out with instruments to sing to our love birds. It was established early on that our main two characters' hallucinations/inner thoughts would be easily distinguishable through the use of color. With that in mind, I picked out colors similar to the puppet we already had to incorporate into our hallucinations.

Hot glue muslin to the inner buckets

Materials

4 Paper/cardboard buckets

Muslin

Cardboard tube

Paint (spray and acrylic)

Hot glue

Cut tube to desired length and fit through cut holes in the outer buckets. Repeat cuts on the inner buckets

Fit test!

Two shades of orange spray paint to give slight texture

Detail with the same blues as guitar.

Bongos, assemble!

Materials

Broken guitar from stock

Acrylic paint

Fishing line

Wood glue

Super glue

Putty

this sure is broken! good thing it doesn't need to be played!

paint mock up for director

realize orange makes more sense and do that instead...

fix her up with some glue

(don't worry, I cleaned the drips up after I took this photo)

putty the remaining cracks

don't forget to sand the whole thing after its dried!

paint treatment

Materials

Cardboard tube

Purple foam

Beads

Patch 'n paint

Acrylic paint (same as guitar)

paint treatment

seal beads inside

Drugs

For the number That's Why You Love Me, our stoner guy needed some weed to brag about and coke to pour on the counter.

Materials

purple foam

acrylic paint

hot glue

flower foam

pre-modification

yucked up

glued to block / paint treatment

1/2 and 1/2 (by weight) mix of cornstarch and flour

coke bag in action

(press play to watch)

Casey: Natalie Raybourn British Ex: Jaylan Clay Stoner Ex: Wesley Carmicheal

Hedge trimmers

Aaron's hallucinated version of Casey's father is very upset that his daughter is with a Jewish man and goes on a musical rant about it. During this rant, he has a line about circumcision. The director wanted this moment to be highlighted via the use of oversized hedge trimmers.