BLOG: Stephanie Rothenberg on The Road to Opening Stratford's THE SOUND OF MUSIC

BroadwayWorld Toronto is pleased to present the first entry in an exclusive series of guest blogs from The Stratford Festival. Stephanie Rothenberg (Maria in The Sound of Music) and Sara Farb (Anne in The Diary of Anne Frank) will chronicle their road from first preview to opening night in our newest feature "The Road to Opening!" Here, Stephanie writes about first previews, recording EPK footage, having show stills done, and more! Check out some exclusive behind the scene photos below!

Hi Everyone! Welcome to the first week in a new blog series about THE SOUND OF MUSIC at the Stratford Festival. I'm so excited to be bringing you backstage and on the journey from previews to Opening Night with me!

This is a pretty hectic time in any show process because we are performing, rehearsing and putting in changes simultaneously, but at the Stratford Festival, we add another element-repertory scheduling. Most people are in two or sometimes even three shows at once, and almost all of the shows are in the tech process NOW.

For example, many members of our cast are also in the other Rodgers & Hammerstein musical at the Festival this year, CAROUSEL, at the Avon Theatre. They begin previews next week, and are in their final technical runs of the show. It's going to be beautiful, and while you're here checking out THE SOUND OF MUSIC this summer, I hope you'll take a stroll down the road and see it as well.

So let's dive in! Last week, the trumpets sounded as THE SOUND OF MUSIC began previews. It was such an exciting week and a very special one for me as this is my first season at the Stratford Festival. I have loved my time here already in Canada (I'm a New York City girl), and have fallen in love with this theatre and the community. I feel so honoured to be performing this iconic role on this world-renowned stage with such an incredible company, some of whom have been at the Festival for more than 20 years.

We started this week off with our third preview and an evening EPK shoot, so this was one long day! EPK stands for electronic press kit, and is a video shoot that produces the footage for our commercials, montages, and sneak peeks of numbers from our show.

Last week there was a camera in the audience during our final dress rehearsal shooting still photographs as well as video, but the great thing about having an additional EPK shoot is that you can go back and run the number multiple times to get specific moments and multiple angles.

There were four cameras in the audience, some on wheels that could get lots of cool moving shots. During one of the numbers they even brought cameras onstage with me to get close ups. Imagine how distracting that would be if we tried to do that during a show! I will post the videos here on the blog as soon as I have them so stay tuned!

We are now on our fourth preview today, with a month to go until Opening Night. I hope you will join me on this exciting ride! I'd also love to hear your questions or suggestions of topics you'd like me to explore in this blog series. Tweet me @stephrothenberg. "So long, farewell," until next week!

Photos: EPK Footage is shot of Stephanie Rothenbeg performing "The Sound of Music"