Barbara Johnston, Anika Johnson, and Nick Green are re-defining the online theatre experience with their new musical Living the Dream
This fall, I’ve had the great pleasure of working as music director on a brand new musical by three of my favourite writers: Nick Green, Anika Johnson, Barb Johnston. With Mitchell Cushman at the helm as director and a cast of 14 outstanding performers from Sheridan College’s CMTP Program, we’ve had an unforgettable experience rehearsing, experimenting, troubleshooting and learning all of the ins and outs of designing a musical completely over Zoom.
Back when the writers were first conceiving of this piece, it was a very different show, but as it became clear that Covid-restrictions would limit us to rehearsing and performing on Zoom, they decided to make the most of the situation by seting the show on zoom and using the opportunity to write something about this very unique time we’re living in.
LIVING THE DREAM
What do you do when you’re feeling alone? Every Tuesday, Clare throws a Zoom party. A contemporary look at relationships and loneliness in the Instagram era, Living the Dream is the story of a group of friends told entirely though commercial breaks during a viewing party of a reality TV dating show.
The show itself is equal-parts heartbreaking and hilarious. Even after seeing it so many times, I still laugh out loud over and over again and the ending always makes me cry. The music is stunning- the songs are so good and so catchy and skillfully arranged. James Ervin created beautiful show tracks and all of the students became their own recording engineers when Sheridan shipped microphones to their houses so they could -pre-record their harmonies from their homes.
And also worth mentioning- Barb Johnston choreographed every number and she did such a brilliant job working with the performers and thinking outside the box with different angles and close-ups and “click-ography”. It’s quite spectacular!
I’m so thrilled to have been part of this process, working with my best friends and witnessing the creation of this brilliant new piece of theatre. Don’t miss it!
LIVING THE DREAM will be presented LIVE tomorrow, at 2pm, streamed to Youtube! The shows will be available to watch for the rest of the week, but ours will only be live tomorrow!
There are also two other exciting premiers happening later on in the day:
Sunday Oct 18th
2pm: Living the Dream, by Nick Green, Anika Johnson and Barb Johnston
5pm: Burden of proof by Rob W Kempson, Scott Christian , and La-Nai Gabriel
8pm: Almost a Full Moon by Charlotte Corbeil Coleman and Hawksley Workman
Check out the presentations tomorrow here: https://youtube.com/channel/UCGV33bqJwSSzFA0kSGev0yg
Hope you can make it!
Suzy Wilde
