In the Wings

Now that the nominations are out, it’s time to think about getting to the Paramount on June 4. The show runs from 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. Producer Danielle Rudess has added an online-ordering component to the ticket-buying process.

File photo by Vinnie DiSalvio: The crowd outside last year’s Metropolitan High School Theater Awards at Peekskill’s Paramount Center for the Arts.

Here are the nomination tallies for 2012 Metro Awards, excluding those for technical merit, for which a school may be a multiple nominee.

THE NOMINEES: ARTISTIC | PRODUCTION | RUNNING LINES VIDEOS

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I logged a lot of miles during the high-school-musical season, talking to kids and shooting videos of them delivering favorite lines from their musicals. Here are Running Lines videos from 2012 Metro-nominated shows in Westchester and Rockland counties.
THE NOMINEES: ARTISTIC | PRODUCTION | BY THE NUMBERS

Archbishop Stepinac High School’s “The Phantom of the Opera”

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Archbishop Stepinac High School’s production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera” leads the field with 15 nominations for the 14th annual Metropolitan High School Theater Awards, to be handed out June 4 at Peekskill’s Paramount Center for the Arts.

The all-boys Catholic high school in White Plains enlists actresses from across the region and has nominees in the top four acting categories: leading actor (Albert Stanaj); leading actress (Nicole Heney, above in a photo by The PhotoShoppe); supporting actor (Chris Guzman) and supporting actress (Samantha Kenny). Heney, a junior at Blind Brook high school, lives in Rye Brook; Kenny, a senior at The Ursuline School in New Rochelle, is also from Rye Brook.

Stepinac is also among three schools from Westchester and three from Bergen to contend for outstanding overall production, the top honor among the contest’s 27 categories.

THE NOMINEES: ARTISTIC | PRODUCTION | BY THE NUMBERS | RUNNING LINES VIDEOS

Here, from producer Danielle Rudess, are the nominees in the Production (Technical) Categories for the 14th annual Metropolitan High School Theater Awards, to be handed out June 4, 2012 at the Paramount Center for the Arts in Peekskill.
THE NOMINEES: ARTISTIC | PRODUCTION | BY THE NUMBERS | RUNNING LINES VIDEOS

Here, from producer Danielle Rudess, are the nominees in the Artistic (Performance) Categories for the 14th annual Metropolitan High School Theater Awards, to be handed out June 4, 2012 at the Paramount Center for the Arts in Peekskill.

Photo by Barry Sabino/The Photo Shoppe: Nominees Nicole Heney and Albert Stanaj in Archbishop Stepinac’s production of “The Phantom of the Opera,” which garnered 15 nominations, not including the technical-merit category, for which schools can nominate themselves and have multiple nominations.

THE NOMINEES: PRODUCTION | BY THE NUMBERS | RUNNING LINES VIDEOS

Producer Danielle Rudess and her team are compiling and cross-checking the nominations for the 14th Metropolitan High School Theater Awards, which we’ll announce here at 8 tonight.

I call it the loudest, proudest moment in the high-school-musical season, when schools from Westchester, Rockland and Bergen counties converge on Peekskill’s Paramount Center for the Arts and pack it to the rafters to yell and scream and applaud the work they’ve done and celebrate the charms of the musical form.

This year’s ceremony is Monday, June 4, from 7:30 to 10 p.m. (Not too late: After all, it’s a school night.)

This year, 37 schools — five from Rockland, 20 from Westchester and 12 from Bergen — put themselves in the running for the awards, which are given in 27 artistic (performance) and production (technical) categories.

The Westchester schools are Stepinac’s “Phantom of the Opera,” Blind Brook’s “Hello Dolly!” Briarcliff’s “Sugar,” Edgemont’s “Oklahoma!” Harrison’s “42nd Street,” Hastings’ “Pippin,” Hendrick Hudson’s “The Pajama Game,” Kennedy Catholic’s “Anything Goes,” Lakeland’s “Oklahoma!” Ossining’s “Aida,” Pleasantville’s “Beauty and the Beast,” Port Chester’s “All Shook Up,” Rye’s “Pippin,” Rye Neck’s “Beauty and the Beast,” Salesian’s “Grease,” Solomon Schecter’s “The Pajama Game,” Tuckahoe’s “Annie Get Your Gun,” The Ursuline School’s “Grease,” Westlake’s “The Drowsy Chaperone,” and Woodlands’ “Once on the Island.”

The participating schools from Rockland are Clarkstown South’s “Into the Woods,” Pearl River’s “Damn Yankees,” Rockland Country Day’s “Urinetown,” Spring Valley’s “Footloose,” and Tappan Zee’s “Sweet Charity.”

Schools from Bergen County are Academy of the Holy Angels’ “Footloose,” Bergen County Academies’ “The King and I,” Don Bosco Prep’s “Will Rogers Follies,” Emerson’s “I Love a Piano,” Fair Lawn’s “Nine,” Glen Rock’s “Grease,” Hackensack’s “Grease,” Ramsey’s “Curtains,” River Dell’s “Willy Wonka,” Northern Highlands’ “The Wedding Singer,” Saddle River Day’s “Gypsy,” and St. Joseph Regional’s “Cabaret.”

Once again, I’ll be backstage streaming pre-show interviews and LoHud.com will stream the ceremony in its entirety, something we’ve been doing for years now. I think we’ve got the hang of it, now.

First, though, the nominations.

Tonight at 8.

Here.

This was too funny. Have to try to find some teachers who’d be up for it. I think John Gwardyak at Eastchester could be a contender….

Jim Filippelli has grown accustomed to “My Fair Lady,” the musical his Panas Players will stage in Cortlandt Manor this week, the final show to open in the Lower Hudson Valley’s 2012 high-school-musical season.

The indefatigable director still glows a bit when he remembers the first time he directed Lerner & Loewe’s musical take on Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” about a Cockney flower girl named Eliza Doolittle and a rude professor of dialect and elocution by the name of Henry Higgins.

My final high-school visit of the season, yesterday, was to Walter Panas High School in Cortlandt Manor, where Jim Filippelli holds forth — and has for decades.

This year, the Panas Players present an old favorite of Filippelli’s, and one that means something for the Panas community: Lerner and Loewe’s “My Fair Lady.” (Above, a shot from “Ascot Opening Day.”)
In 1981, it was the last musical to be performed at what is now Van Cortlandtville School, what was then Lakeland Middle School and the home of the Panas Players. Back then, before Panas built its theater, kids would have to schlep over to the school across from the mall to put on their shows.
But in December 1981 came a new theater, one connected to the high school. Still, Panas (and Filippelli) is a bit sentimental so every decade or so, they’ve staged “My Fair Lady” and invited alums back to remember when.
Yesterday, costumes were being tried on and sets and drops were being adjusted as the Players ran through a couple of numbers.

The kids really took to the Running Lines videos. Just watch what Steven DeNardo, above—a FRESHMAN!—does with Henry Higgins. He practically channels Rex Harrison. And you gotta love what Liora Bogin (who shares the role of Eliza) does with her favorite line.

Enjoy.

Most schools would be proud to produce one musical each spring.

Rye is not most high schools, and this week presents “Little Shop of Horrors,” a month after “Pippin” took to the stage on Parsons Street.

“Little Shop,” directed by Peter Green, is the Alan Menken-Howard Ashman doo-wop musical about a boy, a girl and a man-eating plant. Performances are at 8 p.m. April 20; 2 and 8 p.m. April 21; 914-967-6100.

Photo by Lucy Cassidy: The cast of Rye’s “Little Shop of Horrors” includes, from left, Danny Keller as Seymour, puppeteer Serena Mason in the Audrey II puppet, and Ariella Reidenberg as Audrey. 

Wow! What a weekend awaits theatergoers across the Lower Hudson Valley this weekend.

There’s a full slate of high-school musicals — from Lakeland’s “Oklahoma!” to “Beauty and the Beast” in Eastchester and “Into the Woods” at Clarkstown South. (See the full list, with links, below.)

There are two productions of “Xanadu” (Greeley and Mamaroneck) and two productions of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (one at Putnam Valley High School, the other by a cast of community-theater ringers at Yorktown Stage).

And the White Plains Performing Arts Center presents the riveting story about the Matthew Shepard’s death, aftermath and legacy with two productions: the original “The Laramie Project” and “The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later.” (Read story here.)

For something serious and comic and just plain clever, consider Stephen Sondheim’s “Assassins” at the College of New Rochelle this weekend and next. (Read story here.)

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Seniors at Horace Greeley and Mamaroneck high schools are looking forward to graduation by rolling back the calendar this weekend.

Both schools present seniors-only musicals each spring: shows with casts of soon-to-be-graduates.

Both schools present their musicals this weekend.

Both schools have chosen “Xanadu,” the campy stage adaptation of the laugh-out-loud awful 1980 musical film that starred Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly.

Erik Schneider, who stands an imposing 6-foot-3-inches tall, says he had an ace in the hole when it came to playing the menacing Jud Fry in Lakeland High School’s production of “Oklahoma!”: Director Darrin Grimm has played the role before and could help the senior get inside Jud’s mind.

“When you talk to someone who has played the role, it’s a gift,” says the 17-year-old Lakeland senior. “We sat after rehearsal the other day and talked for an hour and a half about Jud. But it wasn’t like a chore. It was fun. He’s like a bank, a resource to tap into.”

Joe Mignone had it all planned.

Having taken culinary classes at BOCES while at Putnam Valley High School, he was planning to study culinary arts in college. But a funny thing happened on the way to cooking school: Joe Mignone got bit by the theater bug.