ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT - fringe festival
New Orlando group says it's time to act
Members of the Ghostlight Theatre Ensemble are willing to take risks, and don diapers, in `Sport,' a Fringe show that just might propel their onstage careers.
May 24, 2006
|By Michael Tedder, Special to the Sentinel
Brandon Roberts is acting like a big baby.
Although some would say that could be true of any actor, at the moment this budding Orlando International Fringe Festival performer is literally wearing a huge -- and hugely unflattering -- diaper and crying every time his beach ball rolls off the stage.
Roberts, 29, is filled with good cheer during rehearsals for his Fringe show Sport, a lighthearted physical comedy-satire featuring mock-advertisements for a fictional sporting goods company named Slastic. (At one point, the company attempts to sell a combination athletic shoe/coffee grinder.)
Roberts is doing his best to get his fellow actors and producers to laugh out loud. And although it's hard not to crack a smile at the sight of Roberts -- a man so slight that he refers to himself as a buck-ten, who probably couldn't get hired as a waterboy on a real sports team -- competing with his beefier co-stars, the seriousness of the situation isn't lost on anyone in the room.
With only two weeks to go until the Fringe opens, Roberts and his group, the Ghostlight Theatre Ensemble, are rehearsing for their first Fringe show. And the determination the company's members have shown just to get to this point would earn them the respect of even the most dedicated athlete.
A Ghost is born
Roberts and his fellow Ghost-light founders Meggin Weaver and Karla Schultz first met at the now defunct Orlando Broadway Dinner Theater in the summer of 2004. Roberts and Weaver, 28, had both recently moved to Orlando.
The pair would soon meet Schultz, 26, a University of Central Florida graduate, when the dinner theater staged How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying.
Ironically, the company went out of business shortly thereafter. "We sort of saw the writing on the wall," Roberts says.
"We were all at a meeting, almost a cast debriefing, and somebody said, `Why don't we just do it ourselves?' " Weaver recalls. "And Brandon, Karla and I said, `Yeah, why don't we?' "
With Schultz and Weaver, "all of a sudden we were brainstorming about shows to produce and looking for theater spaces here in town. Suddenly it was a reality," Roberts says.
The ensemble had an early success when its first production, a Valentine's Day-themed cabaret, "did pretty well. I think if that show hadn't done well we would have been much more hesitant to continue," Roberts says. "But with a little bit of chump change in the bank, we were like `Hey, uh, maybe we can keep doing this.' "
Sport nights
The Ghostlight group is a close-knit unit in which members tell one another they love each other before every meeting, but the participants are not without their differences. Weaver, who graduated from Furman with an English degree but realized that what she loved most in college was acting, and Roberts, a self-professed former ham and perpetual student, are workhorses, whereas Schultz is "the silver-lining girl."
The group has risked $2,400 on Sport, for application fees, promotional items such as fliers and T-shirts and props. But even though they've found ways to cut corners here and there, such as using Styrofoam balls instead of real shot puts, it's still a dollar amount that makes the group nervous.
"It's a pretty penny for us," Roberts says. "It's scary, but, we're chasing a dream and trying to make it a reality so you've got to spend a little bit of money."
Most of the cast -- which includes Roberts and local actors Pat Braillard, 29, and Michael Gill, 25 -- and crew are friends or volunteers.
"When you work with Ghostlight you are not just an actor or director, you are made to feel that you part of the ensemble," Braillard says "and that you're helping a small company do big things."
Although they are cautiously optimistic about doing well at Fringe, Ghostlight's founders have little illusion about making a living from theater anytime soon. They work multiple jobs to pay for their art: Schultz plays characters at both Disney World and Universal Studios; Roberts splits his time between five part-time jobs ranging from Williams-Sonoma to the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival to a local murder-mystery show.
Roberts toured with Sport in America and Europe (it was developed by a Spanish mime group), after graduating from the University of North Carolina. He thought the show's high-energy slapstick would be a perfect fit for the Fringe Festival.
"We're very green, and we're learning as we go and we're making tons and tons and tons of mistakes," Roberts says of Ghostlight. "As long as we're willing to make those mistakes and get back up and dust ourselves off, I think we'll be OK."
New Orlando group says it's time to act
Members of the Ghostlight Theatre Ensemble are willing to take risks, and don diapers, in `Sport,' a Fringe show that just might propel their onstage careers.
May 24, 2006
|By Michael Tedder, Special to the Sentinel
Brandon Roberts is acting like a big baby.
Although some would say that could be true of any actor, at the moment this budding Orlando International Fringe Festival performer is literally wearing a huge -- and hugely unflattering -- diaper and crying every time his beach ball rolls off the stage.
Roberts, 29, is filled with good cheer during rehearsals for his Fringe show Sport, a lighthearted physical comedy-satire featuring mock-advertisements for a fictional sporting goods company named Slastic. (At one point, the company attempts to sell a combination athletic shoe/coffee grinder.)
Roberts is doing his best to get his fellow actors and producers to laugh out loud. And although it's hard not to crack a smile at the sight of Roberts -- a man so slight that he refers to himself as a buck-ten, who probably couldn't get hired as a waterboy on a real sports team -- competing with his beefier co-stars, the seriousness of the situation isn't lost on anyone in the room.
With only two weeks to go until the Fringe opens, Roberts and his group, the Ghostlight Theatre Ensemble, are rehearsing for their first Fringe show. And the determination the company's members have shown just to get to this point would earn them the respect of even the most dedicated athlete.
A Ghost is born
Roberts and his fellow Ghost-light founders Meggin Weaver and Karla Schultz first met at the now defunct Orlando Broadway Dinner Theater in the summer of 2004. Roberts and Weaver, 28, had both recently moved to Orlando.
The pair would soon meet Schultz, 26, a University of Central Florida graduate, when the dinner theater staged How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying.
Ironically, the company went out of business shortly thereafter. "We sort of saw the writing on the wall," Roberts says.
"We were all at a meeting, almost a cast debriefing, and somebody said, `Why don't we just do it ourselves?' " Weaver recalls. "And Brandon, Karla and I said, `Yeah, why don't we?' "
With Schultz and Weaver, "all of a sudden we were brainstorming about shows to produce and looking for theater spaces here in town. Suddenly it was a reality," Roberts says.
The ensemble had an early success when its first production, a Valentine's Day-themed cabaret, "did pretty well. I think if that show hadn't done well we would have been much more hesitant to continue," Roberts says. "But with a little bit of chump change in the bank, we were like `Hey, uh, maybe we can keep doing this.' "
Sport nights
The Ghostlight group is a close-knit unit in which members tell one another they love each other before every meeting, but the participants are not without their differences. Weaver, who graduated from Furman with an English degree but realized that what she loved most in college was acting, and Roberts, a self-professed former ham and perpetual student, are workhorses, whereas Schultz is "the silver-lining girl."
The group has risked $2,400 on Sport, for application fees, promotional items such as fliers and T-shirts and props. But even though they've found ways to cut corners here and there, such as using Styrofoam balls instead of real shot puts, it's still a dollar amount that makes the group nervous.
"It's a pretty penny for us," Roberts says. "It's scary, but, we're chasing a dream and trying to make it a reality so you've got to spend a little bit of money."
Most of the cast -- which includes Roberts and local actors Pat Braillard, 29, and Michael Gill, 25 -- and crew are friends or volunteers.
"When you work with Ghostlight you are not just an actor or director, you are made to feel that you part of the ensemble," Braillard says "and that you're helping a small company do big things."
Although they are cautiously optimistic about doing well at Fringe, Ghostlight's founders have little illusion about making a living from theater anytime soon. They work multiple jobs to pay for their art: Schultz plays characters at both Disney World and Universal Studios; Roberts splits his time between five part-time jobs ranging from Williams-Sonoma to the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival to a local murder-mystery show.
Roberts toured with Sport in America and Europe (it was developed by a Spanish mime group), after graduating from the University of North Carolina. He thought the show's high-energy slapstick would be a perfect fit for the Fringe Festival.
"We're very green, and we're learning as we go and we're making tons and tons and tons of mistakes," Roberts says of Ghostlight. "As long as we're willing to make those mistakes and get back up and dust ourselves off, I think we'll be OK."