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May 27, 2007

Moving Day

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 4:02 pm

So tomorrow morning I depart bright and early on a 7AM train from Penn Station, off to start my summer at Reagle. It’s 10:50PM and I think I’m actually packed. I’m not sure how that happened, as I’ve been very busy with closing Back from the Front, and horribly procrastinating about getting my apartment in order and packing. Stay tuned to find out what really obvious thing I’ve forgotten.

My day tomorrow involves getting up around 4AM, maybe 4:30, leaving the house around 5:30, and getting on this 7:00 train. I’ll arrive at Rte 128 station outside Boston at 10:53 (so they say), where I will be picked up and driven to Waltham to the guest artist apartments, where I will find my car (I always feel like a game show contestant at this point — last year I won big, I had a Sebring for the first month, and then a Hundai Sonata, both great). Hopefully the apartments will be move-into-able when I get there, I might have to kill a few hours while the crew finishes up, but that’s OK because I have a few hours of shopping to do. Basic apartment things like toilet paper, soap, shampoo, etc. and some stage-management-y stuff like scissors and pencils and scotch tape, and probably a trip to the mall for things like black jeans. Why is it that nobody sells black jeans anymore? I haven’t been able to find them in a year or two, and the last time I had to order them online from the Gap. Now they don’t even have them online.

Well I’m going to bed now to get ready for the big day!


May 20, 2007

Packing

I call this: computers,gaming,mac,summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 9:58 pm

OK, I’m really going to do something productive now. I’m going to think about packing. My task is made a bit easier because I have a crate up at Reagle with a lot of my stuff in it. At the end of my first season there, I found I had accumulated a lot of stuff that there was no point bringing back to New York — apartment things like a hairdryer and Brita pitcher, stage management-y things like pencils, paper and blank CDs. It was silly to throw the stuff out, and I had been told early on that I was welcome to come back the next year, and I wanted to come back too, so I asked if it would be OK if I bought a storage crate and kept some stuff in it. If something else came up and I couldn’t return, they would be free to give the contents to the next stage manager. They were happy to accept it, probably because they figured if they had my stuff I’d be more inclined to come back!

As luck(?) would have it, the Broadway show I had booked for last spring/summer was canceled before rehearsals began, so I found myself back at Reagle, and my crate was waiting for me. At the end of that second year, it expanded from just essential supplies that would be of use to anyone, to my own personal box of goodies. Does anyone else want my hairbrush? I think not, but I do, and the likelihood that I would be the PSM in possession of the box the following year seemed high enough that I packed just about everything in there.

What’s in there? I don’t know. But I learned from my mistakes last year — having unnecessarily purchased or brought from NY things I had forgotten were in the box — and at the end of last summer, made a complete inventory of what I was putting in the box, with a hard copy in the box itself, and saved in a document in my “Reagle” folder, cryptically titled “What’s in my storage box.” Let’s see…
Household Supplies:

  • 2 sponges
  • can of apple cinnamon air freshener
  • 2 boxes Snuggle fabric softener [this was one of the things I bought by mistake]
    Bottle of unopened hand soap [probably that, too]
  • Bathroom clock radio
  • Corkscrew
  • Approx. 4 sq. ft of bubble wrap
  • partial box of large trash bags, mostly full box of kitchen bags
  • hairdryer
  • hair brush
  • nightlight
  • Approx 200 Q-tips
  • GNC Women’s Ultra Mega vitamins
  • Alarm clock w/ 9-volt battery
  • Deodorant (degree)
  • razor & 1 spare blade

Office Supplies

  • Approx. 30 business-size envelopes
  • 4 6×9” manila envelopes
  • Approx. 20 crappy yellow pencils
  • Approx. 15 ballpoint pens<
  • 1 red roller-ball pen<
  • 1 blue, 1 orange highlighter
  • 1 glue stick
  • Unopened pack of post-it page markers
  • 1/2 roll of packing tape w/ dispenser
  • disposable wipes for electronics
  • spool of 7 CD-R, 7 DVD-R
  • iPod firewire cable [that I can’t even use with my nano – why did I keep that?]
  • Significant amount of blue construction paper
  • Approx. 500 sheets white paper
  • Package of photo paper
  • Perhaps 150 business card templates SINGLE SIDED
  • AEA Stage Manager packet
  • 11 thank you cards w/ envelopes [think anyone notices I keep using the same ones?]
  • Approx. 6ft continuous cable wrap
  • 4 binder clips
  • 1 keyring
  • 25ft coax cable
  • ethernet cable
  • 1 6-outlet vertical power strip

Hmm… Looks like I brought the contents of my personal pencil case home with me and just left the bulk supplies for the company. WTF was I thinking? That’s heavy, why didn’t I leave it there and replace the stuff when I got home? I don’t have any of my favorite pencils, or scissors, or scotch tape, or anything like that. Well now I have some Staples items to add to my shopping list (which is a memo on my Treo called “Reagle Shopping Day 1.”) The other puzzling omission is the two binders for my scripts — a large one for my blocking script, score, and technical documents, and a more svelte 1″ binder for my calling script. While the Reagle office supply closet always has a good supply of cheap binders for my temporary needs, I only use these for my main scripts, and I know I had them — a white 2″ one, and a 1″ blue one. I’m sure I didn’t bring them home (what a crazy idea anyway) because I don’t even have a white 2″ binder in my apartment right now. I’m inclined to think it’s a typo, but I remember being very thorough about this list. They would have been the last thing packed after the final performance, and maybe I just felt it was so obvious I didn’t write it down. I sure hope they’re there, they’re expensive.

I like to pack really light, so it’s always a huge to-do the night before when I decide the suitcase is just too heavy and/or won’t close, and stay up all night obsessing about reducing the weight in such minute detail you’d think I was planning to launch it to the moon.

The Kit
I love-love-love-love-love the container I currently use for my kit. I got it at the Container Store, which is like a porn shop for stage managers. Here it is. Ooh, it’s so sexy! I have the large one. It’s not here at the moment to be experimented with, as it’s currently living on my desk at the Riverside Theatre, but the big challenge is that it just barely fits in my suitcase. It actually has to be at a little bit of an angle to fit, which requires some creative packing to make use of the space around it. Now that I think about it, I’m not even sure I brought it last year. I think I used (gasp!) a ziplock bag, and just brought the things that couldn’t be easily obtained at the theatre (i.e. no paperclips, push-pins, screws, etc.).

In New York the design of this case is wonderful because it’s so thin and easy to carry while navigating crowds and packed subways and stuff. It’s a fact of life that sometimes I work in places where I don’t have a place to store even something that small, and the need to carry it everywhere makes portability very important. But in Waltham it just sat in my trunk most of the time, and I do believe I had more success last year with a bare-bones ziplock bag that stayed in my backpack. I guess that’s the plan again.

I won’t decide exactly what to take from my kit until the night before, when we load out of Riverside and I have it back at home, but here’s my rough guess:

  • Leatherman (Charge XTi) and flashlight (Surefire 6P) in combined holster
  • lithium batteries for said flashlight, as they’re way too expensive when not bought in bulk
  • maybe a couple binder clips, since I only have 4 in the box up there
  • LED keyboard light — my Powerbook has its own backlit keys, the light is for my script
  • laser pointer (don’t use it often, but it’s great for pointing out exact positions at a distance — which light I’m talking about, position on stage, etc.)
  • stopwatch
  • this weird tool I have with tiny blades and screwdrivers — I can’t even describe it
  • maybe a pair of earplugs — was PSM for a rock musical years ago, still keep multiple kinds of earplugs, guitar picks of all thicknesses, and a drum key in my kit. It used to be a necessity, now it’s my favorite thing to be comically over-prepared for. The earplugs are light and sort of health-related, so I may throw them in just in case we’re using the little-known Metallica orchestration of The King and I.

A lot of the things in my kit are there on the assumption that I am essentially stranded on a deserted island and have to be able to fix any problem with its contents. When working in a professional and well-equipped theatre like Reagle, where people are employed to do the things that aren’t my job, there’s a lot less I have to carry since I can just do what a rational person should do — if an actor breaks a shoelace, I’m sure a wardrobe person can help me. I don’t need to be able to produce a spare shoelace at a moment’s notice.

The last thing that is show-related is my headset, which will not travel with my kit or computer supplies because it gets packed gently in my suitcase between my clothes. I have a little leather pouch I use to keep it clean, but I have to be careful not to crush it. My headset of choice is the Telex PH-88, which I first fell in love with when it was at the calling desk at Phantom. Now they use one of those huge Sennheiser things that feel like wearing a football helmet — ugh. Anyway, when I first arrived at Reagle, Lori asked if I owned a headset because she was preparing to place an order for some replacements if I wanted to get one. I spent the first show of the season swapping between the Telex and the Clear-Com CC-26, which I have always liked for it’s very light weight, but as they get older the booms tend to get floppy, and I have this nervous habit of always having to hold onto them to make sure they’re actually in front of my mouth before I talk. I decided to go for the more expensive but more sturdy Telex, and I was able to get in on the discount pricing with the theatre’s order.

The computer stuff
As I may have mentioned, I’m planning to buy a Macbook Pro over the summer (hopefully June 11 will see the announcement of new models). My trusty Powerbook will limp through one more trip to Reagle, and hopefully by July will be enjoying retirement recording TV shows while I’m at rehearsal. Yes, it’s a bit disappointing to not have been able to make the transition before the season started, and to lug two laptops home at the end. On the other hand, you should see what the difference in sales tax is when buying a computer in Massachusetts. More than makes up for the inconvenience.

So… the Powerbook, of course, in its MacCase sleeve (I might need a new one to fit the slightly longer MBP, I think — but the old one is stained from when a certain director spilled his smoothie into my computer bag, so I guess it’s OK). The power cable for the Powerbook obviously, especially since the elderly machine has its original battery, and starts threatening to shut down after five minutes of use. Also in the main compartment of my computer bag will be my script for Singin’ in the Rain, without a binder. I carry an assortment of cables, many of which are in cute little retractable spools: firewire, USB, mini-USB, ethernet, phone cord, iPod, Palm sync/charge cable. My Canon i70 printer, which is the same age as my Powerbook, besides needing some serious percussive maintenance over this past winter, is still going strong after years of hard work. Along with that is the Airport Express. See this post for the whole story on how they’re used. My Nintendo DS Lite and charger — I had a lot of fun last year playing Animal Crossing with the kid playing Chip in Beauty and the Beast. We actually inspired two people on the crew to buy the game, too. Everyone else in the building thought we were dorks. …What?

Low priorities
And finally, if there’s any room in my bags left over, I might not have to walk around naked. I pack exactly eight sets of clothes (including the one I’m wearing on the travel day). That leaves me a one-day grace period to do the laundry every week. One of those is my “nice outfit” which is not intended to be part of the normal clothing rotation, as it’s too nice to wear on an average day. It’s only for occasions when I know I can sit in my ivory PSM tower and not get dirty. Opening nights, parties on the day off, etc. I usually wear a sweatshirt of some kind on the travel days (so the sweatshirt doesn’t have to fit in the suitcase, of course), that way I have one heavier thing to wear should it ever be cold. This year I’m sure it will be my 1-up jacket. I love that thing. I also pack a lightweight windbreaker for rainy days. I bring only one pair of shoes, due to space and weight constraints. This depresses me because one of the best things about Reagle is that I never have to dress in all black for three whole months. On days I don’t have to wear black I enjoy wearing a nice bright pair of white sneakers, but because white sneakers aren’t classy enough to be worn with the “nice outfit,” that means my one pair of shoes must be plain black sneakers that are subtle enough to pass for dress shoes if no one looks too closely. I just bought a new pair to cheer myself up about this (and because the old ones had a huge hole in them).

Usually a few stray items also find their way into my suitcase. A small notebook mouse went up the first year so I could do a little bit of computer gaming. The sad state of Mac gaming and the age of my Powerbook made that a joke, but this year it might make the trip again for the new computer. I might bring another cheap little mouse I got for free instead of the good one — then I can leave it there.

Well that should more or less cover it. It certainly is nice to have a consistent experience and know exactly what I can expect to have available to me up there, and where I can obtain all the other things I need. It’s a big difference from my first year where I packed a lot of stuff not knowing whether I would need it.


Step Away from the Photoshop

I call this: computers,summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 9:11 pm

You may notice the site has a new banner logo. This came about because when I got home from my matinée, I had the rest of the late afternoon and evening to myself to take care of the pressing matters in my life:
1. Laundry: sheets and towels and my uniform for this Thursday’s softball game.
2. Clean my apartment for my impending departure for the summer.
3. Perhaps rouse a brain cell to at least begin thinking about how I might go about maybe packing.
4. At least finish reading the script of the show I begin rehearsing in nine days.

To my credit, I did do the laundry. I then got the brilliant idea to see if I could design an attractive desktop wallpaper incorporating the visual themes of my blog, just for myself so I would have something interesting displayed on my computer when I got to Reagle, that would go along with my little Anatomy of a Summer Stock Season. Well the wallpaper is coming along, but it’s not quite done yet. I was trying to be all blurry and abstract, nothing I would ever use for the site itself, but in the process I stumbled upon a design that excited me so much, I had to make it the real logo. See, it’s a Go button, that is either moving very fast or just has been horribly abused by a Photoshop filter. My worry is that you can’t actually tell it’s a Go button anymore, but when I cranked the motion blur up too high, it just looked so surprisingly interesting, I had to keep it.

I also changed the site’s subtitle, which I’ve been wanting to do since before the site went live. “Where theatre and technology collide” sounded so melodramatic to me, not to mention “collide” felt a little negative. Where theatre and technology collide is where somebody runs the automation in the wrong direction. That’s never good. So I whipped out the thesaurus and decided on “converge.”

I have two-and-a-half days off, so I think I should be able to do something productive. I’m also going to try to see a couple shows before I leave — definitely Curtains and maybe something else, hopefully I can get Grey Gardens on TKTS. This always happens — I go away and when I come home everything I wanted to see is either
a.) closed
b.) impossible to get tickets to due to a Tony win (Jersey Boys, I’m lookin’ at you)
c.) no longer has original cast member that made it worth seeing
I’m so hopelessly behind this season, but I’m at least going to make an effort to see something.


May 19, 2007

Now and Forever

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 8:32 am

So I mentioned as a sidebar that the Cats tour teched at Reagle last year. This was a rather unusual event that complicated the Reagle season by taking up the stage for a week, but it was good for the theatre financially, and I’m sure for Troika as well, since they didn’t have to pay a union crew or deal with any of those big-city problems.

It was fun to have a big show in the theatre while we were rehearsing. Even if it was non-Equity, I couldn’t help thinking that those stage managers, while perhaps being abused, were doing a show that sure looked like a national tour. I’m at a place in my career where having the experience of doing it is more important than getting paid well for it, and I admit I looked on with envy as they worked around us. I would sometimes have to be in the wings during their techs or runs to ask Lori something about our show, and I was jealous of our crew guys standing there with some ridiculous “Skimbleshanks” prop over their heads.

This was also where I learned…
Life Lesson #3: Your lower leg is not going to stop a dozen road cases rolling down a hill.
Well, actually it might, but it’s not worth it just to protect some gear.

The tour had all their boxes of unused equipment in a long hallway backstage, which had a slope to it. At some point we needed to remove one of the boxes. That seemed fine for a second, until all the boxes uphill of it slowly started to roll down the hill. They weren’t going fast, but by the time they filled in the gap left by the missing box, they were going to hit the next box with considerable force. I — “Little One,”remember — was the only one close enough to the oncoming boxes to get a hand on them. I grabbed the leading box by the top corner, and used my leg to try to slow down the bottom corner. I did succeed in slowing it down a lot, and by that time somebody else had gotten a hand on it as well, but they did collide very gently cushioned by my calf, and somehow I managed to get my leg out of there after the boxes hit but before the thousands of pounds of stuff behind the first box caught up. I was fine, but I realized that was incredibly stupid, especially considering no people were in danger and the only potential victim would have been some presumably-well-packed gear. This is the kind of complacency that comes from being a stage manager and not being allowed to touch stuff.< I went to school for directing, but my more formative years were spent in technical theatre, and there's a part of me that still wishes every now and then that I could moonlight as a followspot op or something. Last season we were doing the photo call for Will Rogers and realized there was one shot that was lit basically only with a spot, and we hadn’t called in any crew for that. It would have been no problem for the head electrician to go over to the spot, but I wanted to do it. I hadn’t touched a spot since I was 14. I got a quick course on headset of “what does this knob do?” and played around with it for a while while they took the pictures. I kind of sucked at it, and I was glad I didn’t have to do it in performance. Spot ops have a tough job, and I never hold a mistake against anyone, unless it comes from not paying attention. But it became even more clear that just as one of them couldn’t call the show that night, I would be just as bad at running their spot.

I really wanted to be on the crew for Cats — I mean when else in my life would I have the opportunity to be on local crew for Cats, or anything else for that matter? But of course I was rehearsing Millie a few feet away in the studio, so there was nothing I could do. I did get to work the load-out, where I was on the sound crew. It was a lot of work considering I had been at the theatre since 9:30 that morning, and the last truck drove away at 4:30AM, and I had to be back in rehearsal at 10, but I found it absolutely fascinating. How the hell do you get a 600lb mixing console into its road case and onto the truck without breaking it or your legs? Well I found out.


Little One

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 7:52 am

I found the Singin’ in the Rain package in my mailbox when I got home last night. I was glad it fit so I didn’t have to waste a day picking it up at the post office. I didn’t have time to get through much of it, but so far I’m kind of entertained by it.

In the package was a note referring to me by my top-secret code name, “Little One,” which I had actually forgotten about until this week. Just thought I should tell the story on that.

Last season the Troika tour of Cats did their tech and previews at Reagle in the middle of our season. (I was a little bitter that I was too busy being PSM of Millie across the hall — the idea of being on local crew for a production of Cats was absolutely hysterical to me.) Anyway, the traveling crew had a lot of people whose names we never actually found out, because they all went by names like Big Daddy, Big Mama, etc. and they in turn bestowed on our crew some new names that stuck for the rest of the season.

When they left and we began tech for Millie, somebody decided that the rest of us needed code names on headset. Mine became “Little One.” Here’s the story:
At the end of my first year, we were doing Sound of Music. And you know, there’s like seven kids. So at the top of Act II we needed the kids, Max and Elsa on stage in order to start. Most nights I would be sitting in the booth while the kids were counted, and being told who the culprit was that we were waiting for.

So one night it had been maybe a long intermission, or I got held up with something in the lobby after calling places, and when I got back into the booth I hopped into my chair, put on my headset, and the first thing I hear is the tech director, Lori, say “OK, we just need the little one.” Given the usual ritual of counting the kids at places, one would assume she meant the five-year-old girl playing Gretl. I press the talk button and say, “OK, we have the house,” and Lori says, “Oh, we can go now.” It now becomes clear that I’m the Little One. I thought it was pretty funny, and it stuck.


May 18, 2007

Anatomy of a Summer Stock Season

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:00 pm

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.


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