Introduce Yourself

[Bobster]

16 years later, I'm a software engineer with two beautiful and brilliant daughters.

And a beautiful wife. 

[Bobster]

Robert's presence amps up any Disney trip!

 

[Gsavage14]

I'm Graeme, I think I joined the original board sometime around 2003, as something of a Sondheim newbie.

I live between Bath and Bristol, working at the Theatre Royal Bath, but have also run my own youth theatre for almost 20 years, and directed and MD'd various other groups in that time, which has given me the opportunity to direct Into the Woods three times, Sweeney Todd three times, Company, West Side Story four times, and crowbar his songs from Dick Tracy into otherwise dreary productions of Bugsy Malone! I do direct non-Sondheim stuff too, when I have to...
My wife Sarah sometimes choreographs and appears with the adult company which has grown from the youth theatre, and my 9 year old daughter is already a veteran of a crazy number of shows. The 3 year old son is still to decide whether he wants to join in too, although he is word perfect on Hamilton, Spamalot and Guns n Roses... 😂

Have made some great friends through FTC, even those ive not met outside of cyberspace, but they've always been on hand for offering sage advice, listening to problems, and usually diffusing seemingly awful situations with a healthy dose of black humour and a 'show must go on' attitude! Long may it continue.

And in the words of Boadacea Overall, "That's me, and everyone else is just chorus, so shall we crack on...?" 😂

[KathyB]

I'm Kathy. I live in a suburb east of Denver. I joined the original board in 1999 or so, after lurking for five years because I didn't have a regular Internet connection--only one wherever I happened to be working at the time. I'm far from the longest-tenured person on the board, though. Robert definitely predates me, and so do some other people on the member list.

I don't remember what exactly got me into Sondheim specifically. I'm thinking it was Sunday in the Park with George, which came out when I was in high school and going through a major musical theatre stage (which I never grew out of). I already knew that Sondheim wrote "Send in the Clowns" and that it was part of a musical called A Little Night Music, and that he wrote the lyrics to West Side Story, but somehow at that time something clicked in me. I purchased Follies in Concert because it had Mandy Patinkin and George Hearn in it. I purchased the book Sondheim & Co. (still a fantastic book even if it hasn't been updated in how many years). I saw Sweeney Todd in my freshman year in college. I wrote an art history paper on the similarities between the organization on A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte and the music in Sunday in the Park with George, after four years annoying my fellow art students blasting "Color and Light" and "Putting It Together" in art class. 😊

Other than that, I like listening to music (all types), going to the theatre and reading. And trying to find the best french fries in the state of Colorado.

[Leighton]

I'm Leighton.  I joined in late 2001/early 2002 ... I think I joined under the name Beadle ... although I might be making that up!

I was 15/16 when I joined, and living in south Wales; I'm now 31, and a Head of Department (Drama, naturally) in a private girls' school in Reading, England.  I'm just finishing my fourth year of teaching, having initially trained as an actor at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (though it wasn't royal in my day!) and doing a bit of acting, a bit of directing and running a youth theatre before training as a teacher (best decision I ever made).

I am engaged to the wonderful Emily, and we had our first child in August last year: Benjamin, who is wonderfully miserable!

I first met Sondheim through Send in the Clowns, but it's with Into the Woods that my love affair really started. 

And I am thrilled that this board is back: I have missed (more than I realised) the wise and witty community that we had. 

[Chris L]

I also need to figure out how to make my avatar blink.

@artscallion -  Try resizing your animated GIF to 65x65 pixels before uploading it. If the forum has to resize it, it will convert it to a PNG and lose the animation. We can turn this off, but supposedly PNGs (maybe because they offer more colors) resize more  clearly.

[Chris L]

I also need to figure out how to make my avatar blink.

@artscallion -  Try resizing your animated GIF to 65x65 pixels before uploading it. If the forum has to resize it, it will convert it to a PNG and lose the animation. We can turn this off, but supposedly PNGs (maybe because they offer more colors) resize more  clearly.

@artscallion - Amy informs me that even if we turn this off, the forum will resize a GIF as a JPEG, so it would still lose any animation. This probably applies to any resizing, up or down. But if you can precisely nail the 65x65 pixels, we're pretty sure it will come through as a GIF, with animation intact.

[artscallion]

I also need to figure out how to make my avatar blink.

@artscallion -  Try resizing your animated GIF to 65x65 pixels before uploading it. If the forum has to resize it, it will convert it to a PNG and lose the animation. We can turn this off, but supposedly PNGs (maybe because they offer more colors) resize more  clearly.

@artscallion - Amy informs me that even if we turn this off, the forum will resize a GIF as a JPEG, so it would still lose any animation. This probably applies to any resizing, up or down. But if you can precisely nail the 65x65 pixels, we're pretty sure it will come through as a GIF, with animation intact.

Thanks for checking into that! I'll start working on it.

[Gordonb]

I'm Gordon; the original Gordon from London and never to be confused with the "other" GordonY from Toronto; never I tell you!

My first exposure to Sondheim was I think "A Little Night Music" at the Adelphi theatre in 1975 (I was a baby at the time!) with Jean Simmons, Joss Ackland, David Kernan, Liz Robertson, and Diane Langton; the second was probably in 1976  when the Mermaid Theatre put on a production of "Side by Side by Sondheim" after the original benefit revue at Wavendon Stables.  Millicent Martin, Julia McKenzie, David Kernan and Ned Sherrin were the original cast. At that stage of my life theatre was relatively cheap and I saw almost everything rather indiscriminately, so the 2 Sondheim shows weren't deliberate.

I didn't "get into" Sondheim until 1986 I think it was, when the BBC showed the "Follies - 4 days in New York" film. After that I was hooked.

I joined FTC after lurking for a long time in possibly the late 90s. It was either then or the very early 2000s as I went to New York for the Patti Lupone "Sweeney" at Lincoln Centre in May 2000 (where I met my first "Sondhead" AlanScott/AlanG/Alan Gomberg.

Since the early glory days of FTC I have got to know several "Sondheads" in person both here in London  - Mairi, Sarah, JonA, Ray Rackham, Sebastian (sorry if i missed anybody) and in the USA - @Hester Jean, @George, @Diane together with assorted spouses/offspring.

I live in South East London with my partner Rey who cooks (I cook a bit too but mainly I eat!). I'm retired from "proper" work but still working part-time whilst we figure out what to do in my dotage, and where to do it.

Like all of us I am glad that the board is back;  thanks to @Chris L and @AmyG who I hope to have the pleasure of meeting live and in person in the autumn, not in the fall but in the autumn

[JustTheOneAnne]

Hi!  I'm Anne, formerly annedahlin (from a youthful Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood phase), but nobody knew what that even meant or how to pronounce it, which I realized when I started meeting people from the board, so I've switched to Anne of Green Gables.

Anyway!  I joined the board as a lonely 14-year-old high school freshman who had just discovered A Little Night Music and Into the Woods and was looking for ANYBODY with whom to discuss them. (My family loves musicals but none are Sondheim fans beyond Into the Woods, mostly because I was in Into the Woods a few times.) I found the board and I learned so much. I was pretty much blown away by the level of knowledge of the posters here, and as I think Jenny has posted on Facebook (or maybe one of the other FTC Youth folks), I learned how to really write on this board.

Almost sixteen years later, I'm an opera singer! Wild. The board and the people I've met through the board have been so incredibly supportive, from coming to my performances (all of the Chicagoland folks--Diane, both Wills, George and Greg--and Kathy, who schlepped to Colorado Springs one summer to hear me sing) to helping me arrange an audition at Welsh National Opera (Mairi!), and just generally always having positive things to say when I have posted videos or news. You all have been some of my biggest fans and cheerleaders, and I am so grateful.  I'm working on my masters degree at Indiana University, but I'm currently in Berlin improving my German, and then I'm going to Paris (no particular reason, just a free week in Europe!) and Harrogate, UK to sing some Gilbert and Sullivan.

I look forward to "meeting" new members when they arrive!

[DrPangloss]

Hello, all! I'm David. For a very long time I was DrPangloss, but I'm sure I had another username before that as I was a member of FTC since before I played Pangloss at age 17. I remember being grilled by the Sondheim Youth faction when I first joined (some of whom I later learned were younger than I was!) and knew that I'd fit right in with any group of teens as pedantic as I was about Sondheim.

Now, I'm a working musical theatre writer and director in NYC. I was very remiss in letting you all know about my last long-runner, Wild Women of Planet Wongo, which recently closed after 9 months at Parkside Lounge on the LES. I'm going into previews for Me the People, the Trump America musical, which I assistant directed. We'll be running at The Triad Theatre until September 3rd (or until he's impeached).

Sorry to turn this into a plug, but if you're interested definitely message me here, and most of you I'm facebook friends with and I'm posting all about it there.

[Chris L]

Sorry to turn this into a plug, but if you're interested definitely message me here, and most of you I'm facebook friends with and I'm posting all about it there.

We have no problem with plugs, David. In fact, if you want to post more about it, there's an Announcements section under Theater in General that's precisely for that. And nobody's posted in it yet!

[JustTheOneAnne]

Hello, all! I'm David. For a very long time I was DrPangloss, but I'm sure I had another username before that as I was a member of FTC since before I played Pangloss at age 17.

Awww, I remember that production of Candide.  And the Voice for the Actor class at French Woods where I met you!

[scenicdesign71]

I'm Dave.  I joined FTC in 2004 and, after the past year or so of chafing against the limitations of Facebook Groups, I couldn't be happier that this format has been revived -- thanks, Amy and Chris!

I became aware of Sondheim's works in 1983, somewhere around my 12th birthday -- though I'd been fascinated by musical theatre for a few years before that, so I already knew him as the name behind the lyrics of WSS and Gypsy.  But in 1983* my mom took me to see a local university production of Sweeney Todd -- twice, I was so gobsmacked by it -- and I was hooked.  A year later came the Tony clip of SITPWG, and its cast album, causing me to wonder "is Stephen Sondheim God?" well before New York magazine entertained the question, and to start collecting his other OBCRs.  In high school I was briefly distracted by the British megamusicals -- the hot new thing, at the time -- but by the time I came to NYC for college, their appeal had cooled and I was back in full Sondhead mode.

I've probably listened to the recorded works of SJS more than those of any other single artist.  But I've been through phases, sometimes years at a time, of not thinking about or listening to them much.  It was at the end of one such "off" phase that I stumbled upon FTC just by typing "sondheim.com"  into my browser to see whether such a site existed.

I eventually settled in there as something of a resident brainiac (one among many, to my delight) -- relatively shy around social chitchat, but with a hair trigger for long-winded, hopelessly self-serious exegeses^† of the works of SJS and his peers.  And, occasionally, of my own little design projects (see below), on the Announcements and Show Pics threads.  But I try to make up for it by embracing the general "house style" of friendliness and respectful debate, which drew me to FTC in the first place and kept me there happily for over a decade.  Also by making sure to puncture my own pretensions at regular intervals.

In the real world I'm a set designer and painter, sometimes branching into projections and (rarely) costumes.  My degree is in scenic and costume design, though most of my time for the past couple of years has been devoted to painting other people's sets for television.  I've been a proud union member (IATSE Local USA-829) since 2010, a long-overdue achievement -- almost exactly 15 years after receiving my MFA -- which I remember celebrating on FTC's Pretty Wicker Settee.

Sadly, I've designed only a handful of small productions of SJS's works:  ...Forum (twice, both in summer stock; I've also painted two other productions that I didn't design -- so I've actually worked on four different Forums); Sweeney (summer stock again); and Assassins (on the London fringe, with direction and lighting by two other FTC members).  While Mr. S. Himself was in the general vicinity of the latter two productions during their limited runs, he was regretfully unable to attend either. But I was thrilled to learn that he did see a play I designed off-Off Broadway: a brain-tickling "meta-comedy" which -- according to friends who were there the same night -- he seemed to enjoy enormously.

_______________________________
* So long ago that I had to google the date -- the Interweb truly knows all: Sweeney Todd, WMT, 1983-84 season.
^† I'm the son of two humanities-Ph.D./novelists, what can I say? I use words like "exegeses" and write posts with freaking footnotes.     

[ignatzmouse]

Hello everyone. My name is Simon, i'm from North Yorkshire, England, UK. I am new to this forum.

I am here to learn more about Stephen Sondheim. I am an enthusiast, but have little knowledge of Musical Theatre. Apart from Stephen Sondheim, i don't really like musical theatre. (so far!) There must be some great stuff.. so.. i'm looking forward to being diected towards some new great music.
Is there anyone else on the forum from the UK i wonder ?
Thanks Chris for approving my submission.

Simon (ignatzmouse)