piaf love conquers all blog

Announcing Angela Chan!

1/28/2016

Wow! She said yes! In this awesome City of talented people, it's really hard to get the really good ones because they are all busy working! Well, Angela IS busy but she is making room in her schedule for some good old fashioned French chansons! And we are so lucky she is able to join the cast of Piaf: Love Conquers All at the Winchester Cultural Center on March 4 & 5. Angela is well known in Las Vegas and has performed in “The Producers,” “Spamalot,” “Mamma Mia,” Disney’s “The Lion King,” “Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular” as well as playing with the Las Vegas Philharmonic. Playing in “Jersey Boys,” “KA” by Cirque du Soleil, Steve Wynn's Showstoppers, and Franco Dragone's Le Reve keeps her hoping around town. She is a touring diva! She has a very cool website to help touring musicians / artists find the best places to eat, sleep and be happy! Angela is also an award winning lyricist and composer, capturing “Best of the Fringe Festival” awards for her shows “Legacy of the Tiger Mother” in San Francisco in 2012, (a self produced show that played in Las Vegas, New York, Adelaide, Australia, and San Francisco) and “Sudoku the Musical” at the Las Vegas Fringe Festival in 2013! So excited to start rehearsals with this talented lady!

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Shining Light On The Lights

1/22/2016

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One of the fun things in this whole process of self-producing is the many hats I have to wear! Today, I put on my "Light Designer" hat and head down to the Winchester Cultural Center to meet with the in house tech John to discuss their lighting inventory and compare it to what I need for Piaf: Love Conquers All in a few weeks (March 4 & 5. I met the next day with Rob, who will be programming the board for me and he was awesome to work with so far! And the theatre perfect for the show!

The original lighting design for my first tour in 2006 was done by Dominic Manca. He was given the challenge of adapting his design for three different spaces that tour around Quebec and Ontario. I studied the designs/plots and asked a lot of questions and picked up some lingo. 10 years later and 12+ theatres later, I have a pretty good grasp at what I need! I have added some gobos and other fixtures, and have bought my own gels, and even an iris. By the end of the tow hours at WCC, I am happily surprised (and relieved) that they have almost everything I need to make this show look pro! Hey, I've done this show with a house plot in two Fringe festivals with limited cues, but I think I will be able to get the whole 101 LX cues and 16 sound cues this one! Now to see if the set has all it's pieces....next blog.

Dominic in 2006-He is also a photographer

First draft of LX for WCC

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Vlog 1 of #piafinlasvegas - The Set Arrives!

1/13/2016

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It was an exciting doy! My husband and a friend arrived in Las Vegas after a long drive from Austin to deliver the piano and my Piaf set pieces!! The pieces haven't seen the light of day since 2010 since the show was struck in San Francisco. More about the set in a future post! I am also re-designing the logo for the #piafinlasvegas run of Piaf: Love Conquers All. Posters, social media banners, flyers, e-blasts and all that fun marketing stuff...not.

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Getting Back to The Script

1/13/2016

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Vlog entry #2 - #piafinlasvegas
Well, I am trying to fit in a little time in the morning before going to my "job that pays for groceries" to familiarize myself with the script again. It's a little distracting with the chickens. So much to look at! Pecking, scratching, fights over the "flock block". But I've made it through half of the first act and, oh ya, there are some dramatic moments I gotta get my head back into! Especially, as I get ready for Act 2! Drugs, alcohol and all that crazy stuff!

Shiny penny #1 leads me to check in with what Piaf was doing this time in different years of her life in the little book I bought in Paris at the Piaf Museum run by Les Amis De Piaf. Such an amazing record of where she was almost on a daily basis. Who knows how accurate it is but it does give one the idea of how busy she was! her schedule was very full either recording or performing, traveling or all three!
Editor Mchel Birnbaum, Jacques Peron
1995 Editions Vade Retro
ISBN: 2-90982-17-4

Shiny penny #2 I listen to the Le Bel Indifferent record with Momo (Maury Katz). He loves learning about Piaf! This little piece was written for Piaf by Jean Cocteau in 1940. It was performed live at the Theatre des Bouffes-Parisiens. Piaf shared the stage with Paul Meurisse who also became her lover. In Piaf's autobiography My Life, she talks about how heated with anger she would get towards him for his coolness and seemingly indifferent demeanor. Meurisse spends the whole time in the play behind a newspaper. Talk about reality TV on stage!
I love hearing her voice! It catches and is hoarse at times. You can hear the years of singing in the streets over the city traffic and smog. I could no way try to imitate this speaking voice as I would ruin my own but it's great to hear!

I saw a clip excerpt of the piece in a documentary about Piaf and the set in that piece, plus the cover of this record were the inspiration for my set!

But that's a topic for another post!

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Naomi Emmerson

Naomi Emmerson star of Piaf Love Conquers All - the one woman musical about legendary French singer Edith Piaf. She has performed over 200 times for audiences across Canada and the USA and once in Indonesia. The set and costumes are also her creation. Naomi grew up in Montreal Quebec in an anglophone family. She went to French school from 2nd to 6th grade. She loves brie, baguettes and makes a mean crepe Nelson (apple,bacon,sharp cheddar and maple syrup)

Announcing Angela Chan!

Shining Light On The Lights

Dominic in 2006-He is also a photographer

First draft of LX for WCC

Vlog 1 of #piafinlasvegas - The Set Arrives!

Getting Back to The Script

Naomi Emmerson

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