Today we had another 2-hour rehearsal before the show. Rehearsing during previews has been getting tedious, but today ended up being very productive, perhaps for me most of all. When I arrived Josh told me that Mark planned to use the time for a speed-through of the whole show. I commented about what a shame it was that I hadn’t begun learning to call, since it would be a good opportunity to take a crack at calling.
Josh responded kind of positively to that, and I said, “well, how self-explanatory is it?” I had not even looked at the calling script yet. He thought maybe I could do it. So we got Mark’s blessing, and I worked out with the PAs how they would cover my deck track (without costumes it’s possible for the three tracks to be done by two people). Mickey will be doing my track when I call (the ASM will do his track), and he took the opportunity to practice, including a couple of the costume things, just so he could get the hang of it.
While Mark gave notes from last night, I looked at Josh’s script for the first time, and quickly read through as much of it as I could, trying to picture everything as I went. I asked Josh a couple questions for clarification. I got about halfway through Act II before Mark was done with his notes and we prepared for the run.
Calling the show went much better than I thought. I only screwed up a couple things, mostly due to wrongly anticipating a couple of the bumps on the repetitive but not-exactly-the-same scene change music. Mark was very happy with how I did, and he and Josh agreed that I would do fine if I had to call a performance in an emergency now. I’m scheduled to call both shows on Halloween, and maybe a few earlier, so we still have some time for me to practice.
I’m just so glad for the opportunity to have done it. Under normal circumstances, my only training would be working with Josh in an empty theatre and trying to picture the actual show going on. Then I would have to train my sub on the deck, so that I could go up to the booth to watch Josh call a performance, then call the show a couple times with Josh watching, before being able to sub for him. It’s not the most comfortable way to learn anything, and it creates disruption by pulling me off the deck for three or more shows. This way, I got a rare opportunity to actually practice calling the show with the cast doing a full run-through (and the fact that it was a speed-through added to the challenge). Generally the only time you get to do it with the cast is when there are paying butts in the seats, so there’s no room for mistakes.
Calling the entire show before even beginning to train removed any anxiety I had about learning the show. It also shortens our training time immensely because instead of having to take up several performances to learn the show I can just work with Josh privately and then do the show once with him watching to make sure everything goes well.
For the show itself, it was great to get to see it again. During rehearsals in previews I’ve sometimes sat in the house and seen the final product, but I haven’t seen many parts since we were in the rehearsal studio. The show was also very fun to call. One thing that I think helped me is that it’s mostly audio-based. Most cues are called on words or music, which helps me because although I can’t see the show, I can hear it, so I’m familiar with the music and the actors’ delivery. The stuff that’s visual I’ve been lucky enough to get to see from the house or watching the video monitor in the green room.
Knowing from the time I was hired that Josh had days off scheduled had me watching the whole process keeping in mind that I would probably have to call the show. We weren’t completely sure until recently, because we wanted to decide whether it would be easier to teach someone my deck track or to call the show. As the show evolved in tech, my track got about twice as easy, and the show became more complicated to call, so the decision became clear that I would call. The plan for Mickey to do my track came about because of all the quickchanges I do. He’s there every day to observe what I do, and the cast is already very comfortable with him, which I think is especially important because most of the actors I change are women. His track has gotten much easier lately and involves mostly “pull this,” “push that,” “be tall here” and “catch this prop, ” which will take much less time to teach to someone new than which pair of glasses Stanley should be wearing for which line of dialogue or how the clasp on Alix’s suit jacket works.
Today may have been our last day of rehearsal, unless we do a few hours on opening night, which I hope will not happen. It will be very nice to be in full show mode!
