Profile for Alex LaVelle

They changed the number in Japanese. It's ni yon roku go san, which translates as 24653. My guess is its because the "ah" in san is not nearly as rough on the throat as trying to hold the "ee" in ichi, which is 1. On that note, I also need to throw in that I'm looking forward to Gemignani as Valjean.

I like both Colm and Takeshi Kaga, from the Japanese Red Cast (of course, in Japanse, he's 24653, but that's beside the point).

I wouldn't discredit Usher too soon. It's stunt casting, yeah, but I live 20 minutes from Chattanooga, where he grew up, and know a number of people who knew him (in fact, my high school Spanish teacher's niece dated him for a while), and everyone who I've ever talked to who knows him has said he has done well when he's been on stage with stuff like this. I'm not typically a fan of Usher, but I am interested to see how this works out.

Lenox is a bit of a drive, but it's not too bad, about half an hour or so going north on Peachtree given average traffic. There is a train station at Lenox; there are others as well, but the one that I know for sure is the Lenox station.

I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General. Starts off A Tempo, slows second verse, then speeds up so that it's faster than A Tempo for the end.

Well, it wasn't professional, but one of Emory University's theatre groups performed Equus two years ago. It was the year before I got there, so I didn't get to see it, but it is supposedly one of the best student productions ever done on campus.

I mostly do lighting design and direction, but lately I've taken to doing some tech directing and stage management work as well. I started off with lighting design and have been a techie since the age of 12.

According to the dictionary I just checked: An Opera is a work that has been numbered in some way and comes from the time when composers numbered their works (ie, Beethoven's symphonies, which are probably the most famous numbered works, though they aren't operas). Opera is the plural of the Latin Opus, meaning work. An Operetta is lighter than an opera and is not necessarily numbered. It also may deal with more popular subjects. A Musical is defined as a "play or movie with music", so there'...

Also, during the whole debacle, Webber tried to convince Patti to take the role in NYC after Close left; obviously, she didn't care much for this idea. It got to the point where he begged Betty Buckley (who was in London preparing to replace Patti at the end of her run there) to try to convince her to take the offer. Buckley didn't like the idea, and neither did Patti.

Ragtime. Then shortly after that, I worked on a production of Into the Woods, which just solidified it what Ragtime had started.

Michael Cerveris said in an interview on Sirius that the reason they didn't do A Little Priest was because they did it for the Drama Desk and they wanted to do something different. I thought the medley was well put together. I do hope that this show sticks around a good, long while. I saw it back in March and loved it.

I think that if it were approached by the right creative team and were carefully worked not to seem like a South American version of Les Mis (and had a better book than the movie version of the book), Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits would make a phenomenal musical.

The worst was my sophomore year of high school, we did Into the Woods, and our director cut the entire affair sequence between the prince and the Baker's Wife. It was so obvious and so bad. Losing that kills the whole second act, if not the whole show.

Michael Cerveris said in an interview with Seth Rudetsky over the weekend that Sweeney's cast is doing a medley for the show: Ballad of Sweeney, Worst Pies, My Friends, Finale version of Ballad of Sweeney, so there's one number we can look forward to.

Christine Pedi just said for sure that "I just found out that my good friend Tom Hewitt will be in the touring company of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. He'll be the tall, good looking one." She sounded pretty sure about it, so hopefully we'll hear something official soon.

I sort of agree with what has been said about Hugh Laurie so far, except I say he already has it. Roles in plays have been written for him, and he has performed in them and performed well. I read the script a while back for a class I was in of a play called Gasping, which is a satircal piece about a corporation deciding to create an elitism regarding the air people breathe, resulting in the destruction of the human race. Not the cheeriest piece, but hysterically funny. Regardless, the main ch...

I don't tend to follow Idol that, much, but my parents were watching Fox and Friends yesterday, and she was making an appearance on the show; she apparently was a senior at a theatre school in Boston (I think it was Boston) before she left to be on Idol, so she does have training.

Well, as a lighting designer, I get to do some really fun stuff, but my favorite bit of lighting likely comes form Ragtime. The end of the second act, when Coalhouse opens the doors to go outside, is probably the single most vivid lighting image I can remember.

Perhaps the "2 in 1" clue refers to a show with a play-within-a-play structure, such as how Kiss Me, Kate has The Taming of the Shrew in it. Also, if that were the case, it could explain the clue about it starting with A or H....the musical proper could start with one letter, and the show inside could start with the other.