Dino Hayz is the creative director and co-owner of the Center for Living Arts, the Rock Island-based venue that, since 2006, has offered music and theatre (and musical theatre) classes for ages 18 and under, and has produced such stage presentations as Schoolhouse Rock Live! and Disney's High School Musical.
Consequently, Hayz says that he and his performers have a pretty fair idea of how patrons might react to the Center's latest theatrical offering.
"When we're in rehearsal," says Hayz, "at the end of Act I, we always say, 'A-a-and ... blackout. Actors off, lights up, a good third of the audience walks out the door ... ."
PROJECT X
Music
The first trophy handed out at the 2012 Academy Awards ceremony was for Best Cinematography, a prize that I predicted would go to The Tree of Life but that instead went to Hugo. (Seriously, after his undeserved losses for 2006's Children of Men and now the Terrence Malick film, exactly whom does Emmanuel Lubezki have to do to win an Oscar?) But that was actually my second incorrect assumption of the evening, because as soon as host Billy Crystal stepped on stage, I said to the others at my viewing party, "Here comes the standing ovation," and the audience - despite giving the man a warm reception - remained seated. Did the crowd have a collective premonition of just how spectacularly Crystal would bomb last night?
After compiling the list of stage presentations coming to area venues this spring, three things became immediately clear.
WANDERLUST
THIS MEANS WAR
Music
THE VOW
