After my employer came to see "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" at the Players Theatre of Sarasota, he busted my balls about how he came to see a two-hour play in which I was only on stage for five minutes. Actually, intermission included, our production ran closer to about ninety minutes, and my stage time was closer to ten. Just the same, to this I remark that in all one-hundred and eighteen minutes of "The SIlene of the Lambs," Hannibal Lecter only gets about fifteen minutes of screen time, and yet he is remembered more than any other character, and he wasn't even the main villain. Neither, of course, was the Child Catcher the main villain in "Chitty," yet he is remembered in childhood nightmares. It's now been five months since our production closed, and still when I go to work or to the grocery store, I am approached by strangers asking "haven't I seen you on stage? Weren't you the Child-Catcher?" and remarking "my four-year-old granddaughter still asks about you, wondering if you're going to come and take her away in the night." Critics ate us up, despite a recurrent gripe about the car not actually flying (what do you want from a community theatre?!). My favorite review of my performance came from Marty Fugate of The Observer, who described my Child Catcher as "high-octane nightmare fuel! Pelissier plays this creep like a cross between Nosferatu and Edward Scissorhands." I've never had so much fun being bad. That, coupled with the entire cast, crew and ensemble of truly wonderful people that I got to work and spend time with for a month and a half made me so happy to have broken my one-show-per-year-and-no-more rule. And while my main intention in putting this little montage together was to highlight my own contribution to this incredibly fun show, I couldn't resist capping it off with the entire curtain call featuring every face, young, old and in-between, that made our production of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" a truly scrumptious affair.
I created this video with the KZfaq Video Editor ( / editor )