Vintage Hitchcock by Grove Playmakers Theatre - Jonathan Elmore: Creative Producer

Vintage Hitchcock

I was approached by my friend Sandy to be in this show. She was directing and needed a few people that could handle multiple voices to act out three radio plays that Alfred Hitchcock had made into films. I wasn't sure I wanted to do it because I didn't take the time to learn what was really going on. Once I figured out that we were basically doing a live radio broadcast complete with live Foley artists, I got excited about the project. It turned out that Sandy had to pass the directorial responsibilities on to Tom Teel, but that was only a little bump in the road. The show went on to be really fun and entertaining to me. I only hope that others had as much fun watching it. For my part, I had 20 different characters that I had to find a voice for. Since all the plays take place in Britain, I had to dig deep and come up with a slew of accents to make it sound like each character was its own real person. I used Cockney both light and heavy, BBC English, West End, Irish, Scottish, French, Brummie, Liverpool, and one stutterer. Some voices were high pitched, some were low, and others were in my normal vocal range. These plays really pushed my limits as an actor. I loved it a lot!! In addition to quickly changing voices, we decided that we would also change hats to let the audience know that a new character was coming. It was so much fun being able to mix these accents and dialog with real Foley artists behind us making noises like rain, gun fire, doors opening and closing, footsteps, doorbells, telephones and people fainting. I was lucky to share the stage with Marijo, Pam, Tom, Mark, Carol, and Summer with Mimi and Sharon handling lights and sounds respectively. Great crew. Great time on stage.