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January 12, 2010

Daily Routine (show mode)

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 8:28 pm

A rundown of my routine during performances at the Guthrie.

1 1/2 Hours Before Curtain

Hang around theatre, make sure everything is prepared for the return of the actors. The stage should be clear for warm-up and props ready for fight call. This is the trouble-shooting time.

1 Hour Before Curtain

Voluntary warm-up begins onstage. Invite the cast to the stage for warm-up.

45 Minutes Before Curtain

Call the cast to the stage for fight call. The fight captain runs fight call, and we mostly stand off to the side making sure everything goes smoothly.

35 Minutes Before Curtain

With the conclusion of fight call, I holler up to the booth where our light board op puts us into blackout check. This turns off all stage and house lights, and if anything is amiss (lights on that shouldn’t be, or spill from improperly masked running lights), it will show itself. This usually takes about 5 seconds to establish that it is indeed dark, and for me to call for the lighting preset.

After we’re in preset, I check the stage for debris or people’s personal belongings they may have left on or near the stage during warm-up, such as coats and water bottles. I check that any onstage props and furniture are on their spikes and properly set, then invite Nick to inspect for himself (it’s really his stage, so unless he’s busy I want him to have a chance to approve it). Once Nick and I agree that we’re ready to open, I tell the house manager that the house can open, and our sound engineer plays a “welcome” announcement over the PA, telling the patrons in the lobby that seating will begin.

30 Minutes Before Curtain

The famous “half hour.” First, I call half hour over the backstage PA. Then I gather up my belongings and head to the booth, where I will park myself for probably the next three hours. I set up my computer, and at least at this point where we’re transitioning from daytime rehearsals in the house, I carry my headset and script up with me.

Then I hang out and/or blog until I have to interrupt myself temporarily to call “15”.

7 Minutes to Curtain

I switch my radio from the “SM” channel for our theatre to “FOH” (front of house), and ask the house manager if we expect a delayed curtain due to late seating, traffic, weather, etc. This helps me plan the five minute and places calls so the cast isn’t standing around if we know we’ll be starting late.

5 Minutes to Curtain

I call “5”. This can be adjusted early or late depending on the expected actual start time.

At Curtain Time

I call “places.” Like the 5-minute call, this can vary, although unless something unexpected happens, I try to make it literally 5 minutes after the “5”. At this point I check in with the crew on headset and make sure everyone is ready to begin. As the cast arrives on the deck, Nick begins a head-count so we know when we have places.

When We Have Places

When we actually have places, Nick tells me, and I radio the house manager that I’m ready. She will either tell me that we need to hold for people being seated, or will order the staff to close the doors. The door people radio back that their doors are closed, and then the house manager confirms that we’re OK to begin, and wishes us a good show. And then away we go!


January 11, 2010

Post-Tech Day Off!

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 9:29 pm

We have finished tech, we did a very successful first dress rehearsal, then turned around about three hours later and did our final dress rehearsal for 300 high school theatre students.

On Saturday we had our first preview, last night we had our second preview. Before each show we spent five hours making changes to lighting, sound, staging, choreography, and fight choreography. All the shows have gone very smoothly, and the rehearsals during the day have been low-stress affairs. I’m very pleased with how it’s going.

I planned my week so that I would have today totally off as my reward for surviving tech and first previews. I bought 2 weeks of groceries last week, and got up early on Saturday to do some needed shopping downtown.

Today I got out of bed around 1:00 and then spent nearly 2 hours dealing with the 15 emails I woke up to. Having Mondays off is kind of annoying because everyone else has just gotten back to work and has lots of questions and things to get moving on.

Other than that I’ve been taking it easy until dinnertime. Tonight I updated our electronic script with a few small cuts and changes we made in the past week. I also found some small typos and formatting errors when I began using my calling script at the beginning of tech, because before that I’ve just been dealing with the original script we began rehearsals with and making the changes in pencil, except for a few particular pages which required me to print out the updated page.

With that done, I’m now starting the electronic calling script. I have no intention of using it until after opening night, as switching scripts from the one you learned to call the show on is kind of a scary thing. Ashley is staying with us longer than we thought, and among other things Nick and I have planned, she’s going to learn to call the show even though she wouldn’t actually be able to put it into practice. At the invited dress she sat next to me in the booth and updated our per-scene running times during the show. Once the new script is done, she can be another eye reading it along with the show to look out for any problems.


January 8, 2010

End of Tech

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 2:35 am

The show, she is teched!

Just as we got down to the wire, we finished the show with about a minute to spare! To be perfectly honest, we were writing light cues as we went through the tomb scene and I never got to call them, but they’re fairly simple and Michael and I felt we could see them in the first run-through. In our last moments we just ran the last few lines of the show again to make sure we got the final music and fade to black looking good, and then dismissed for the day.

Tomorrow the cast is called at 12:30 (making Nick, Ashley and my call 12:00 noon — yes, afternoon!), and we work for four and a half hours on a few notes (some funereal choreography and a wig quickchange) and then we’ll do our first run of the show around 2:00. After dinner we come back like it’s a regular show call, with a voluntary warmup, followed by fight call, and then the house opens at half hour for our invited dress. How “invited” one of those is can range from a few close friends of the creative team to a wider selection of friendly theatre people, to what we have tomorrow — 300 high school students from local Thespian societies, who are apparently so excited to attend the show that at least some of them have planned to wear formal wear. In response to this I am rearranging my wardrobe for the week to wear my dressed-up-for-calling-a-show outfit to the invited dress rather than to one of the public performances this weekend.

A few thoughts from the day:

We experienced one of the funniest, most pure forms of comedy I’ve ever witnessed in a tech: towards the end of the show, Romeo visits the shop of an apothecary to buy some poison, and calls out to the apothecary when he arrives. This scene is staged right in front of the staircase, and Sonny tried to knock on the set to summon the apothecary to crawl out from his hovel, where he keeps his business apparently somewhere under the stairs. Seems like a simple task. So Sonny knocks on the side of the stairs, and it’s rock solid and makes no sound. So he knocks on the decorative spindles on the staircase. Same thing. He tries the handrail. He tries the bench which is right downstage of the stairs. Every surface he tried to knock on had absolutely no resonance. Every time he tried something else everybody in the theatre howled with laughter. The stairs are steel encased in wood, and I guess this proves that they’re very well built! Eventually, the staging was changed so that he goes up the stairs to the first landing. From there he can stomp on the floor, which is lexan over metal grating, and that makes a satisfying noise.

Today was the first time the database has saved me by giving me an error when I schedule something against Equity rules. It’s always been a good guard against typos, but this time I was so sure in my incorrect math that I was actually digging in the formulas to figure out why it was broken. The formula actually thinks of the problem in a more correct way than I was counting it in my head (span of day minus length of meal break), and showed me that I had reduced the meal break without reducing the span of day, thereby making more working hours than allowed. So I felt like the time I took to build some rudimentary rule-checking into the schedule form was well spent. It doesn’t understand things like tech days, but when I get a chance to revise it before my next show that will be something I flesh out.

Another somewhat funny observation:

At one point we must have spent 10 minutes sitting watching the director, staff director, prop master, costume designer and prop crew gathered in a quiet circle, apparently discussing how Juliet can conceal a dagger on her person. As our lighting designer and I decided, we were witnessing the costume equivalent of everybody standing on the stage looking up in the air (it’s sort of a tech stereotype that if you see a large group of stagehands, a stage manager or two, and especially a director or designers all standing on stage staring silently and thoughtfully up into the grid… you’re not going anywhere for a while!)

Ow, My Ear!

By the end of today I have had a headset on my ear for 28 of the last 49 hours, and my ear was starting to hurt, despite the recent modifications I’ve made to my headset with a Dr. Scholl’s pad. I don’t have a default ear preference, though I generally have a strong preference on a per-show basis. It almost always has to do with which ear will generally be pointed at what I’m listening for — either at the stage, at people who might come up and talk to me, or at an audio monitor — and then putting the headset on the opposite ear. For example at Phantom on the deck I’m most often standing stage left facing upstage, meaning my left ear is pointed at the stage, so I always wear my headset on the right. Twice I’ve been cushioned from head injuries because I just happen to wear my headset on the right side, so I guess it’s a good choice. However, when calling the show I wear the headset on the left because the audio monitor is next to my right ear.

During a long tech I will usually try to switch ears every few hours, but in this case the comm rack is to my left and I’d be getting tangled all the time if I put the headset on my right side. I do think the Dr. Scholls was a great idea though. It’s definitely more comfortable than any on-ear headsets’ padding I know of. My custom orange earpiece foam cover is really starting to rip, and that’s making me sad (it’s a little smaller than it should be to fit properly, but it’s the only non-black one I could find, and I like it because no one can take my headset by accident, or “accident” even).

One more cute story:

In a fascinating example of how light and music can tell a story, we were kind of hanging out waiting for a light cue to be written. Ray (Friar Laurence) was lounging on an onstage bench up against the stairs. Laura (Juliet) was lying down in the tomb, where she had been for probably hours, with an occasional break.

While the cue was being built, a single par on the floor stage left was turned on, casting a wash of sidelight across Friar Laurence in his priestly garb, and creating grotesque shadows of the staircase all across the wall of the set. At the exact same moment the light was turned on, the sound department, completely independently, tested a sound cue of very loud, ominous music that we had never heard before. Everyone in the room had been just kind of doing their own thing, but for the few seconds that sound cue played, there was a very specific story happening onstage that captured everyone’s attention — the young woman laid out in a tomb surrounded by candles, the mysterious priest sitting nearby — was he there to dispel the demons, or might he be possessed himself, concealed in the disguise of a man of the cloth? Once the mood had been established, Laura played into it, reaching her arms up from under her shroud, an overhead shaft of light on her being the only other illumination besides the par and the candles. All the while Ray just sat there, silently contemplating… what?

And then the sound cue was cut off, and more lights were added to the cue, and it was just another moment in rehearsal. I feel like I studied directing for years where my teachers tried to teach us just that: it has nothing to do with your budget or resources. You can tell an entire engrossing story with a single light, the right music and some simple costume pieces like a priest’s collar and a sheer piece of fabric, without a word even needing to be spoken. I absolutely sucked at that when I was in school, and here it happened completely by accident. It was just a wonderful little moment that highlights the things that really make theatre work.

Tech Table

Finally, here’s a picture of my tech table, which I love very much, and will be sad to say farewell to after the afternoon’s rehearsal. I saw the booth for the first time today. It was rather uneventful. I don’t expect anything about it to bother me, but I didn’t see anything that blew my mind either (knowing this place, there probably is something, but like the electric pencil sharpener built into the cue light panel, you just need to know where to look).


January 7, 2010

Tech Day 2

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 2:23 am

I have to keep this somewhat brief as I’m a fool and left my computer charger plugged in at the tech table.

Today was our second day of tech. The first day was a 10-hour day, this was the first of our two 12-hour days. We also had the amazing tech dinner tonight. I think I mentioned this last year, but if you ever get an offer to work at the Guthrie, I recommend taking it for the tech dinner alone. An army of volunteers cooks an endless variety of foods and desserts — the hardest part is figuring out how to get all of it on your plate. Here’s my plate:

Our progress is a little bit ahead of schedule, although I’d feel more comfortable if we were further along.

We’re now in the middle of Act III Sc. 3, which is more than halfway through the show and way more than halfway in terms of scenes that are expected to be time-consuming. We had very few notes at the production meeting — the meeting was adjourned 17 minutes after we stopped rehearsal, which is pretty amazing. There are quite a few people at each meeting. When we all gathered yesterday I was really amazed. These are all the people we might have on a given day:

1. Production Stage Manager (that’s me)
2. Assistant Stage Manager
3. Stage Management Intern
4. Director
5. Staff Repertory Director
6. Choreographer
7. Fight Choreographer
8. Production Manager (Acting Company)
9. Production Manager (Guthrie)
10. Scenic Designer
11. Associate Scenic Designer
12. Lighting Designer
13. Assistant Lighting Designer (Guthrie)
14. Lighting Supervisor (Tour)
15. Prop Master
16. Costume Designer
17. Associate Costume Designer / Wardrobe Supervisor (Tour)
18. Wardrobe Supervisor (Guthrie)
19. Voice and Text Consultant
20. Assistant Voice and Text Consultant
21. Sound Designer
22. Composer
23. Acting Company Artistic Director
24. Acting Company Associate Artistic Director
25. Crew Supervisor (Guthrie)

It takes a lot of people to put a show together, and that’s just the people who are there physically putting the show together. Outside the room there are press and marketing people, education directors, general managers, house managers, security, photographers and videographers, and countless others who are involved at various stages of the process, before an audience ever sees the show.

The cast seems to be in good spirits, even though the show is structured in such a way that some people end up waiting hours and hours between scenes. We have been able to give five of the actors a later call for tomorrow because we next see them in Act 5. We have an amazing greenroom known as “the hub” with gorgeous views of the Mississippi, a fridge, two microwaves, a toaster over, four vending machines, coffee, water, tea, and a number of very comfortable couches, tables, and a computer. I think that may have something to do with people’s patience! I have visited on breaks to spend some time with our neglected actors, only to find them deeply engrossed in card games and internet surfing, so I think they’re doing OK!

Here Elizabeth and Jesse enjoy a break in the kitchen area of the hub, in their party costumes (Act I Sc. 4). Elizabeth plays the Nurse and Jesse is Abraham (shown here) and Friar John.

People have also been in the house watching a lot, which is really nice. The house is comfortable and very intimate, and despite being a traditional proscenium with two balconies, you really feel like you’re all in the same small room. It doesn’t have much of an “us-and-them” feel between the people onstage and those in the house, so I think that also adds to the camaraderie among everyone involved in the process. There has been a lot of laughter and enjoyment of everyone’s work, and no yelling, which is always the best way to have a productive tech process.

We have another 12-hour day tomorrow. The good sign is that we have started with actors at 11AM every day this week. The first day Nick, Ashely and I got in at 9:30. Today we got in at 10. Tomorrow we get in at 10:30. The three of us decide this at the end of the night in a form of decision-making I would call a democratic dictatorship (which means that we all put in our ideas and reasons, I make the final decision, but can be influenced if Nick and Ashley tell me I’m an idiot or a masochist), based on what we think we need to accomplish before we officially begin work. Getting to sleep later on longer days is a really good sign, and good for our mental and physical health, too.

A Special Announcement

I have to give special credit here to Nick. As I was finishing this post, my battery up-and-died on me, while still showing half a charge. At 1AM I sent him an email asking if he was still up and if I might borrow his charger, and he kindly obliged and even delivered it. So I am much indebted to him for making this post possible, as well as allowing me to do my job in the morning!

I will close this post with a portrait of Nick at his ASM station backstage. Which, by the way, is more full-featured than most PSM stations I’ve worked with. It has the same two-camera monitor I have, the paging mic, a script holder and an area where he keeps his laptop, as well as drawers of first aid, spike tape, and who-knows-what-else. That’s one of our prop road boxes in the rear.


January 5, 2010

Quick Tech Update

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 6:27 pm

We’re almost at the end of our dinner break for the first day of tech. We’re in scene 3, after four hours onstage. It’s not the best pace, but it’s certainly not bad. Things are progressing steadily.

I don’t have a whole lot to say. I’m getting kind of tired. Perhaps I need some caffeine. I didn’t really take much of a break on our 2-hour dinner. The cafe and restaurant here in the building are closed, so I just had a little snack I brought. I had to meet the guys who are shooting our B-roll video to show them around the theatre so they can scout locations for cameras. They’re shooting during the invited dress, which will be attended by about 300 high school Thespians, so we need to know what seats to rope off.

After that I’ve been arranging last-minute wig fittings, and answering general emails. The cast is back in 3 minutes so I’m going to run now. Bye!


January 4, 2010

From the Archive: How I Got Home from Houston

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 7:26 pm

I was telling this story recently, and as the word “blog” hadn’t been invented when it happened, you haven’t heard it, and it must be told.

Some years back, when I was but a wee professional PSM, I was on tour in Houston. Houston was our last stop before returning to New York for two weeks layoff for Christmas, and then our New York run. As the tour had been a less-than-perfect experience, we were all very much looking forward to the end of the week in Houston, to return home for the holidays and generally escape from work for a while.

We somehow survived the week in Houston without anyone quitting, committing suicide, or murdering anyone (which was an especially precarious feat because due to the two weeks off, we could have quit at the end of the Houston stop without breaching our contracts).

This backstory informs the desperate events that followed.

Our flight out of Houston was from George Bush Intercontinental Airport, around 8AM. We had four actors, myself, my assistant, and the production manager. We arrived at the airport and lined up to check our bags, thrilled that we would be home in just a few hours. When we checked in we were told it was snowing in New York and our connecting flight had been canceled. We decided to take the first leg of the flight to Atlanta and see if we could get on another flight if the weather cleared up. I should also mention, we were flying AirTran, which if you didn’t know, is the name that Valujet changed themselves to after they killed all those people due to their negligence. I also should mention that our producer and some other folks I can’t remember were also flying out that day, but had a direct flight on Continental.

We checked in, went through security, and arrived at our gate. Our flight to Atlanta was delayed. And delayed. And delayed. The other flight on Continental was boarding nearby, and we said goodbye to our colleagues, and waited more hours.

Sometime during this waiting period, we started to go a little crazy (this is where you have to bear in mind all the things leading up to this day, and why just getting home was of such great importance). We had a fake cake in the show, that our set designer had lovingly built. It really did look like a realistic ice cream cake. Due to its delicacy, whenever we flew it traveled with someone as a carry-on. This day was my turn to guard the cake. It was in a cardboard box, which if I’m remembering correctly, was tied up with string so it could be carried.

I’m sure so many years later I can’t adequately explain how it started, but we began creating an entire scenario about the importance of protecting this cake. Everywhere we went, we would say, “Do you have the cake? Is the cake OK? The flight’s cancelled, but the cake is still safe!”

Sometime around 3:00 (so 7 hours after we were supposed to leave Houston), our flight to Atlanta finally made it into the air. We landed in Atlanta in the early evening.

We went to the AirTran desk, where they were totally unhelpful, and because they’re a terrible airline, they had no relationships with other airlines and couldn’t help us transfer to another flight to New York, Philly, or anywhere nearby. By this point, the people who were on the Continental flight are home in their apartments.

The best we were offered was a flight to Baltimore. We figured if we could get that far we could take Amtrak or drive the rest of the way. While my assistant finished up the arrangements to get us on that flight, I was on the phone to Amtrak making reservations for the last train of the night from Baltimore to Penn Station, and the production manager was on the phone with Hertz renting us a car at the Baltimore airport.

With these options laid out, my assistant made her escape and decided to stay with friends rather than attempt our foolhardy mission to make it home to New York that night. And then we were six.

So we made our way to the new gate, guarding the cake all the way. As we traveled, the legend of the cake grew and grew. I recall at some point, after our flight had been delayed yet again, we began deciding who would be cast in the movie recounting our adventure to protect the cake.

Finally, sometime after 8PM, i think, our flight departed Atlanta for Baltimore. The last train was around 10PM. Nervously we would look up the aisles at each other, wondering if we just might make it. I think we landed at about 9:55. So we made our way to the Hertz counter, so grateful that we had bothered to book two different modes of travel.

I may have my times off a little bit throughout the story, but one thing I remember is that when we crammed all our luggage and 6 people into a minivan and turned the key, the clock said 12:00 midnight exactly.

Our production manager drove with the intensity of our desire to get home (and to protect the cake!) and when we emerged out of the Lincoln Tunnel it was 3:00 exactly.

The funny thing is, I don’t remember what happened to the cake at the end of all that. I remember getting let out of the car at 42nd Street and 9th Ave and making my way home. Someone must have taken the cake home for safekeeping for the two-week layoff. Maybe it was me.

Anyway, that’s my story of travel woes, perseverance, and the insanity that comes from being trapped in the airline system for about sixteen hours. It’s surely far from the worst kind of travel nightmare, but it was the passion with which we wanted to get the hell home that made it an unforgettable experience.


Day Off Dilemma

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 3:59 pm

It’s the great decision that needs to be made on any day off in Minneapolis in January:

Is what I want to accomplish in the outside world really worth leaving the house?

On our day off we also go grocery shopping in the Guthrie van. There are usually three grocery runs, at 10am, noon, and 2pm. I like to take the 10am one, because it gets me up early so I don’t waste the entire day sleeping. It also acquaints me early with how cold it is. Which is usually pretty damn cold. Except when we greet each other in the front lobby of the Guthrie to meet the van, we usually use a stronger word than “damn.”

So today I was planning to go downtown to Nicollet Mall. This always has to be explained to people: Nicollet Mall is not a mall like the Mall of America is a mall. It’s a mall like the mall in Washington is a mall, except instead of national monuments it has like, a Target, and an Office Depot, and a Barnes and Noble, and a Walgreens, and so forth. And it does have one national monument, which is the statue of Mary Tyler Moore outside Macy’s. Anyway, it’s simply a pedestrian-friendly thoroughfare that runs through downtown.

So I had some things I needed from Target and/or Office Depot (or Office Max, I can never remember which it is). The question is, how badly do I really want to go there? Do I really need a nice big eraser when I’m frantically making changes in my calling script during tech? Does our extra cast member since last year really need a valuables bag that matches all the other ones, this week? If I bother to replace my exercise band that broke this fall, will I actually use it? If I tour with a second lingerie bag, will my socks really dry any better by being split up into two piles? Well yes. Does it matter this week, when I have free laundry 8ft from my bed?

On such things do I dwell on my day off.

And then finally I went to WeatherBug on my iPhone for the hourly forecast, to decide if there might be an optimal time of day for this journey. And I actually said to myself, in total seriousness, “Oh look! At 3:00 it’s going to be 6 degrees! Maybe I can make it!”


On Stage!

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:36 am

A magical thing happened this week. The show has really come to life. It’s hard to describe, but it’s the difference between a show that just kind of happens, and a show that sucks you in and makes you feel like the action is really happening for the first time right now in front of you. In a few short rehearsals our cast has found many new ways to bring their characters to life. On one particular day, I left the room for maybe 15 minutes to make some phone calls to take care of set issues, and when I came back the scene was totally fresh and new. I don’t know what exactly occurred, but all week we have made leaps and bounds in the show. Our run-throughs in the rehearsal room have been highly complimented, even by veteran designers and crew, who usually don’t come to runs to be entertained or moved.

Today was our first day onstage, and the excitement of the show in the rehearsal room has been topped by the excitement of the show on the set. The depth and texture of the structure really makes the action pop off the stage. Everything just looks so good and feels so comfortable. A large part of what we had to do today was to adjust spacing for the actual set, but we haven’t hit any problems, just things we can now refine better in three dimensions.

In the most unexpected good news ever, our platform Fred does not appear to need brakes. Through some combination of the quality of castors and the fact that it’s moving on marley, it rolls almost silently, yet has enough weight and stability that it doesn’t move at all even under significant leaning and sitting. It moves easily when you want it to, and not at all when you don’t. It’s like the scenic holy grail! So we have had to take back all the nasty things we said about Fred.

The theatre has a very warm feel. It’s very intimate, yet also has a grandeur that feels like working in a real honest-to-goodness professional theatre. And of course the Guthrie facility provides all the little goodies a stage manager wants. At my personal tech table, I have plenty of power and ethernet, my headset console, with four channels (of which I assume we’ll use three — deck, lighting and sound), a paging mic, infrared and color monitor, and a cue light panel that I hope to God we don’t need. We have cue lights set up here, but I’d really rather not have to worry about that on the road if all our actor entrances can be handled by Nick giving hand signals off my cue. Anyway, the best part of the cue light panels here is that they have a built-in electric pencil sharpener. Uh huh. Yes, they do. I believe the reason I never blogged about this last year is that they removed the panel from my tech table before I got a chance to take a picture. So this year I made sure I did:

As you can see, it’s a regular electric pencil sharpener that just fits right into the casing. It almost makes me wish I used regular pencils.

My other favorite thing in the room today was our rehearsal mock-up of the victrola we have in the show (what does a victrola have to do with R&J? Well part of what happens at the Capulet party is that Capulet shows off his new technological purchases, such as this fancy device that plays music by itself, and electric lights). In the rehearsal room, we used a cardboard box that vaguely resembled a pizza box, so while waiting for the real victrola to be delivered (supposedly Tuesday), our prop master, Scotty, wanted to make us a more accurate mock-up to use on stage.

Here’s what it looks like before it’s unveiled at the party:

Looks pretty nice, huh? And here’s what it actually is:

I think it’s the greatest rehearsal prop ever. Most of the cast hadn’t seen under the sheet before we rehearsed the party scene, so the reaction when the new victrola was unveiled was very special!

Our day went very well today. Between getting spacing done for all the major scenes, and apparently solving the Fred problems, we’re in good shape. At my urging, everybody on the production team who’s in town was present for the entire rehearsal, as well as our two local carpenters, Craig and Sarah, who are awesome. It’s so nice to finally all be in one room and able to discuss things in real time. That’s why I find tech less stressful than the rehearsal process — aside from learning to call the show, what I really have to do is guide all these people who are specialists in their respective fields to work together and solve problems, and I find that fairly easy and relaxing, once all the people are in place.

We have a very welcome day off (our second in four days, due to our weird Christmas schedule shaking out back to a normal schedule), and then we begin tech on Tuesday.


January 1, 2010

Halfway

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 5:32 pm

Today marks the halfway point in our stay in Minneapolis. We arrived here December 1st, and we depart on January 31st, for our next performance in Moorhead, MN (right next to Fargo, apparently), on February 1st.

As one would assume, we are about to go into tech. Nick, Ashley and I will pack up the rehearsal room on Saturday night, and all of our stuff will be moved up to the theatre on Sunday morning. Sunday is a regular rehearsal day, but instead of being in our rehearsal studio, we will be on stage. Our local carpenters, Craig and Sarah, will be there with us for the first time, where they will begin learning the show, and becoming familiar with the props. I’m sure they already know the set better than us since they put it up.

Sunday’s rehearsal is about spacing, getting used to the ins and outs of the set, and troubleshooting any problems we discover in the course of that.

We have Monday off, during which the crew will complete everything that remains to be done before tech, and then on Tuesday morning we have our first day of tech.

My Team

Although being away from our company’s base of operations has its challenges, one of the things that has helped me stay reasonably sane is that I have a stage management team I trust. At this point Nick and I have been working together long enough that we often think of things at exactly the same time. This year we are taking part in the Guthrie system of using Google Talk to communicate in the rehearsal room and between departments and other shows. Usually at least once a day, Nick and I will type the same thing into Google Talk and send it to each other simultaneously. Yesterday I caught us both letting out an exasperated sigh at exactly the same time and duration. That being said, instead of always thinking of the same thing at the same time, we also often think of things the other has forgotten, which is far more useful than two people thinking the same thing.

Nick

I am a big believer in delegation in a stage management team. I believe the ASM should be an independent entity, and not just a someone who does the PSM’s bidding. I think the biggest part of that is not just to assign certain duties to the ASM, but to empower them to be in charge of certain aspects of the production. That might mean maintaining certain paperwork, or keeping track of certain aspects of the production (usually props).

In our production, I do most of the paperwork, because almost all of it is generated by the database I designed, so any changes to its function go through me, but once I get something working, a lot of the data is Nick’s domain.

Nick is also in charge of props, costumes (mostly because last year’s Henry V was so complicated that costume pieces had to be tracked like props), and I have put him in all the fight rehearsals because he likes it, and he was the fight captain for The Spy last year, so he’s got a good eye for fight choreography and weapons maintenance. When we get to the theatre, he will be the one who knows how things are backstage. I know he’s been watching the entire process with an eye towards backstage traffic, prop tracking, where costume changes happen and so forth, and in his head he has a much better picture of what things will be like backstage.

I have been more focused on what happens in front of the audience — blocking, light cues, sound cues, etc. Chances are we will finish the tour with neither of us ever fully understanding what happens in the other’s world, but that’s why we are a team.

Ashley

Ashley, the Guthrie’s stage management intern, is our liason to all things Guthrie. She knows the people in most departments, and knows who we have to talk to about what. Although this is the second time working here for me and Nick, we have a grasp of the way things are done, but we aren’t fully integrated into this well-oiled machine. Ashley has been with numerous productions here, and can keep us on track with what’s expected of us throughout the process, while freeing us from having to personally interact with all the little details of operations in such a large organization.

She is the keeper of the official Guthrie computer (largely because Nick and I prefer to use our own computers, and they don’t allow outside computers access to the network). Aside from the strangeness of switching computers, email systems, and document formats in the middle of our tour — I mean come on, why would we stop using Macbooks to use a Dell?

When emails go out on the G’s system, they go to Ashley and if it’s anything I need to know, she’ll tell me about it or forward it to me.

As we make the schedule every night, I create it in our database, which arranges it in a vertical format (which I’m not really happy with, but it’s the best I could design before we started rehearsal). The best I can say about it is that no one has ever missed a call because they didn’t read the schedule properly, in fact I can’t remember anyone even asking for clarification, even on the craziest days, which may be the best track record of any schedule format I’ve ever created.

Anyway, Ashley looks at my schedule as I’m making it, and copies it into the Guthrie’s format, which is more horizontal, and shows things going on in different rooms side-by-side, which is definitely a more natural way to conceive of it. The fact that we simultaneously create and then proof-read the schedule in two different orientations allows us to catch problems more reliably, and Nick can also watch my schedule from his computer, as we share access to the database over our network. So between the three of us checking our work, we have never made a scheduling conflict.

Ashley also has access to the magical document that shows who is using what rooms in the entire building. On days when we have multiple rehearsals, fight choreography, movement and voice work going, this can be very important. We also now have Macbeth in rehearsal next door, which is the big show in town and requires more space, but we have been very successful in sharing rooms with them, and coordinating our schedules so we can have time with members of our creative team who are working on both shows. Knowing what rooms are available the following day is essential when scheduling things outside the main room, which also affects what gets scheduled in the main room and when.

Honorable Mention: Corey

Corey is not a member of the stage management team. He is the company’s staff repertory director. If you’re wondering what the hell that means, he functions more-or-less like an assistant director in the rehearsal process, and like a resident director once the show opens. He tours with the company, and maintains the artistic integrity of the show. Which I kind of like, because it means I don’t have to do it! While I would enjoy the challenge, it would be very hard in this situation because I don’t travel with the cast, and rarely get to see them outside of performances. Also, with a two-person stage management team, I can’t swing out to watch the show from the audience, which is often vastly different than watching from a booth. Ian and I worked closely last year and would sometimes confer on things, or even watch and discuss the show together if the booth was comfortable and afforded a good view, but ultimately it’s the staff director who evaluates the performance and keeps up the original direction. Since I’m advancing the show with the crew while the actors are just waking up and boarding their bus in the previous city, I maintain the technical integrity of the show, while Corey will have time with the actors on the bus to give any notes he feels are necessary.

In the rehearsal process Corey and I don’t have all that much direct interaction, but sometimes after rehearsal we check in and discuss how things are going, or things we need to plan for in the future. In my experience from last year, I think that relationship is one of the most important for the success of the tour, because it keeps the physical production and the artistic side of the production working in harmony, which keeps the show’s quality consistent.

In Conclusion

So all in all, having a great team in the room with me has made the rehearsal process incredibly smooth, which has left me more time to deal with all the things that need to be coordinated out of the rehearsal room.

I’m very relieved that the hardest part of our process is basically over, or soon to be, and I’m excited to see what comes out on the other end of tech, which will become the show that we will bring to audiences in Minneapolis and all over the country.


December 31, 2009

Getting Close to Tech

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 7:21 pm

We’re in our last couple days in the rehearsal room. This morning Nick, Ashley and I went up to the theatre before rehearsal. The tech tables are already out. That’s mine closest to the stage in the center.

We’ve had some really complicated schedules as we try to squeeze every moment out of our rehearsal time, and finish all the haircuts, costume fittings and wig fittings. Yesterday the day was crazy. In the first 4 hours of rehearsal, we had 24 individual calls scheduled. Some of them were only 15 minutes long. So to keep track of where everyone needed to be, and to make sure they all got required breaks, I had to map out everyone’s day individually, at least prior to lunch. It was insane, but the chart was actually really helpful.

And finally, we used this time to take a portrait of Nick and I on the set. This is the “hobbit hole”: a small doorway tucked under the balcony stairs, used primarily as the entrance to Friar Laurence’s cell. In this photo, I demonstrate how there is absolutely nothing tight or uncomfortable about the size of this doorway. Nick does not seem convinced.


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