Hey, it’s a new feature! This is the first post of what will become something of a sub-blog here for the next few months. I intend to blog frequently over the summer to give a complete picture of my season as production stage manager for The Reagle Players in Waltham, MA. There’s a new “summer stock” topic over on the sidebar yonder —->, which will narrow down to only these posts.

So how did I get this job?
I first came to this company two years ago when I received a phone call from Scott Mikita, one of the actors in Phantom. He was calling to see if I’d be interested in stage managing at a theatre he and his wife Sarah Pfisterer (who I knew from her days as Christine in Phantom) had worked with before. They were going to be performing in the shows that season (he had gotten a leave from Phantom to do the first one, she was doing the second and third), and the producer had asked them if they could recommend any stage managers in New York.

Going off into the unknown like that is a little scary when you don’t know the company, and living in the suburbs for three months without a car could have been miserable, but I knew Scott and Sarah wouldn’t be returning if it wasn’t a great place to work — hell, Scott was giving up his Broadway paycheck to do it — so I was convinced it was something I wanted to do. A lot of my remaining anxiety was eased at the last minute when it was determined that I should have my own car, which in hindsight was an absolute necessity. One thing I really appreciate at Reagle is that even when the budget is tight, they will always make sure I have what I need to do my job.

A brief history of The Reagle Players
Reagle is celebrating it’s 39th season this year. The founder and producer is Robert Eagle, or R. Eagle. REagle… get it? They started out as a community theatre, and now operate under an Actors’ Equity Letter of Agreement contract, which means that the company consists of a mix of professional Equity actors, professional non-Equity actors (mostly from New York and Boston), and local actors who work for free, many of whom have been with the company for a long time. So it’s a nice mix of community theatre and various levels of professionals, from college students to Broadway and movie stars, with lots of talent at all levels.

Equity-speak for anyone who cares: The contract is an LOA referenced to COST. Generally there’s a requirement of seven Equity actors per show, two of whom must be in the chorus. This does not include me, and I can never remember if it includes my assistant, who is an Actor/ASM. I believe it does not, as I seem to recall always having to count to 9 in matters involving Equity members. Non-Eq actors are able to work for Equity Membership Candidate (EMC) points, and we’ve had a couple actors earn their cards during shows in the two years I’ve been there (EMCs who are expected to earn their cards during the run don’t count toward the required 7 Equity members).

The Theatre
The Robinson Theatre seats about 1,100 and is situated inside Waltham High School, and is supplemented by a recent multi-million-dollar addition that Reagle helped to pay for, including a dance studio of the same size as the stage, an enlargement of the scene shop that I’d say at least doubled it, as well as the basement storage where a lot of the costumes, props and drops are stored. In addition, the lobby was enlarged to double its original size, with a full-length glass wall looking onto a courtyard. Waltham High also uses the theatre and dance studio, so the first show of the season always has to take into account activities like dance classes during the school day, graduation events, etc. The whole theatre wing of the building is kind of separate from the rest of the school — just the box office, theatre and related backstage areas, dance studio, and a few music rooms which are used as additional rehearsal space. It’s really a very nice facility, and there’s nothing “high school” about it. When rehearsal space is tight there’s also a nearby dance school with two studios in this old schoolhouse type building that we rent. I much prefer being at the theatre though, because on most breaks I like to stroll down the hall to the stage or the shop to see how things are going with the set and other technical matters, and there’s usually somebody who wants me to take a look at something. Oh, and P.S. the old schoolhouse has no air conditioning.

The Schedule
Thankfully, this is not the crazy summer stock schedule of doing a new show every week while rehearsing the next during the day. Every show takes four weeks. The first two weeks are rehearsals. On the Saturday of the second week, tech starts. (I’ve developed a little something I call “pre-tech,” but I’ll save that for when the time comes.) The beginning of the third week is dress rehearsals, and the show opens on Thursday. Performances run the rest of that week, and all of the fourth week. The show closes Sunday and the following Tuesday rehearsals begin for the next show. It could be much, much worse, and for that I am grateful!

OK, enough background, start blogging!
So what have I done so far? Well I like to go in knowing the show itself as well as possible. What I learned the hard way on my first show at Reagle is that because there are almost always two or three simultaneous rehearsals going on (actors, singers, dancers), and my assistant is a dancer in the show, I can’t bounce around very easily and see what everyone is working on. I’m almost always in the acting room with the principals and the director, taking blocking. This is all well and good, but when it comes time to put on a show, I’m going to be the world’s expert on some long, boring book scene with no cues, and there will be a massive 10-minute dance extravaganza with 50 cues that I’ve never seen.

Life Lesson #1: Sometimes I just need to leave my rehearsal.

My helpful assistant, Paul, keeps an eye on what the ensemble is doing, and we check in on breaks and via text message during rehearsal, and if they’re running a finished number, or large chunk of a number, he’ll tell me when to stop in so I can see the most stuff in the shortest amount of time. I don’t need to be there when they’re learning step-ball-change, though if there’s no blocking rehearsal I need to be at instead, I do enjoy sitting in on the dance and music rehearsals, because learning it as the dancers and singers learn it helps it to sink in better, instead of trying to absorb it all at once as a finished product. Anyway, the willingness to stand up and say, “I need to be in the other room right now” has helped me a lot in preparing myself for tech and performances, and usually doesn’t inconvenience the blocking rehearsal very much, if at all.

All that to say, I try to go in ideally with the score memorized from the start. That almost never happens, unless I’ve done the show before, but I try. This year we’re doing 42nd Street, which I will confess I haven’t listened to a note of since it was chosen, because I’ve done it before. My big concern for the last few months has been King and I, because it’s a great big classic show that I really don’t know. I have this friend Amy, who has like every show CD ever, or at least it seems that way. Around February, she’s taken to asking “So what CDs are you going to need to borrow for this summer?” When I ask if she has a certain show, the response is usually, “Broadway or London? Original or revival?,” followed by her recommendations of which one I should be spending more time listening to. Because Singin’ in the Rain has no cast recording, I only needed King and I, so predictably, a day or two after my request, I find waiting for me at the Majestic both the original and the Donna Murphy/Kevin Gray revival. I put them both on my iPod and start listening to them as much as possible.

In my head, I think I know the season: 42nd Street, King and I, Singin’ in the Rain. I know King and I is second, because Sarah Pfisterer is playing Anna, and whenever I’m at Phantom Scott Mikita keeps me updated on anything at Reagle I may have missed, and this is one of the things I had heard from him. I ASSUME (you know what happens when you assume) that Singin’ in the Rain is last, because the story I’ve heard is that it always has to be last, because the rain ruins the deck, and this way the deck gets rebuilt at the end of the season. Makes sense, right? One thing I knew but was somehow in denial of the significance of, is that the deck was already a mess last year. I said to myself, too bad we have to do another whole season on it before putting it out of its misery with the rain. So last week I was on the phone with the producer’s assistant just checking in, and he asked if I knew the season, and I said yeah. “42nd Street is first, right?” “No, 42nd Street is last.” Uh oh. I know King and I is the middle show, so that can only mean Singin’ in the Rain is first. Of course it is, because that way the deck gets replaced mid-season (big job for the crew, but I’m sure they can handle it), and then we have a nice new deck for the rest of the shows. Only problem is I had been comfortable in the knowledge that I have the first two months of the season to prepare for that monster of a show, pore over the script and score, watch the archival video a million times, question all the experts in each department who have done it before, and I should be fine. Well now I have to do it first.

Life Lesson #2: Make sure you’re absolutely positively completely certain you know the order of the shows.

Ever since I first set foot in Reagle-land, Singin’ in the Rain has been something of a legend. It might be the most award-winning show Reagle has ever done, so much so that the first time they did it (2002), it was so popular that they did it again the following year. It’s the show every other show is compared to, certainly internally, and I’ve also heard it when walking through the lobby at intermissions and after shows. “I think this one might have been as good as Singin’ in the Rain!” “Really? No! Nothing could beat that.”

It’s also legendary in a different way with the crew. Since the day I arrived, I was told, “God help you if we ever do Singin’ in the Rain again! Run away! Run away!!” I’m always up for a challenge, though, and when rumors began flying at the end of last season, I was looking forward to confronting the beast and conquering it. The set is huge. Everyone gets wet. That’s basically what I’ve gleaned from them. My take on this is: We know the set fits. Maybe not easily, but it fits. And I will be dry in the booth. My expectation is that it will be much worse for the crew than for me, and hopefully we’ll keep everything on track and it won’t be so bad for them either.

So what I’m currently doing is waiting for a package to arrive with my emergency Singin’ in the Rain-learning supplies. I’m comforted that pretty much everyone but me has done the show before, and the last production was very well documented. There is a wealth of knowledge at Reagle, both in paperwork and oral history, on any show they’ve done before (which is most of them), so when I need to know how something works there’s always someone I can talk to with firsthand experience.

I also booked my train ticket on Amtrak this week. We’re provided with bus fare from New York, but I never use it. I like trains, I hate buses. It’s worth it to me to pay for it. I actually got a good fare this year, so I upgraded to business class. I use those four hours to get a lot of work done. I have traditionally used the train ride to do the first show’s contact sheet and put all those names and numbers into Entourage and sync them to my Treo. That deserves a post in itself. Maybe I’ll write it on the train.