Posted on by nataliejmoore

Gamma Phi Tiger Tunes 2021: Rebuilding a Legacy

Good morning, Angels!

Good morning, Gamma!

I had the honor of being the choreography director for the Women of Gamma Phi’s 2021 Tiger Tunes show Gamma’s Angels! The magnitude of this honor was amplified because of the fact that Tiger Tunes 201 was Gamma Phi’s first Tiger Tunes show to participate in as a club in over 20 years.

The Women of Gamma Phi faded from Ouachita’s campus during the 1999-2000 school year, and it was not until May of 2019 that we officially made our debut.

Because the club’s re-founding occurred in May it was too late for them to enter Tiger Tunes 2019 as a club. Members who still wished to participate in Tiger Tunes that fall were in the Campus Ministries Time Travelers show.

I was also a member of the Time Travelers show! It was this experience that made me fall in love with Tiger Tunes and solidified my hopes of becoming a Tiger Tunes Director.

Late Spring semester 2021 when Gamma Phi held officer elections for the fall, we also elected our Fall 2021 Tiger Tunes directors. Piper Fain (music director), Hannah Herrington (creative director), and I (dance director) ran and received the votes necessary to get the positions!

We knew we had our work cut out for us, but we didn’t know just how sweet the job would be.

Piper Fain, Hannah Herrington, and Natalie Moore

It was so rewarding to get to set a standard for future Gamma Phi Tunes shows by being the first directors since our re-founding. It was an experience filled with challenges, but I would not trade them for the world.

Being a director brought me closer to my sisters and also gave me an opportunity to exercise my creativity to serve them. It was like my two worlds collided, Gamma Phi and dance, I loved it!

Listen to the following audio to hear what my fellow director, Piper Fain had to say about her experience as the music director for Gamma’s Angels!

SoundCloud link to interview with Piper Fain

The weeks of practice leading up to Tiger Tunes performances were filled with days of adjusting to school schedules again and nights of adjusting to Tiger Tunes Practice schedules. But all of this adjustment paid off the first time Gamma took the stage to perform our first Tiger Tunes show in over 20 years.

You can see our journey from practice to performances in the video below!

Being one of the first Gamma Tiger Tunes Directors since the re-founding of the club has been one of the biggest blessings of my college career. Through it I gained closer relationships with my sisters, the opportunity to serve my campus community in a new way and memories that I will always hold dear (see image below).

Gamma’s Angels, mission accomplished, but never forgotten.

Hannah Herrington, Natalie Moore, and Piper Fain making those lasting memories walking to perform in the finale of a show in the rain with “ponchos” and “rainboots”.
Posted on by nataliejmoore

Art and Music Tell the Story of Freedom

Sculpture in the “This Little Light of Mine” gallery at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum

The Public History Program at Ouachita Baptist University took a field trip to Mississippi March 4th through the 6th. I had the privilege of going on this trip!

The first stop on the trip was at the Two Mississippi Museums. The Two Mississippi Museums are the Mississippi Museum of History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. Chris DiGiovanni, a 2018 graduate of the Ouachita public history program who works at the museums, guided us during our visit.

We all found the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum particularly insightful. The museum showcases the story from slavery to freedom for people of color in the state.

Exhibit at Mississippi Civil Rights Museum Listing the Names of Every Lynching Victim in the State

It is the responsibility of a good museum to portray its message to visitor honestly and invoke a response. The response we felt after visiting the museum was one of awe. Not awe in a positive way, awe as in shock. We were all shocked at the amount of suffering endured by the participants in the Civil Rights movement and how strong and brave they were to endure it for the greater purpose.

One of the most profound features of the museum combined art and music into a space that provided visitors an opportunity for reflection (pictured at the top of this page). The sculpture in the “This Little Light of Mine” gallery has branches that extend into the museum’s seven other chronologically arranged galleries representing the unity of all who came before and will come after.

The above audio is the introduction Chris gave us as we came into the gallery for the first time, followed by a small portion of the song that played after (a longer portion of the song will be included at the bottom of this post). The circular gallery is centered around the sculpture and the walls feature the faces of heroes of the Civil Rights movement. You’ll hear Chris mention some of their names.

The experience of sitting in that space and hearing the voices sing the freedom songs while looking at the faces of those who lost their lives due to racially motivated reasons was humbling. It provided a reminder of how fresh these injustices are.

We tend to think of the civil rights movement as something that was a long time ago, but the last lynching in the state of Mississippi was just in 1973. This was less than 50 years ago.

I appreciated the message of the museums as a whole, but I really valued that they made a space for reflection in the “This Little Light of Mine” gallery. This space allows visitors to have the same experience we did, one of realization that the Civil Rights movement is still playing out today and that the results of it affect our daily lives.

Longer Portion of Freedom Song from the “This Little Light of Mine” Gallery
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I was in the “Room Where It Happened”.

“Hamilton” has been taking Broadway by storm since August 9, 2015. This A-Ham craze came to Little Rock, Arkansas this month. The show opened February 8th and will run through the 20th.

“Hamilton” sets on the Robinson Center Stage

The Angelica cast of the show’s touring company was the group to take the stage during the show’s run in Little Rock.

The matinee performance on Sunday February 13 marked a monumental occasion for the cast—it was their 1400th show to perform! The cast celebrated this occasion with gold balloons and cake backstage before the show.

However, this celebratory occasion didn’t mean that each cast member had personally performed in every one of those shows. That would be impossible due to sickness (que the pandemic), fatigue, vocal strain, and actors simply taking leave.

But the show must go on, even when cast members are not there. How is this accomplished?

Thanks to three very important groups of cast members, the standbys, swings and understudies, the cast of every show is full of talent, even when originally cast members are absent.

A standby cast member only performs in the show when the actor’s character they are on standby for has to be absent. Standbys usually only exist for lead characters.

An understudy will perform in a role when a standby is unavailable, or one is not cast for the character that needs to be covered. An understudy is also usually a member of the show’s ensemble.

A swing is a cast member who only performs when they are needed in as many as 12 different possible roles, they have to be ready to “swing” into any role they are contracted for.

Program Filler Detailing Cast Changes

This program filler was stuffed in last Sunday evening’s playbill. It was a necessary addition to the program because there were several understudies, standbys, and swings performing in place of the cast list that was originally printed.

Deejay Young, a standby for Alexander Hamilton performed in place of Edred Utomi. An understudy, John Devereaux, performed the roles of Hercules Mulligan and James Madison instead of Tyler Belo. The roles of Philip Schuyler, James Reynolds, and the doctor were played by a swing cast member, Connor Wince. Those roles are normally filled by Will T. Travis. Jacob Guzman played Charles Lee in the Sunday evening performance; Robbie Nicholson is originally cast in the role.

These cast members graced the stage with their amazing stage presence and made my experience feel truly historic.

I was amazed at how much the cast sounded like the original cast recordings of the soundtrack. Even with multiple understudies, standbys, and swings filling the cast Sunday evening the integrity of the show was not affected.

  • view from row V seat 302
  • cast—featuring all the amazing understudies/standbys/swings—taking their final bow
  • excitement before the curtain opens

If not for the little white slip of paper in the program I would not have noticed or known that there were performers taking the stage in roles they didn’t usually do. The presence of these fill-ins enables the show to go on, with no hindrance to the production. This is mind blowing to me and proves the talent and versatility of the artists.

This performance was the first time I had seen “Hamilton” live. I can say with certainty that the Disney+ recording of the show does not compare to being in the actual “room where it happened”.