Alisa The singers rehearsing on the stage, the live painter touched the stage backdrop and the stage performance, and the stage was packed with wholesale corsets and uniforms to perform the rehearsal of the “Guardian Gate” in 200 theatres in a church in the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
This Gilbert Sullivan Society performed for the first time on the millionaire yacht in the Blue Mountains of Maine in 1924 and has been known as the cultural export of the blue veins of the Upper East Side for decades.
With Ivy League professionals, who like to pay in installments at night and on weekends, these days, the team has fewer and fewer applicants and has problems finding rehearsals and store space, let alone making calls. Home theater.
But even after the golden age, even if many small theaters in New York City were closed, the troupe could survive.
Now that it has entered the 94th season, the troupe has continued to perform frequent performances. It hopes to reach the 100th anniversary.
Susanna Taylor, the acting president, said: “I think we will reach 100, but it will work.” Before the troupe’s spring producer “Muehmann” rehearsed, he often saw countless things in the background. The play was held at the St. Jean Theatre on East 76th Street on March 31st.
Taylor pointed out a nursery room at the church day care center, which is providing choir members with a locker room for their tower guard uniform.
The band squeezed into a narrow pit and the rehearsal started.
When Jack Potter and Elsie were “I have a song to sing!”, the troupe was completely boring.
The program’s program includes photographs of the “Yeoman” troupe dating back to the 1930s. The troupe created works from 13 works by Gilbert and Sullivan. It has raised millions of dollars for charity in New York City for decades.
Taylor said that about 260 crew members participated actively throughout the year, whether it was spring or autumn performances, or other concerts and events.
Taylor said that even if they are inactive or residing elsewhere as a means of maintaining contact with the group, nearly 400 members continue to pay membership fees, and many people travel to New York during the production, which may be similar to the party.
Dozens of members have worked in this group for more than 50 years, many of whom were in the 80s and 90s, including Ed Gough, 95, who still sang with the troupe.
Like many members, “Yeoman” executive producer Sandy Dickinson has three generations in the troupe. Dickinson’s children were all members. He said he was “blue” and was a member of the troupe’s children. Then he came into contact with the opera when he was at Allen Stevenson College in Manhattan. The theatre department still provided Gilbert and Sand. Li Wen’s works.
For decades, the troupe has provided similar drama programs to local private schools. Although some members of the nobility still exist – including J. Pierpont Morgan’s great-grandson Charles F. Morgan – its members have been diversified.
“When I was young, most of you were patients with blue blood disease in the Upper East Side, but everything changed,” Dickinson said. “I live in Jersey. I can’t live on Park Avenue.”
The troupe performed for the first time in 1924 and promulgated “H.M.S. Pinafore” on the founder’s yacht deck, a wealthy Manhattan doctor, Seth M. Milliken. By 1926, they established the “Pangers Pirates” in the townhouses of Madison Avenue, and then performed for many years in FE’s spacious mansion.
The troupe still holds meetings in its members’ luxury apartments, but it is difficult to find real estate that was donated regularly for rehearsals and production of buildings a few years ago. The organization was recently built in a parking lot in Secaucus, New Jersey, and in a barn in New York State.
“These backgrounds may be painted in the basement of someone’s building, suspended in heating oil or other things,” said Tom Ridgeley, director of the production department.
Ridgley said that the close unity of the troupe has not diminished; it has improved the stage performance.
Intimacy will also kick behind the stage. The post-show destination includes Alehouse on Third Avenue, where members often use well-lubricated theatrical songs: “Hail in the Pirates of the Ice”.
“Hail, poetry, your reborn maid!
Your favorite pirate trade. “
This troupe can easily break into the songs on the subway or during the funeral of members, in the church. At the wedding of the member, guests may hear “The Gondoliers” “groom and bride” and “become a beautiful young bride” from “Yeoman”.
For many years the wedding is sure to be very rich. The troupe claimed that no less than 99 marriage couples were married – known as “meeting and marriage.”
“This is a matchmaker’s paradise,” she said. “You bring all these professionals together because they have this common passion.”
Only 12 of them ended in divorce, said Suzanne Taylor, daytime event planner Suzanne Taylor and a soprano who now plays Dame Carruthers in “Yeoman”.
Taylor and her husband John Taylor married in 2000 and became the 84th meeting and marriage couple of the troupe.
Of course, there are many extra married couples who have not met at the troupe.
For example, Betsy King Militello met her husband Sam Militello in the late 1990s, both of whom worked in the Village Light Opera Group. Betsy Militello has been a member of the Blue Mountain team since 1983 and has been joined by Sam Militello to the Blue Mountain team. Both are lighting designers currently performing.
Betsy Militello said: “You soon met people.” “Everyone has more than full-time lives, and there is no time to do anything. We are all doing what we love.”
Militello said that she grew up in the Upper East Side and went to perform in Manhattan Light Opera. In 1989, she closed the full-time Gilbert Sullivan Troupe of the Upper East Side. She is interviewing to join the Harvard Club. Her interviewer is a member who suggested she apply to Blue Mountain.
As for Dickinson, his ex-wife never became a member of the troupe. However, he is dating a woman, but due to their early relationship, he flinched when he was asked if he could become the 100th “befriend and get married” couple of the troupe.
“What are you?” he said. “Priest?”