I clipped this out of The New Yorker sometime in the early-to-mid ’90s and have held onto it ever since. I just recently rediscovered it and scanned it, cause I’m surprised it’s stayed in my life in non-digital format this long.
September 3, 2007
August 30, 2007
A New Job
If you’re like me, you’ve probably been wondering when the hell I was going to post something new. Well I assure you I’ve got a number of posts in draft, mostly new computer-related product reviews which I’ll try to finish now that I have a few days off. But other than that, there just hasn’t been anything to post about.
In my last post I mentioned something cryptic about possible big jobs on the horizon, and the biggest of them has officially been offered to me, so now I can tell you about it. I’m going to be the ASM for the Off-Broadway production of Frankenstein, which starts previews October 10 at 37 Arts. The show’s website is here, it stars Hunter Foster, Christiane Noll and Steve Blanchard, and it looks like it will be a fun time. It doesn’t start rehearsals until Sept. 17, but exciting things should be happening soon.
August 19, 2007
Reagle Roundup
My summer season has come to an end. I’m currently on the Long Island Rail Road going directly from Waltham to a family barbecue that conveniently happened to be scheduled for today. I am so far enjoying the benefits of civilization like a cell phone that gets four bars and EV-DO coverage in a tunnel. There really isn’t any higher form of civic advancement than good cell coverage.
I’m glad to be returning home to my other group of friends and colleagues and to all my stuff, and most of all a big soft bed with nice soft sheets and pillows just the way I like them. I met a lot of great people this summer, and worked again with some more great people, and we put on three very good shows. I’m hoping to maybe get a bit of a break from the PSM thing for a while, but I’ll take whatever comes. My future is filled with a couple definite small gigs and some possible big gigs, and the usual subbing on Phantom and The Fantasticks. I don’t have any dates booked yet, but I’m hoping to get back into both rotations quickly, especially Phantom as I never like to let too much time go by between performances. I’ll need to spend some time with my calling script at home so that I’m ready at a minute’s notice if the call comes.
This concludes the summer stock mini-blog (at least this year). Thanks for reading. Hope you stick around!
August 12, 2007
42nd Street Photos
We’re in the Money
Dames
Lullaby of Broadway
See, you can even see the tops of everyone’s head on the upper platform.
All photos by Herb Philpott.
August 10, 2007
42nd Street First Performance
Last night was our first show. We were sold out, which was a little unexpected. I heard last week that the Saturday matinee is sold out, but I hadn’t heard anything else in a while, so that was a nice surprise. It was our first sold out show this season.
When I arrived the stage was still filled with sets getting their final touches, and the marquees for the ballet still being wired. Eventually I was able to bring in the curtain and open the house, but work continued behind the curtain until pretty close to show time. Nobody really saw the marquees hung and lit until 1,100 people saw them all at once, and I snapped a picture of the moment.
They looked great, although they need a little tweaking to make the heights more varied. Considering there was no way to really check that before the show, they came out pretty well. They actually look a lot better to the audience than they do from the booth because the viewing angle is different.
The first show was very smooth, and everyone was in great spirits afterward.
This is Mugsy. He belongs to one of our actors, and makes a cameo in the “Gettin’ Out of Town” scene, as the fictional cast packs up their belongings, “dogs, cats, canaries…” and heads for their out-of-town tryout. He’s doing a great job.Since we had only a matinee, the evening was taken up by a party at a local cast member’s house, which was very well attended and a great chance for cast and crew to unwind and mingle after a hectic couple weeks. The party was a fiesta, and of course it wouldn’t be complete without a pinata. Somebody got a sun pinata, because “There’s a Sunny Side to Every Situation.” Here’s me trying to hit the pinata. I got in a number of good hits, but alas I was not the one to break it.
Night Crew
The night before opening of 42nd Street, we had our final dress, did some fixes and notes, and dismissed the cast around 11:00PM. By midnight our production meeting was over, and I was well on my way to going home. On the stage and in the shop, however, the crew had been working since the run ended, cramming in all the little details that still remained to get in shape for the first performance at 2:00PM the next day — painting, set repair, refocusing lighting instruments. They stayed until 3 or 4 in the morning, returning at around 10 to continue work and get ready for the show.
Before I left I took some portraits of our hard-working crew:
Ray touches up the paint job on one of the “Lullaby” stair units.
Christina lurks under the other stair unit, doing the same thing.
Jamie starts painting a column to match the pink marble style of the existing ones that frame the proscenium.
Who says the wardrobe crew can’t do physical labor? Joe sets up scaffolding.
Matt refurbishes the edge of the big dime to make it nice and shiny. Here he shows off a technique known in the theatre industy as “gaff-painting.”
August 7, 2007
The Glittering Desk Lamps of Broadway
As promised, here is a picture of our electrical stand-ins for the 42nd Street marquees. I didn’t get a chance to take a photo of them in the scene, as I wound up rather hastily calling the run from the booth tonight. By hastily, I mean that as soon as the Overture started we realized that even literally screaming into our headsets we wouldn’t be able to hear each other over the blaring trumpets and tapping feet, and after about 32 bars, I gathered up my calling script, pencil, God mic, headset, and cup of soda from the tech table and ran up the aisle to the booth, calling cues as I went. We often have this problem of the orchestra sound getting into the headsets and drowning everyone out, but for some reason thought that on this show of all things I could get away with calling from the house. We realized our stupidity right away.
So when we got to the ballet I realized too late that I didn’t have my camera with me to get a shot of the “marquees,” and anyway I would have been too far away to get a good picture. After the run Steph turned them back on for a photo op. She also corrected my earlier post which assumed they were taped to the pipe. Oh, no. The desk lamp is actually lashed to the pipe by its cord. And of course the clip light is attached by its clip. And I forgot to mention my personal favorite part of the whole display, the extension cord with the end that glows orange when it’s powered, adding a nice third light source to the mix. I’m going to miss all of them when the real marquees go up tomorrow.
Fun Things in the Shop
BREAKING NEWS!
Just five minutes ago I was dragged skipping into the shop by our master electrician, Steph, and knew immediately what I was going to see.
Here Nick, Steph and Justin show off their creation. It’s been a long and complicated process to turn the giant marquees from the national tour (this is the smallest one) into something that doesn’t cost thousands of dollars in bulbs, and require more power and counterweights than anybody should really need. A bulk order of Christmas lights arrived in the morning, and even up close they look quite a bit like real marquee lights. They won’t be hung until all the marquees are done tomorrow, but for now we have an empty pipe with — I kid you not — an upside-down desk lamp and a clip light taped to it to represent the marquees for lighting purposes. It’s hysterical. I’ll try to get a picture of it.
Competing with the marquee builders for my attention is head painter, Matt, who is refurbishing the fabric on the Regency hotel unit.
The third and final project currently underway in the shop involved Scott, Tim and Ross climbing around on top of the “Buffalo” cars.
When I inquired what exactly they were doing, I was told, “attaching mirrors,” with the express instructions that it was to be pronounced “murrrs.” There’s murrrs all over this set, most of which are in need of something between cleaning and replacement. With a lot of the big fixes done, a lot of the little projects in the next two days will involve making all the murrrs look respectable.
July 31, 2007
42nd Street Week 2 Recap
I haven’t been posting very regularly since we started rehearsal. It’s been a crazy process and I haven’t had much free time, or the mental energy to relive my day after I get home. I have been taking some pictures with the intention of sharing them, so I will try to catch you up.
Now that we’ve got something very closely resembling a show going on on the stage of the Robinson Theatre, here’s what’s been going on:
First of all, let me introduce Jameson, our company’s “Spiritual Frog.” He sort of showed up one day and I really wasn’t sure where he came from or why he was there. His origins are still somewhat of a mystery to me, but he apparently originated with the ensemble men, following them around to various rehearsals and watching over them. When we started working on stage, he was placed in a position of honor between the center footlights on the pit rail, so he could keep a good eye on us. These days he’s no longer perched on the cardboard box, he fits quite nicely below the masking for the footlights, where I’m sure he will remain for the run. Update: he’s now on top of the piano in the pit, where his view of the stage is somewhat reduced. I’m going to try to get him back on the pit rail, as I think he’s helped us out on a few occasions.
You may remember our “Lullaby of Broadway” set that was juuust a little too tall. Here it is in tech, with the top platform and escape stairs cut down by a couple feet.
And here’s a typical view from my corner of the tech table:
I don’t know where my headset is. I’m probably wearing it. But I you can see the little leather baggie that I use to keep my own personal headset safe and separate so it doesn’t get mixed in with the theatre’s. One of these days I’m going to get a nice hard case for it, as the baggie would do nothing to prevent it from getting crushed.
So tech has been going well. This show is all about quickchanges, and we took some time before our first dress last night to talk through all the major changes so the cast could figure out where to preset their costumes in the wings and work out the traffic. For the most part it worked. We had to stop only once, at the end of “Dames” which features a ginormous quickchange right in the middle of the number. Our goal for tonight is to make that change. There were a few other hiccups, with one or two people scrambling on late, but nothing to stop the show.
We had our sitzprobe with the orchestra on Sunday night, which I managed to get through efficiently while stealing selected people out of the dance rehearsal across the hall. The orchestra sounds great, and it always perks up the cast to hear them for the first time. I had arranged for the whole ensemble to come in and listen to the ballet, but alas time was short and better spent on stage dancing the ballet, so after singing “Sunny Side” they had to leave.
Tonight is our first run with the orchestra.
July 25, 2007
Allentown, We Have a Problem
M.J. demonstrates why the railway station is just a little too tall.
That’s the platform the cast is supposed to enter on. We knew what was going to happen as soon as the set was unloaded, but today the crew assembled the station stair unit, giving a visual element to the assessment that it’s HUUUUUGE!!!!
But I learned something today that made the whole set at least make a little more sense. This is a national tour set. See, I was under the impression that it was a large but second-rate touring set. So when I would hear things like some of the drops are over 50 feet tall, I remarked at the production meeting, “Where did they expect to take this, the Fox?” Well, uh, I guess they probably did. Maybe more than once, to more than one of the gargantuan Fox Theatres. Under its worn paint and chipped plywood detail work, I hadn’t noticed that it’s all made of steel. It also explains why certain corners weren’t cut in the design where you’d expect a touring set to be made more manageable. The railway station is a perfect example. It’s huge and there are so many pieces, why would anyone ever want to drag all that around and try to cram it into a variety of theatres? Well when you picture it on a national tour it seems perfectly reasonable. Of course the Robinson Theatre is not the Fox. Ideal height of a drop custom made for our theatre: 17 feet (height is a major inconvenience on every show). I believe the grid height is 36 feet, meaning a 53ft tall drop stood up on our stage would be several stories taller than the roof of the building.
I’m not sure exactly which tour the set is from, nor do I know anything about the tours of the original production of 42nd Street to make that determination, but the set has obviously been around the block a few times, so I wouldn’t doubt that it could be from the ’80s. I’ll have to see if I can find out. At any rate, this is one of the things we will have to figure out in the coming days.
