Behind the Scenes by John Miller – April 2025 A warm welcome at the door, a friendly smile at the Lakewood Café, and a pleasant usher to help you find your seat; priceless amenities when you visit the Reif Center! We are lucky to have a fabulous facility, but our volunteers make it more than…

Behind the Scenes by John Miller – January 2025 “Did I tell you what happened at the play? We were at the back of the theater, standing there in the dark, all of a sudden I feel one of ’em tug my sleeve, whispers, “Trudy, look.” I said, “Yeah, goose bumps. You definitely got goose…

Bigger than a Minnesota blizzard in January, Frozen exploded onto our movie screens in 2013.

Behind the Scenes by John Miller – March 2025 Sometimes it’s all about timing. In 2002, the movie musical Chicago was released, winning six Academy Awards including Best Picture. The success of Chicago paved the way for a new generation of successful live-action musicals, most recently the critically acclaimed and popular movie Wicked. However there exists a vast wasteland between…

Behind the Scenes by John Miller – February 2024 Dancers live in light as fish live in water. The stage space in which they move is their aquarium, their portion of the sea. Within translucent walls and above the stage floor, the lighting supports their flashing buoyance or their arrested sculptural bodies. The dance is…

Did you know that there really was a Cyrano de Bergerac?

Grand Rapids Players’ production of “Fiddler on the Roof“. Editor’s note: This article is from the Grand Rapids Players’ newsletter and is reprinted here with permission. Grand Rapids players will be our hosts for MACT*Fest 2027 at the Reif Center in Grand Rapids in February of 2027. What an audience might not realize about the…

Behind the Scenes by John Miller – March 2024 King Triton’s court, Ursula’s Lair, and a storm-tossed Galleon; are just a few of the many scenes set under and over the sea in the Reif Theater Arts production of Disney’s The Little Mermaid JR. How do we go about designing these scenes without breaking our…

Behind the Scenes by John Miller – February 2025 It’s been said that “Everyone knows how to do two jobs, their own and sound.” OK, it was me, I said that! But it’s true! I’ve never had anyone come back to me at the light board and complain that they can’t see the actors, but…

Behind the Scenes by John Miller – June 2025 No, it’s not the next winning Powerball numbers, but if they are, I want a cut! It’s Hairball by the numbers! ㉕ We got lucky! Hairball was originally scheduled for September 2024. But the September date conflicted with a radius clause for another of their concerts,…

Behind the Scenes by John Miller – January 2024 n January of 1959, a twenty-four day musical tour of the Midwest began in Milwaukee. Twelve days later the “Winter Dance Party” would end in tragedy on Feb 3, 1959. 2026 will mark the 67th anniversary of “The Day The Music Died.” The number one and…

Behind the Scenes by John Miller – November 2025 No one sets out to make a bad movie. No one sets out to make a classic movie. Somewhere during development, filming, editing and marketing a film can go either way.  In theater there are dozens of people behind the scenes, in film it’s thousands.  Sometimes,…