1. Outstanding Resident Musical – SLEEPING BEAUTY WAKES at La Jolla Playhouse
2. Outstanding Lead Performance in a Musical, Female – Aspen Vincent
3. Outstanding Lead Performance in a Musical, Male – Bryce Ryness
4. Outstanding Featured Performance in a Musical, Male – Bob Stillman
5. Outstanding Choreography – Doug Varone
6. Outstanding Lighting Design – Christopher Akerlind

Check out the full list of nominees in today’s Playbill.com!

Bryce and Aspen in "Drifting" from SLEEPING BEAUTY WAKES

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/aug/23/groovelily-wakes-sleeping-beauty/

It’s a pretty nice story of how we got where we are, and what we hope for the future.

The newest and most talked-about song of the show is Beauty’s rock anthem, “Good For Me” – and though we don’t have leading lady Aspen Vincent on the recording, we do have our own *brand new demo* available for streaming and download.

Pay what you can, share it around, spread the word, and tell everyone you know in or near San Diego to go see SLEEPING BEAUTY WAKES, which has been EXTENDED through August 28!

(For those who have already seen the show: get a FREE download of “Good For Me” from La Jolla Playhouse! Just email a photo of your ticket stub or playbill to marketing@ljp.org and they’ll send you the song.)

If you didn’t win, please do come to the show anyway if you can! We promise you’ll be in for a treat. There are even a couple of great ways to see the show at a discount:

- “Family Weekend” promotion August 19-21: Buy 1 ticket, get the 2nd for 50% off with the promo code FAM2368

- $20 tix for those who are 30 and under

Aspen Vincent and the patients

We had an absolutely tremendous opening night last Friday, and the show is in its best shape ever with this new La Jolla Playhouse production. Critics and audiences are responding, and due to popular demand the show has been EXTENDED through August 28.

La Jolla has even been running a contest called “Beauty in Bed” where people send in photos of their slumbering selves (and their beautiful pets). It’s pretty great.

Please tell everyone you know, and help make SBW an even bigger hit in San Diego! La Jolla is running some terrific deals, like “30 And Under” special $20 tickets – and starting next week we’ll be offering something very cool to all ticket buyers: a free download of the newest/most talked-about song from the show, “Good For Me.” Stay tuned here for more details.

“Drop-dead dreamy”
“Playhouse’s savvy retelling of fairy tale brims with winning songs, performances.”
- James Hebert, The San Diego Union-Tribune

For the full review, go here. For more of what critics and audiences are saying, read further…

From the La Jolla Playhouse website:

What Critics Are Saying:

“CRITIC’S CHOICE!”

“Drop-dead dreamy”
“Playhouse’s savvy retelling of fairy tale brims with winning songs, performances.”
- The San Diego Union-Tribune 

“An absolute spark”   
-La Jolla Light

“The inherent charm of the piece captivates our imagination”
“It whisks a classic fairy tale to a modern day locale that freely mixes medical science with pixie dust.”
-Los Angeles Times

“Sweet-spirited update of the classic fairy tale”
“Inventive and expertly produced”
-North County Times

What Our Social Media Fans Are Saying:

“What an impressive show and performance…destined to be a BIG SUCCESS.” ~James N. via Facebook

“The music and staging were awesome and the actors were INCREDIBLE! … An added plus was seeing the music director “rocking out” in the pit while playing. ~BobCat H via Facebook

“Literally the best all-around production I’ve seen! Thanks for giving me more reasons to sing in the shower ~Kat C. via Facebook

“Was completely blown away by #SleepingBeautyWakes…Go See This!” ~@Cyndi_Morrison via Twitter

“Much applause to @ljplayhouse for a fabulous musical production. Chills throughout the entire performance!” ~@kristinaolani via Twitter

“A hit! Standing O! Terrific cast, vocals, music! No sleeping in our seats!” ~@DramaMamaSuzRN via Twitter

“The best musical I’ve seen in a long time! The sets, staging, music, actors and voices are all incredible!!! If you live in San Diego don’t miss it!!!” ~xander208 via YouTube

We’re in the darkened theatre–the big proscenium stage of the Weiss Theatre at La Jolla Playhouse. We stay in this dark room for 10-12 hours a day now, with brief 10-minute breaks every hour or so when they turn on the house lights on and we go outside to get a moment of beautiful Southern California sunshine.

The rehearsal process was very abbreviated–a mere three days–which isn’t out of the ordinary when you’re taking a full production from one theatre (McCarter) and essentially importing it whole to another theatre (LJP). Now we’re in the midst of six days of technical rehearsals on stage before the curtain rises on Sleeping Beauty Wakes with a paying audience again.

Our mood is upbeat–we did a week of rewrites in Princeton during the final week of the McCarter run, and then even more rewrites after we turned in that draft and met with exhortations for “even bigger, bolder steps forward” from director (Rebecca Taichman), choreographer (Doug Varone), McCarter producer Mara Isaacs and LJP artistic director Chris Ashley. Rebecca promised us that no matter how vast the scope of our rewrites, she’d get them on the stage despite the short rehearsal period.

And so she has. Despite the typical slowdown of tech rehearsals–when everything must move only as fast as sound, lights, projections, stage crew can work through the show for the first time–the show feels tighter and the storytelling more followable than before. Doug Varone choreographed up a storm during the first two days of rehearsal, essentially restaging everything from the moment the patients fall asleep in Act 1 until they wake up again, 17 continuous singing, moving, dancing, dreaming minutes later.

I continue to make tweaks to the underscoring of the in-between bits. Val’s rewriting lyrics here and there. Rachel is down in the front row next to Rebecca, making on-the-spot rewrites of little moments to increase clarity.

Carrie Manolakos. Photo stolen with gratitude, directly from her site, carriemanolakos.com.

My favorite new thing about the show is Carrie Manolakos, who is our MVP for the week. Carrie was actually called back for the role of Beauty when we went through the exhilarating, exhausting, filled-with-peaks-of-joy-and-depths-of-despair process of casting the McCarter production. It was a very tough call, but we ultimately decided to cast Aspen Vincent in the role of Beauty…but we all harbored a very soft spot for Carrie Manolakos and her gorgeous, agile, Valerie-esque voice.

During the run at McCarter, our Cheryl/Night Terrors Patient, Donna Vivino, discovered that she wouldn’t be able to participate in the La Jolla run…so we knew early on that we’d need to find a replacement for her. What we didn’t expect was that Carrie would be big-hearted enough, and open-minded enough, to come on board to replace Donna.

In our process of doing rewrites for the show, it was wildly helpful to know that Carrie was going to be stepping in, and Val actually wrote new harmonies and melismas for Carrie’s voice in the opening song. Carrie fits in like she has always been there–and the four-part writing for the patients sounds simply sublime with her as a part of it. I’m so grateful she took this gig.

I’m so glad we got another chance to make little fixes–they make such a difference. The show is already so much better, in this stop-start version of tech rehearsals.

7 days ’til opening!

PHOTO EXCLUSIVE: Backstage at Sleeping Beauty Wakes With Aspen Vincent and Bryce Ryness

Aspen Vincent and Bryce Ryness take Playbill.com on an exclusive backstage tour of the new musical Sleeping Beauty Wakes, currently playing New Jersey’s McCarter Theatre prior to a summer La Jolla Playhouse run. The electric, quirky modern fairytale features a score by GrooveLily’s Brendan Milburn and Valerie Vigoda. Read the Playbill.com story.

Bryce and Aspen

Here’s where and how to listen and win some free tix!
Listen live online: www.wdvrfm.org
Listen on the actual radio: 89.7 FM (Sergeantsville, NJ area)

6:05 PM EST/3:05 PM PST
We’ll be chatting for about half an hour.