Oliver!

Scott and Joshua appeared in Oliver! with the Bergen County Players. After a detailed series of auditions, Scott was in the ensemble cast, and Joshua was given the title role.

The musical opened September 7, and ran through October 7, 2000 here in Oradell, NJ. Details are on the Bergen County Player's website.

The photo above shows a rehearsal photo with Joshua as Oliver, Larry Landsman as Fagin, Larry Brustofski as Bill Sykes, Kristen Kendall as Nancy and Grant MacDermott as the Artful Dodger.

I've posted some of the rehearsal photos, these are unedited photos, but indicates the real rehearsal process. Click on the button below to see those images.

Barbara Schwartz is one of the BCP members and on their photography committee. She photographed Joshua (above) for a print that appears outside the theater. There is a line in the play where Oliver asks "Please sir, I want some more".... referring to the near starvation diet of gruel. We both liked the expression she captured, and I took her original image and "dirtied" it up, so he looked even more miserable and pathetic. The lab made the poster from the digital file. If you'd like to see the original image, click here.

Click on the photo above to see the entire cast and crew of Oliver! In order to better see the people in group photo, I made the image 1000 pixels wide, so be patient while the 235kb file loads. Also, depending on your screen settings, you may have to scroll the photo from left to right to see everyone.

Shown below is a photo of Joshua as Oliver, with Larry Landsman (taken at the Oradell 4th of July Parade). Joshua wants me to point out that that is not Larry's real nose.... who knew? Then again, that's not Larry's real beard and warts in the photo above either..... or is it?

By the way, for you photographic techies out there, the photo above was shot in the middle of the street after our local Independence Day parade. The original photo (before the background was replaced can be seen if you click here.

The players needed a head shot of Joshua, so I made the photo below. It was fun for me, because I've not made a black and white head shot in nearly 20 years. Click on the photo for a larger image.

The photo was made outdoors with a Nikon CP 990 with a 2x tele-extender. The image was converted to black and white with Photoshop.

The photos above are of Scott singing with the ensemble. He is very expressive, and his voice is heard clearly in the harmony... quite a pleasure!

As you can probably imagine, we've been pretty impressed with the production, and in particular with the director (Frank Avelino) and musical director (Joe Scorese), who have each put in a tremendous amount of time with Joshua.

So we decided that we'd like to give them a small token of our appreciation. Lauren made Oliver! necklaces for them. If you click here, you'll see photos of how the silver necklaces were produced.

The Bergen County Players performs at the Little Firehouse Theater, here in Oradell, NJ. I made the photo below early one morning so as not to have too many cars in front of the theater. Click here for the original, unretouched image, or click on the photo below to see the "improved" image, with lots of annoying items removed.

The final event was a cast party held in late October. I'll post photos soon, but in the meantime, here's a pumpkin we carved for the event.

Click here for photos of the carving process.

The photo above was from the cast party.

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