The Productions Onboard

So I’ve realized that I have actually managed to speak little to none about the actual productions onboard. I’ll attempt to rectify that now while I am currently in my office between shows.

In general…
There is a production everyday. There is always a technical rehearsal of that production in the afternoon, and then there are two performances (otherwise referred to as “seatings”) that evening. The theater is designed to be able to hold half of the ship’s capacity, so in theory all guests may see all shows if they so choose. Seating times are either 7:15pm & 9:15pm (early shows) or 8:45pm & 10:45pm (late shows). The times are structured around the two available dinner seatings for the guests. Each guest is assigned to either late dinner or early dinner. So, if we do late shows, you eat at your dinner seating and then go to the performance afterward. If we do early shows, those with an early dinner reservation go to the late show, and those with a late dinner reservation go to the early show. For some reason this never ends up working out as designed. But that’s the logic behind the evening’s scheduling anyway.

Production shows…
On any given Celebrity ship there are 3 full-scale, full-cast production shows. These shows are almost always on formal nights and have late seatings. The three onboard the Constellation are:

1. iHollywood
2. Land of Make Believe
3. Celebrate the World

They are all of the same genre – a mishmash of popular songs (mostly popular in the US, but in Celebrate the World especially there are hit songs from many countries). Land of Make Believe has a loose plot line that is some combination of The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland. iHollywood is the most technically complex, and just features a lot of great moments in film history – largely focusing on pirate movies, James Bond, Judy Garland, Little Mermaid, etc.

These shows are each performed 1 day per voyage. They use all 5 singers, 10 dancers, and 2 aerialists. iHollywood uses the onboard orchestra, and the other two run off of track. During these shows I operate from the rigging booth (shown in a picture in a previous post). That is where I run the fly system, turn table, and lifts. I also call any track cues, deck cues, and pit cues from there.

Opening & Closing Night Shows…
The exact content of these shows varies from cruise director to cruise director (they really get to decide the entertainment makeup while they are on board). Currently, our cruise director’s name is Sue Denning. She is a lovely British woman with a fabulous taste in shoes and short blonde spiky hair. For her, the opening night show (which is performed one time on embarkation day at 10:45pm) is called “A Taste of Things to Come.” It opens with an orchestra feature, goes into a cast “bumper” (a piece 10-15 minutes long that is a mash-up of many songs in very similar style to the production shows), a piece done by the aerialists, a number by the onboard a cappella group, and perhaps one or two more pieces contributed by onboard musicians.

The closing night show is called “Everything Musical” and it is literally just that. The cast does a bumper, the orchestra does a feature, and every musical act on board comes through with one piece. It is a technical nightmare with a million changeovers. Right now on board we have a band called Great Ideas (the cheesy party band), Carl Williams (a ballroom dance music group), Expression Strings Trio (violin, viola & piano), Lemon Squeezy (an a cappella group), Jefferson Ang (a guitar/vocalist)… and probably more that I’m forgetting.

//so now I’ve accounted for 5 nights of a 12-night cruise.//

Guest entertainers…
At any given point in time there are 2 guest entertainers onboard. They always swap out mid-voyage so they can perform for one group of guests at the end of their voyage and the next group of guests at the beginning of their voyage. So 4 nights of the cruise you will have guest entertainer performances. These range from vocalists, to pianists, to comedians, to magicians, to ventriloquists, to (playing tonight) a violin duo. You name it, they try to have it. Just like every other show, they do a rehearsal in the afternoon and perform twice on their evenings.

///so now I’ve accounted for 9 nights of a 12-night cruise.//

Local Folkloric Shows…
When a ship does an overnight, they will try to bring a local group on to perform one evening (one seating only). For this voyage, the local group is called Moroshka and they are from St. Petersburg, Russia. I pick them up from the gangway at 9pm, they immediately rehearse and ravage the backstage hospitality, and then they perform once at 10:30pm, and they’re off the ship by midnight. Pretty easy.

//so now I’ve accounted for 10 nights of a 12-night cruise.//

Variety Night…
Not much of a variety, really. The two onboard guest entertainers do a split show. Two 25-minute sets each, typically.

Perry Grant…
Perry is the onboard pianist who plays mostly in the Michael’s Club (usually a VIP lounge). His style is very… umm… flamboyant. And his jackets are very sparkly. He is a terrible singer, but a great entertainer. He sounds a lot like a goat when he sings. I don’t quite get it, but there are literally hundreds of people a year who book cruises just to attend his shows. Literally. No joke. They’ve done studies on it. Anyway, he’s always feeling a bit “under the weather” to get a bit of “sympathy.” So we appease him just so he’ll get on the damn stage every 12 days.

//so that’s it for performances in the Celebrity Theater.//

Theme Nights…
Usually on nights where there isn’t a full production show there is what’s called a Theme Night. Simply put, this is like a miniproduction that happens late at night, using some contingent of the cast, and ends up being a pain in the butt most of the time. Our onboard theme nights that I am involved in are Live@Sky, Broadway Nights, and Sizzle.

Live@Sky is a 1940s theme that has … well … most of the music from IN THE MOOD. Not done as well, but there are many more swing dancers.

Broadway Nights is a cabaret-style evening where each of the singers sings a few Broadway hits. Which was probably exactly what it sounded like so why am I still writing?

Sizzle is a latin dance night. It’s really to get the party atmosphere going. The singers don’t do sizzle, but there are many choreographed dances done by the production dancers. It also features the brass and saxophones from the orchestra.

There are also…
Captain’s Club Celebration
A Cappella Matinees
Aerialists Show
Sue’s One Woman Show (the cruise director)
Captain’s Toast
Crew Talent Show
Star Chef
… and probably more that I’m not thinking of right now.