The day was May 6 1982, the place was the Off-Broadway theatre known as the Orpheum, the project to take a 1960’s Scifi B-movie known as Little Shop of Horrors and turn it into a musical stage production. The rest they say is history after 2,209 performances the play closed and during its run it won The New York Drama Critics Circle Award, The Outer Critics Circle Award and The Drama Desk Award for Best Musical. Little Shop also spawned an updated musical of the original movie that stared Ellen Green and Rick Moranis, Green was the original Audrey in the Off-Broadway production. The movie also spawned a short-lived children’s cartoon where Audrey 2 became an avenging chlorophyll based super hero that lasted one season in 1991.
I would like to thank you for your support this evening and hope that you enjoy our offering, what you are seeing on the stage is the hard work of some really great young people. In this journey they have had to endure music changes, script changes and the uncertainty of when major props would arrive. Through all of this I have not had one complaint or even a hint of frustration, they just met the adversity head on kept moving in the right direction.
I have also been blessed by great parents, grandparents and supported by countless members of the theatre community. Most of all I want to say a huge thanks to Laura Gemignani Steve Anderson, Luke MacSween and Margot McIlvenna, each one gifted in many ways, each one extending grace upon grace and encouraging me when things became difficult. To borrow the title of a classic film I truly have lived Wonderful Life do to my association with such amazing people. Luke, Margot, Steve and Laura thanks for letting this old dog have one more run at one of the great passions of my life, the theatre.
Now sit back and enjoy the Bend Senior High Production of Little Shop of Horrors and remember above all things don’t feed the plants.
