Since my encounter with the vampires (see The Hunted: Expulsion) I have been unbelievably busy.  We’ve begun mask work in movement class with Norm Johnson and we’re building our own masks this week.  This is an incredible experience, but very time consuming and frustrating.  My mask is almost done, I’m on to the painting stage, and hopefully it turns out well.  Other classes are going well, this is the first time in my college career where all my classes seem to be working in synergy, and things are moving a little easier than they have in the past.

We’ve begun rehearsals for Much Ado About Nothing, and while we’re still in the table read stage, the cast just seems amazing.  I can’t wait to get going.  Everyone seems to work well together (the cast is full of the people I spend my time with anyways) and the reading is hilarious.  It’s very easy to see everyone in their roles, and working with Greg is great.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am cast as the Messenger (and I’m understudying the Friar), but I was given the extra role of Lord in Act 5, and I will be Fight Choreographing for the show.  I’m very excited about this part of the production, as it will be my first time working on Fight Choreography for the IC Mainstage, as well as my first time Fight Choreographing for a house this large.  The scenic/costume/light/sound design is going to be phenomenal, the design team gave presentations at the first rehearsal, and they are going to be stunning, so make sure you get your tickets!

We had snowicane 2010 last week (also known as Snowpocalypse 2010) which dropped a huge amount of snow on Ithaca New York, and all of New York State, however a source tells us that Ithaca College was one of two schools in the state not to close last thursday (Feb. 25) and the other was Cornell.  Go Ithaca New York, we stick it out!  Because of it, the cars were all covered, and the parking lots absolutely decimated, and it led to some great sledding!  The snow’s all still here now, and more is dropping on us, which has man people confused.  Maybe it’s coming from New England that makes me wonder how they could think snow would stop once March arrived, but my concept of snow is that it snows through late March, and I’ve seen snow as late as the end of April/early May before.  Especially here where the lake effect snow runs everything, I can’t believe that people think that the calendar date for the beginning of spring would be any mark towards when spring ACTUALLY arrives.  Anyways, that’s just my pet peeve for the day.  Beyond that there’s not much to report.

Pretty soon we’re going to go back after the Vampires who attacked us, and we’ll be sure to post the video so you all can see the outcome.  If you haven’t seen the first video, again please go check it out here and let us know what you think via a rating or a comment or something of that kind.  Showing it to your friends would be really helpful as well as it would help us get the word out.  We’re now an official Affiliate of the official site for The Hunted (we have our own logo and everything), so you’ll be able to see our updates there as well.  Stay tuned for those updates, because we will try and keep updating as fast and often as we can.

Much love to everyone,

~ Ned

I have a story to tell you all, that’s a little scary.  A couple weeks ago, my roommate Max and I were on our way to a film shoot with our friend Mitchell, when I received a phone call.  It was from Mark Bedell, the man I trained with back in Maine.  He informed me that this web series that we had been watching entitled “The Hunted” was actually real, and it was chronicling Bob Chapin’s fight against vampires in L.A.  The vampires had moved from L.A. and spread out all across the country, however, and they came to Maine.  He had fought them, and was calling me to warn me that they knew about me from an article that had been written about Mark and I, and may be coming to get me before I could help Mark.

Needless to say, they came.  Mitchell caught the whole thing on film, thank god, and we in turn have posted it both on this site and on YouTube.  Now I am joining the ranks of vampire slayers across this country.  My friends and are fighting back against them and putting our videos up to make sure that the world knows about this threat.  I will always post about new happenings, and you can find all the videos we make in the new “The Hunted” section under the Media tab.

All videos will be posted on YouTube, and I ask at some point you head over to my YouTube account and comment on them.  A comment shows that you are aware of the threat, and a 5 star rating shows that you will join us in fighting back!

We are all regrouping right now, and figuring our what our next move will be, but trust me, you all will be the first to know.  My best to everyone reading this, and stay safe.  Be always on your guard.  You never know who among you is actually one of them.

~Ned Donovan

That new exciting update I talked about is still in the final stages, however I’ve added a new feature to the “Contact” section of the page.  I now have a Google Voice account, and while I don’t have multiple numbers, so it doesn’t work as well for me, I can now give you all the opportunity to call me from my web page!  It’s very exciting.  If you go to the “Contact” section, there is a button now from Google that says “Call” or something of that kind.  Click it and it will have you put in your number.  Your phone will then receive a call and that call will connect you to me.  It’s an experimental feature and I don’t know if I’ll keep it, but I’m excited to see if it works (or if anyone even uses it).  Anyways, best to everyone, and get excited about this new media update coming soon!!!!

~Ned

I just found out today that the houndbite players I have set up to play my stuff on the audio section of this site are currently out of order. I’m not sure what’s going on and I don’t have time to figure it out right now, however I will try and get things back up and running. Maybe no one’s noticed because no one listens, but I would like to fix that anyways.

Sorry for the downtime. Hope all is well with everyone else.

As a little foreshadowing, there is a very exciting new section going to be coming to the media page soon, so watch closely. I think it should be ready before the end of the week.

Get pumped!

~Ned

I just thought I’d quickly post about what’s going on out here in Ithaca.  I made it back safely 8 days ago and since then have been busybusybusy getting everything accomplished.  Last saturday I auditioned for the Hangar Theatre for their summer stock season, then sunday was the IC Mainstage auditions which had callbacks monday through wednesday.  After a great week of auditions I have been cast as Messenger in the Mainstage production of Much Ado About Nothing which will be great fun.  I’m a little nervous as I have never been in a Shakespeare before, but that’s also why I’m excited, because it will be an amazing opportunity and new experience for me.  I am also going to be taking part in a couple extra projects this semester.  I can’t say exactly what they are and when they’ll be just yet, because they are still being planned…however I can say that they will be amazingly fun and I hope well received, and one of them will be a video project, so look for more updates in the very near future about these things!  Hope all is well with everyone reading this, and can’t wait to unveil my other semester projects!

~Ned

I am currently lying in my living room, in front of a dying fire, wrapped in a blanket, and watching the snow fall. I know, awesome. I also can’t sleep, but that’s besides the point. I just really wanted to let you all know that I am unbelievably excited about this snow, and can’t wait to upload pictures of the aftermath tomorrow. I am uploading some pictures of the accumulation thus far, and I’m pretty excited about this one. If all goes well, I’m going sledding tomorrow!

Until an update later, cheers to everyone.

*UPDATE* I woke up to a winter wonderland. Dear Lord it is amazing out there, I’m uploading a couple more pictures to see it for youselves, but I have friends who have been shovelling their car out for an hour now. It’s pretty nuts!

~ Ned

So if you know me at all, you know that I am obsessed with the musical “Passing Strange”.  My story with Passing Strange is kind of fun, because I didn’t want to see it when I first read about it in the NY Times that February, and then when I went to the city in March, my friend Debra Evans informed me that if she was going to help me find cheap tickets, I was required to see Passing Strange.  I begrudgingly agreed.  Man, was I wrong.  I was on the edge of my seat, laughing uproariously, crying, rocking out, enjoying myself fully, just the way theatre was meant to be.  I saw many shows that week, including Sunday in the Park with George, In The Heights, A Catered Affair, and more; and Passing Strange easily took the cake for the best thing I saw that season.  I came home, saddened that no CD of the show

existed yet, and told everyone to go see it if they were in New York.  Not many people listened.

Fast forward a few months and we’re in June of 2008, the CD rendition of Passing Strange is totally a letdown in comparison with the beauty of the show, many songs are overlooked, and the interludes which made the show so great aren’t in there.  Passing Strange also gets absolutely shafted at the Tony’s; losing everything except for Best Book of a Musical.  (The only one I thought it was a lock to win was Best Lighting, considering the lighting made the show, there was no set…but that’s just me. I mean, look at this picture!) I am furious, however the Passing Strange Tony’s performance was quite dreadful, I must say.  They picked the one song that I feel was weak in the show (Amsterdam which then fused into Keys…it was a weird cut), because it was the most mainstream. I think if they’d trusted the people to accept rock on Broadway, they could have done a different song (like It’s Alright), and totally blown the house away.
Very soon afterwards, Passing Strange announced that it was closing…on July 20th 2008.  If you remember my life about that time, I wasn’t having the best spring/summer.  I had torn two of the ligaments in my knee and was awaiting knee surgery, the one awesome part of my summer had been Henry Fonda and the Falsettos in North Reading with Dave Grossman and company, but it was over by then.  So I was doing nothing with my time, waiting for my surgery on July 23rd.  Also if you know my life well enough, you know that July 20th is my birthday, and that just seemed like a sign that I was meant to go to the closing performance.  I immediately got on the phone and ordered five tickets to the show, figuring I could find people to go with me later.  I attended the final performance with Debra Evans (of course), and then Sarah Brenner, Kyle Johnson, and Hugo Moreno, all people I’d met at orientation for Ithaca earlier that summer.  It was amazing.  Spike Lee was there filming the final few performances to turn into a DVD, so the energy was high, the audience was all people who truly loved Passing Strange like myself, and the performers were amazing as always.  Colman Domingo still takes the cake as the best stage presence I’ve ever experienced, and Rebecca Naomi Jones was absolutely rocking that night.  There was not a weak link in the cast however, between Daniel Breaker (making quite a name for himself in Shrek right now), de’Adre Aziza, Eisa Davis, Chad Goodridge, and of course Stew, the cast was phenomenal.  Also not forgetting the band led by Stew collaborator Heidi Rodewald.  The show went on, it was amazing…again, and I left there feeling like I’d just witnessed the end of something special.  Of course I got autographs, and took pictures with cast members.

So afterwards the experience was over, right?  Or so I thought.  Deb and I said goodbye to Sarah, Kyle, and Hugo, and went across the street to a restaurant to have some dinner before going back to her Brooklyn apartment.  There we saw some people with shirts that said “The Scareotypes” on the front and “Passing Strange” on the back.  Now I had been looking for just such a shirt but could not find one, and Deb and I went over to ask where they had purchased them.  The answer was they had made them, and they were Passing Strange nuts from Broadwayworld.com, they didn’t actually know each other but had met up to see the final performance.  We sat and had dinner with them, of course.  One of them, as it turns out, was a Belasco Usher, and therefore had been invited to the cast party, but wasn’t planning on attending because she didn’t actually know anyone in the show.  She would change her mind, she said, if she knew someone to go with.  She asked all of us, would we like to go.  Would you have said no?  Yeah, me neither.  So off we went to a bar about 4 blocks from the Belasco which Passing Strange was having their cast and crew party at.  It ended up being myself, Deb, the four people we had dinner with, the cast and crew of Passing Strange, and Spike Lee and his entourage hanging out for a good portion of the night before Spike Lee, and the cast departed to sleep before a performance without the audience for the camera the following day.  From then on it was just us, the crew, and the band.  Awesome.  I went back to Deb’s, caught a bus back to Maine early the following morning, and that was that.

You may be wondering why on earth I’m telling this story to you now, in January of 2010.  Well because Passing Strange is back on my radar.  You see just last night, Passing Strange aired nationwide on PBS’ Great Performances, twice, once at 9PM EST and once at 1AM EST.  Also on Tuesday the DVD was released worldwide, for purchase from anywhere you like to buy DVDs (I got mine from Bullmoose Music, a. because I like buying from local Portland shops, and b. because they have it for way cheaper than amazon, best buy, fye, or any of them!)  It is a very very good capturing of the Musical.  One major problem I have is in an attempt to not ruin the audience’s viewing, they kept the cameras out of the line of sight for the show, which is fine, but it means that most of the shots are closeups.  A lot of the beauty of seeing the whole stage is lost by this.  My favorite moment in the show is during Identity, when Daniel Breaker drops the four lights he’s holding, and they are slowly dragged away from him into the pit.  This was barely even captured on the DVD because the cameras were focussed on Breaker, and not the whole image.  All in all, though, Spike Lee did a damn good job making sure that the show was encapsulated for a viewing audience.  I doubt if Passing Strange will ever appear again, without Stew I just don’t think it can work, so the DVD is what we’ve got.  Buy it, ASAP.  You wont regret it, and you will witness one of the most moving, and powerful pieces of (musical theatre? rock?) that I, and many others have ever experienced.

“Call it a rock concert with a story to tell.

Call it a sprawling piece of performance art.

I’ll just call it wonderful.”

- Charles Isherwood, New York Times

I don’t think there’s any other words that need to be said than that.

Passing Strange is available for $19.99 from Amazon.com.  Starring Stew, Daniel Breaker, Eisa Davis, Colman Domingo, de’Adre Aziza, Rebecca Naomi Jones, and Chad Goodridge.  Directed by Spike Lee. Featuring Heidi Rodewald, Jon Spurney, Christian Cassan, and Christian Gibbs as The Band.  Filmed live at the Belasco Theatre 111 West 44th Street, Between 6th and 7th Avenue, New York, NY 10036

Just wanted to drop a quick note and let you know an exciting update in my life.  All the BFAs were put into a hat and names were drawn at random, and I’m singing for Patti Lupone in a master class on Wednesday, December 9th.  It’s going to be an amazing experience, and I can’t wait to hear what she has to say about my work.  I will post again later about how it was.

Love to everyone as we enter the holiday season!

~Ned Donovan

So it’s that time of the year where we all get together and stuff our faces in honor of good in the world.  That’s not me being sarcastic either, I love that tradition (I love food).  There’s not much to report here, I just hope that everyone’s having a phenomenal thanksgiving, that all my college friends are having wonderful breaks from school, and that everyone in my life is taking a day to relax, and just enjoy themselves.  I know I am.  I’m here in Allentown at my dad’s house with my Dad, Diana, Devan, and Graham joined me for thanksgiving as well.  We’re about to go out to a large thanksgiving gathering of friends which should be fun, and should have too much food involved.

My break has consisted of relaxing and eating and sleeping.  I’ve watched a bunch of football with Jason, played video games with Derek, watched movies with the gang, and one day when Graham, Jason, Christine, Danny Moss, Nick Taylor, and I went out for a hike in the woods of Ithaca.  The pictures are posted below.  Beyond that there’s not much else to report.  Graham and I got really lost driving down here…(okay I got really lost because I was driving and Graham was playing video games on his computer) and the trip which should’ve been 3 hours, took a little over 4.  Ah well, we can’t win them all.

Happy thanksgiving to everyone!  I am certainly thankful for all I have in my life right now.

~Ned Donovan