Mark your calendar for one of four performances of Ian Fleming’s “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” one of the most beloved family musicals of all time. Brought to you by Cur- tains Up Pagosa, our community theater group where our kids and adult residents come together several times a year to entertain the community, learn theater skills and even earn college scholarships.
You may have seen the 1968 film starring Dick Van Dyke and Sally Ann Howes, but you’ve probably never seen the Broadway musical version, launched in 2005. Well, now you can, right here at Pagosa Springs High School June 29 to July 2.
Our resourceful artistic director, Dale Scrivener, found another theater company that had the flying Chitty car and drove it by truck all the way from Ontario, Canada, to Pagosa Springs.
It flies, it levitates, it honks, it’s ahhhh-mazing.
Additional props and sets were also obtained from this company. But, what really sets off the scenes in a theater production? The lighting. We are extremely fortunate to have Aaron Bishop, a highly trained and experienced theater profes- sional, on our team to create not only the lighting but other special effects as well.
“Lighting tells the story as effectively as the lines the characters speak,” Bishop said. “In ‘Beautyand the Beast,’ Belle was lit with blue light, the Beast with red light. As the story progressed and their love grew, the lighting on both characters became purple.”
In “Chitty,” the special car is 6 feet wide, 14 feet long, has lighting inside and out, and wheels that flip up so it can float on water and fly in the sky.
“Special effects and lighting make the unbelievable believable,” said Bishop, “transporting the viewer into another imaginative world.”
“Chitty” will be performed at Pagosa Springs High School on June 29, June 30 and July 1 at 7pm, and on July 2 at 2pm.
You can buy tickets online at https://our.show/chitty23 or before each performance.