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August 23, 2010

FLAT – A New Movie

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 6:04 pm

If you liked Backstage Flood, then you have really low standards of entertainment, and you will love FLAT.

FLAT tells the story of an event that happened during our second-to-last performance of Hairspray. Before the final performance, we made a movie about it. The production values are much higher than Backstage Flood‘s. Which is not saying much. But we actually, like, put thought into it and stuff.


August 19, 2010

Pilot: Company Puppy

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 7:32 pm

While hanging out on the dock with the crew, and our lovable company puppy, Pilot, I was asked why I haven’t blogged about Pilot.

Well the truth is, I thought he was a little too similar to Bam-Bam, the Acting Company’s truck dog, below:

They both have at least some Jack Russell in them, and are both painfully adorable. Pilot belongs to one of our wardrobe ladies, and pretty much owns the wardrobe room and the attentions of anyone who enters it. I really can’t express any more about it, he’s just too cute for words.


August 15, 2010

The J/K Tree

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 8:18 pm

Gather ’round, children, and I will tell you the story of the J/K Tree.

(For anybody over the age of 20, or people who spend too much time in real life, and not enough time on the internet, “J/K” is text-speak for “just kidding.”)

This summer at Reagle the J/K Tree has become a metaphorical representation of anything that happens onstage when it’s not supposed to.

It began at the start of the summer, with our first show, Into the Woods. The set consisted of a bunch of two-dimensional trees covered in random text from fairy tales, as though they were cut out of the pages of books. Like so:

There were ten trees at various depths and locations, which would fly in in seemingly random patterns to define different areas in the story. In reality, which tree was in which scene was often very important to direct focus and allow access to certain parts of the stage while concealing others. But for the purposes of running the show, there was really no easy way to remember when a certain tree was supposed to fly. You just always had to have the right linesets moving.

Sometimes the wrong tree or set of trees would move. I had a tree-tracking table in a sheet protector on my desk which showed all the moves, the cue numbers, and most importantly, all the trees that were supposed to be in after a given cue had completed. Generally if it was found that a mistake was made, we would just have to deal with it for that scene and assign fly cues so that on the next transition we would end up with all the right trees in.

Until the J/K Tree. The J/K Tree was known to the director and the cast as Tree #2. It was known to the crew as lineset 7. I had to memorize both sets of numbers, which gave me a headache. Anyway, there was one particular transition, on one particular night, when Tree #2 flew in when it wasn’t supposed to. Because it was pretty far downstage, and close to center, it caught attention right away, and I and several other people immediately cried out that it was wrong. But it was coming in like it meant to, and being the center of attention, couldn’t just come halfway in, stop, and then go out. We figured, as we usually did, that we would just have to live with it until the next possible transition. As soon as it landed I mentally scanned ahead in the show to figure out when it could make a graceful exit.

Immediately I realized the problem: this was the transformation scene, where the Witch turns into a beautiful woman. There was a special in the floor that would shine right up at Rachel. I knew the special was just downstage of Tree #2, so her mark for the transformation would be exactly where the tree is. I said, “It can’t be here for the transformation, get it out!” and away it went, almost as soon as it had come in. As it casually returned to the sky, someone on headset commented cheerfully, “J/K!” And from then on it became known as the J/K Tree. Because of the words painted on the trees, we thought it would have been nice if it actually had the letters J and K on it, but I don’t think we ever inspected it that closely.

So through our techs of later shows it’s been the joke when something happens when it’s not supposed to, and is then quickly, and not so subtly, corrected — such as a dramatic light cue called early and then backed out of, or an actor who starts to sing before their cue and then stops — “Oops! Fly in the J/K Tree!”

It’s one of those you-had-to-be-there stories, but I noticed that I used “J/K” in my video in the previous post, and figured I should explain the particular history of it among our crew.


Crazy Sunday Afternoon

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 7:38 pm

All we had to do today was a Sunday matinee. After that we have no show until next Thursday. Things have been running smoothly, audiences have been leaping to their feet. When the sun rose this morning, all that stood between us and three-and-a-half days off was two-and-a-half hours of awesome musical theatre.

9:30AM

I’ve already been awake for a while, because somehow I’ve become an early bird like that. My phone rings, and it’s our star. She’s not calling me at 9:30 on a matinee day just to say hi. As I suspected, she wasn’t feeling well. She was calling me to get our producer’s home number to see if she could be rushed in to see a doctor so she could get a prescription before the show. Much to my relief, that was the extent of my involvement, and she was indeed able to see the doctor, and was feeling OK for the show.

12:15PM

I’m about to leave the house. Like packing my stuff. And I get a call from one of the Dynamites. It’s obvious right away it’s train trouble. A large portion of our actors commute on the red line from Boston, and need rides from Alewife, which is the last and nearest station to the theatre. There are two regular pickups: an hour-and-a-half before the show is the Ednamobile, which is driven by our “Edna,” Dan. 15 minutes later is the scheduled departure of the Musicmobile, driven by our music director and keyboard player, also Dan (which is why the two cars have names, instead of “Dan is driving me.”) Anyway, I find out that it’s not just the usual Sunday delays on the red line. Apparently the entire T has been shut down for about 40 minutes due to a power outage. Part of my dismay is that, not being from the area, I really don’t know how to help people when they have train trouble. But I do know that somebody even being slightly delayed on the train can really mess up my day, so all the trains in Boston being shut down less than two hours before a show doesn’t sound good.

I decided that getting to the theatre was not important at the moment, and stayed on my computer trying to reach people who could potentially offer rides, while checking Twitter to see what other Bostonians were reporting about the outage (the MBTA website showed all trains happily running with a green checkmark. Thanks!) Shortly after that, the trains started running again, and our actors (and one of our other keyboard players) made it on, and slowly towards Waltham. The Musicmobile would stay behind for them.

Act I

So finally everybody arrived and the show started without incident. Marissa wasn’t having problems, and I soon stopped worrying about her completely. We had almost gotten through act I when everyone kind of noticed at once that there was something in the air in front of the house right light tree. With all the fake hairspray hanging in the air, seeing particles in the beams of light isn’t anything unusual, but as our board op, Jess, pointed out, there hasn’t been any hairspray sprayed in that area in a really long time. So then the only explanation is that something is burning.

Thankfully this happened at the single point in the show where we have lots of time, during the last scene of the act. There was definitely steady smoke, but even with people looking from all possible angles, nobody was able to tell which instrument it was coming from. The light trees are just in front of the front row on either side and probably contain about 12 instruments each, from about 15-30 feet in the air. We spent the last 10 minutes of the act trying to narrow down the offending equipment, and praying it wouldn’t set off the fire alarm before we could examine it more closely at intermission.

We made it, and soon a good portion of the crew had gathered with flashlights to look at it, and saw nothing. After some debate, we decided it was time to take the inelegant step of bringing a ladder out into the audience. Taking a chance, we got the 16ft. ladder, which was much less disruptive than the A-frame, but wouldn’t be able to reach the top rows of lights, if that’s where the problem was. Basically we just wanted to figure out which light it was so we could unplug it or turn it off at the board.

Most of intermission went by and still no luck. We had our deck electrician on the top of the ladder checking all the connections. We brought all the lights up at 20 percent and he saw no sign of smoke. Finally I said that if we couldn’t find anything we’d have to give up, and suggested we put everything on that tree at full in the hopes that the offending light would show itself. Soon after, the smoke began again. After more looking with multiple sets of eyes on the ground and on the ladder, they found it was coming from a damaged connector. Jess quickly took all the lights out, and the connector was unplugged, and traced to the lights it controlled. That channel was parked out on the board, and soon the ladder was being spirited away backstage.

After the Show

We were pretty exhausted by the time the second act started, but everything went very smoothly for the rest of the show. Then as soon as the show ended, or perhaps as it was ending, the stage right toilet started flooding. Not like kind of backing up, or leaking a little bit. It was gushing water like Niagara Falls. By the time I got there there was at least an inch of water on the bathroom floor, so I wasn’t going in to see exactly what was happening. Two of our stagehands were inside trying to do something, and succeeding mostly in getting soaking wet. Wardrobe, who are based in the room next to the bathroom, and props, who have their tables set up just outside in the hall, produced several tubs filled with towels and we began laying barriers to contain and direct the water away from the props and costumes. The janitor arrived from the lobby, and splashed bravely into the bathroom. Soon we heard cries of, “Leatherman! Leatherman!” coming from inside. I dug into my bag and passed my Leatherman forward. Several seconds later, the sound of rushing water stopped, and the three intrepid plumbers emerged from the bathroom, mission accomplished.

Remarking that in one day the theatre had been attacked by both fire and water, I was getting out of there before the plague of locusts showed up.

I did, however, make a movie about the end of our harrowing day.


August 13, 2010

Hairspray Reading Material and the Joy of Live Theatre

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 1:09 pm

Just wanted to share a link about my current production of Hairspray at Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston.

The Globe ran an interview with Marissa Perry, who is our amazing Tracy Turnblad. Her story of how she got to Broadway is really inspiring, and actually involved many more twists and turns than described in the article. I described her yesterday during the show as a “quadruple-threat” — acting, singing and dancing, of course, but the threat that’s important to stage managers — she’s really smart and aware on stage, and can recognize and solve problems (like picking up a prop that’s been dropped on the floor, or figuring out how to casually set a brake on a set piece that’s sliding around).

The thing about live theatre that’s tricky is that you can’t always control what will happen on stage, and once it’s in view of the audience, there’s often nothing the crew can directly do to fix it, especially in a show like Hairspray that only has one or two blackouts. Things that get out of place or left on the floor create hazards for dancers, or can cause scenery to get stuck on them. An actor who can be counted on to notice these things and quickly remedy them before they become a problem is incredibly valuable for the smooth operation of the performance. To have a star with that ability, especially one who is almost never offstage, is a great blessing for me.

And I would add to my “quadruple-threat” comment from last night, that she is also a “quintuple-threat,” because on top of everything else, she’s everything you want a performer to be on stage, and she’s nice! It really doesn’t get any better than that.

On the subject of technically-aware actors:
I’ve also been kind of surprised to work with a few directors lately who have specifically taken a moment in rehearsal to talk about the importance of this, by saying things like, “If a prop falls on the floor, don’t ignore it, stay in character and find a way to pick it up. There are other things that need to happen besides your performance, and it’s important that that prop be where it’s supposed to be. You bending down to pick up the prop will not look as bad to the audience as any later problems it might cause.” So I’m grateful for that.

And I will share a story of the best case of an actor saving the day I’ve ever seen:
When I was in college I was the merchandising manager for Jane Eyre on Broadway. There was this scene where Rochester takes Jane out to the garden to propose to her, where there’s a bench on the turntable, and the bench turns off left while Rochester and Jane are kind of walking alongside it, and a scrim flies out revealing the garden. Well on this particular day in previews, I guess maybe the bench had gotten knocked out of place a little on the turntable, and as it spun and the scrim flew, the bottom pipe of the scrim went under the arm of the bench and began lifting it up off the floor by one end. James Barbour, walking slowly past the bench, arm-in-arm with Marla Schaffel, reaches out with his free hand, and casually lifts the arm of the bench off the pipe and deposits it back down on the floor, without missing a step. The combination of reaction time, calmness, and willingness to interact with something (flying benches in his backyard) that was completely out of the realm of the reality of the scene was really amazing.

And finally, if something goes wrong and you can’t fix it, at least come up with a good ad lib, like our Edna, Dan Dowling, did last night:
Somehow he lost a shoe during “Big Dollhouse,” and somehow the shoe ended up in the pit. At the end of the scene, when everybody is released from jail, Dan says his line to the Matron, “You touch one hair on my little girl’s head and I’ll be back to teach you a whole new meaning for split ends,” and then adds, “…and you can mail me my other shoe!” I’m not sure how much the audience laughed because I couldn’t hear anything over the laughter on headset, but suffice it to say, there was laughter all around. He also referenced it again in the next scene where he has an ad-lib spot in the phone call with Mr. Pinky. I think he said something like, “I’ll be right over. But I’ll be minus one shoe” (in that scene he’s wearing slippers). Of course not every show affords such opportunities, but we are lucky to have a show that was intended to have certain spots for ad-libs, and more importantly — a brilliant cast that spends time thinking up good ones, and can also come up with new ones on their feet. It definitely keeps things interesting instead of watching exactly the same show over and over.


August 12, 2010

Hairspray Photo Recap

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 1:54 am

Well Hairspray opens tomorrow, and I know I’ve been terrible about blogging. I just finished my work at 1:15AM, and we have a matinee, so I’m unfortunately not going to stay up all night writing, but I have been taking some photos over the last couple days to share.

Here’s one of the many dozens of fun cues I have in “You Can’t Stop the Beat.” There’s one — I swear to God — when Motormouth pulls off her pants disguise revealing her sparkly dress, the cue perfectly represents in moving light the act of taking one’s pants off and throwing them downstage, revealing a sparkly dress.

The cast and crew after our final dress:

(those two above images are production photos, by Herb Philpott)

Our master carpenter, Nat, took on the task of designing the portal which frames the downstage space. He had a cool concept of doing Andy Warhol-like paintings of our Tracy and Link. Well our painters, Jamie and Helen, have spent the last two days recreating photographs of our actors on two flats which sit on either side of the stage. They are awesome.

Head painter Jamie and her assistant, Helen, paint the Link picture, using a projected photo of Nick Peciaro as their guide.

The painting of Marissa Perry installed on stage.

And the usual calling desk photo:


August 1, 2010

Hairspray Load in Day

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 7:49 pm

I know I haven’t blogged much about Hairspray yet. Usually that means there are problems, but in this case it’s been going very well. Today we did a stumble-through of Act I, which was very exciting, and made our first serious attack on Act II by staging “Big Doll House.”

Today our set (from Wichita Music Theatre) arrived in two trucks, straight from its closing last night at Gateway Playhouse on Long Island. The tight turnaround between the two rentals has been a great concern for us, but so far so good. We have a lot of backup plans for things.

Just wanted to share some very early photos of the pastel megaliths now crowding our stage and shop.

Miss Teenage Hairspray Scoreboard
Hairpray Set Arriving

The magical giant hairspray can in its travel rack.
Hairspray Can

And the back shop has zero floor space at this moment.
Yeah, That's Enough Storage


July 19, 2010

Stage Management Master Class

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 2:34 pm

Today was one of my favorite days in my yearly summer stock ritual. Reagle runs a Musical Theatre Camp for about a month in the summer, which always gets a surprisingly good turnout (this year they have about 100 campers). The kids take all sorts of classes mostly related to the performing aspects of musical theatre, but in addition to that they have a series of master classes where various guests come in to work with the kids for a day and talk about and teach them a variety of topics. The full-time teachers and guest artists are largely pulled from the performers and creative teams of the summer shows. Since the camp was started in 2006, I have always taught a stage management master class at some point in the season.

Basically in my case it’s more of a question-and-answer session where I talk about the job of a stage manager — what’s involved, how I prepare for a show, what my duties are during the show, what my training is, and how I find work. Then I also field questions about the particular show we’re doing at the time (usually I have the class soon after the kids have seen the show), as well as questions like, “What’s the craziest thing that’s happened while you were calling a show?”

The kids vary in ages — in the past I’ve had two large groups divided by age. This year I had four separate classes, starting with the youngest kids (probably about 8 years old) and ending with the oldest (who I think are about 13). It’s always interesting to figure out what topics to focus on based on the age group. Sometimes it’s surprising what the kids want to talk about.

My co-host for the day was Rachel Bertone, who is one of the camp teachers, and one of Reagle’s regular dancers (she’s currently playing Zaneeta in Music Man). We’ve probably done close to 10 shows together, so we work well together, and Rachel helped to steer the conversation and ask interesting questions when the kids ran out of things to say. Before each class she would give me an idea of what topics each age group might be most interested in, and ways to tie in to what they’ve been studying in their other classes.

Rachel contacted me early in the summer about scheduling this class, and I was able to have more input than I usually do on what the class would consist of, where it would be held, and how the groups should be divided up. In the past we’ve always done it at the theatre in two groups of 50-60 kids, which can be really distracting because all the scenery is around and it’s more of a “field trip” atmosphere, and the large groups aren’t as intimate. I really wanted it to be in more of a classroom setting with as much time as possible to take questions and let the conversation go in the direction the kids were most interested in, and more classes in smaller groups seemed to be the way to go. It’s also a lot of the same kids who attend the camp each year, and many of them already know me from previous master classes, or from having been in the childrens’ choruses of various Reagle shows (which results in me occasionally being asked for autographs at the stage door!), so I try to avoid repeating the same information when half the class has heard it already.

It was nice that we ended up talking about different things in each class. I always feel that the classes are too short. Describing the job of a stage manager can take a really long time if you had to talk about every part of the process, and answer questions about it! So I liked that we were covering a lot of new territory with each class, it kept the day interesting for me, instead of repeating the same things four times.

With the oldest group, they had been learning more about “the business,” including preparing resumes, so I talked a little more about how I get jobs, and how I hire other people, including ways in which resumes have stood out for me.

One thing that came up with most of the groups is the story of how I got into stage managing, which I found myself getting way more specific than I intended to with the 8-year-olds, about how I had wanted to be a director, and after pursuing directing and nothing but directing from the age of 12, I decided halfway through college that I had to give up my lifelong goal and become a stage manager. I realized by way of answering the simple question of “what’s your training in stage management?” that it served as a good life lesson that even if you spend your whole life wanting to do a certain thing, it’s OK to admit that maybe you were wrong and you should really be doing something else. Rachel also chimed in about how she had wanted to be a ballerina her whole life and eventually discovered that she really belonged in musical theatre. So we found a way to work that story in with almost all the classes because it seemed like something important for kids to hear in general, especially in this business where so many people grow up wanting to perform, and very few will make it all the way to being working professional actors.

I’ve learned in my experience of running talkbacks at Phantom, as well as later in my career at Reagle and on the Acting Company tour, that every talkback group is different. That’s part of the reason I love doing them, because you never know where the conversation will lead. Some groups want to know all about the technical stuff, some all about the acting / performance stuff, some are really curious about training and how people grew up to be professional theatre artists. I think of the master classes like extended talkbacks, except that instead of an entire cast, I’m the only one being talked to.

The part of any talkback I don’t like is where the talkers are spouting off canned information.

“Tell us a little about yourself: where you’re from and how you got into theatre…”

“The Acting Company was founded in 1972 from the first class of Julliard’s drama division…”

This is all necessary information that gives context to what the listeners are about to hear, and helps them to decide what questions to ask, but I always want to get it over with as soon as possible because I never feel there’s enough time to cover everyone’s questions, and I like to get to the part where I figure out what the group wants to hear about. I like the intro to be very brief, but give a quick sample of what the possible topics might be, and then when the listeners latch on to something, we can talk more in depth about that.

Rachel had brought along the Music Man program, and began each class by reading my bio, which was nice because in 75 words or less it brings up a couple different topics right away. Here it is:

Karen Parlato (Production Stage Manager) This is Karen’s sixth season as Reagle’s PSM — credits include all summer productions since 2005’s Crazy For You. She is based in New York, where credits include The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, Off-Broadway: Inventing Avi, Frankenstein, The Fantasticks, Wanda’s World, Bingo, and others. In the fall she will return for her 3rd year as PSM of The Acting Company’s national tour, bringing Romeo and Juliet and The Comedy of Errors to 33 US cities.

So right away that potentially leads to:
1. What’s a production stage manager, as opposed to a stage manager in general?
2. How do you travel here from New York? How do you handle working away from home?
3. Wow, I saw Phantom! How do the candles come up from the floor? What’s the hardest scene to call?
4. What’s touring like?
5. Do you like doing Shakespeare? How is it different from musicals?

I could fill the entire class period on any of those topics, so I don’t want to waste time talking about something they’re not interested in, when I have hours of material I could share on a topic they are interested in. The interesting challenge for me with the camp is that usually none of the kids are specifically interested in stage management or technical theatre, so it’s not so much about the nitty-gritty of my stage management style, as it is about familiarizing them with what a stage manager does, and I’m one of a number of guest artists they’ll meet who can answer general questions about what it’s like doing theatre professionally.

On tour our cast does a lot of performance-related workshops at schools we visit, and on a few rare occasions the schools have requested a stage management or more behind-the-scenes workshop for their students who are pursuing other careers in theatre, which I am always beyond excited to do, no matter how busy the day. When we were in Tucson two years ago, Nick and I spent an hour in the greenroom after a performance with a college class of stage management students, which gets much more specific about “how do you write your cues in the book?” and that sort of thing, which is equally fun, to be talking to people who are not that far behind us in their careers. Last year Corey (the staff repertory director) and I did a seminar with a group of theatre students that focused on how we keep the show running on the road, and the career paths of a director and stage manager. Also last year, we arrived at one college and the resident stage management teacher introduced us to one of her students, and offered her as an intern for the day. We gave her a 16-hour example of a day in the life of a stage manager doing a one-nighter, which at one point included a tour of our bus, that ended up with us sitting on the couches in the lounge for probably two hours just chatting about stage management and life.

This whole experience led me to send off an email to The Acting Company reminding them how much I enjoy doing talkbacks, workshops and working with stage management students, and offering that while they’re contacting schools to offer workshops on acting, interpreting Shakespeare, stage combat, etc. they should also feel free to mention that I’m available to talk to technical theatre students or to be shadowed by any aspiring stage managers. They got back to me right away saying they’d begin offering that to venues. So I’m excited to be doing my little part to have our roving troupe offer educational opportunities for other students besides just performers.


July 14, 2010

Music Man Update

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 6:30 pm

I’ve been feeling guilty about not posting anything lately. We open tomorrow. Here are some early photos.

Shipoopi!

“Rock Island”


July 7, 2010

Company Video – Shipoopi

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 10:09 pm

It seems like these days every show needs its own company YouTube video. By this I mean, like every company has its inside joke, its catchphrase, and so forth, it seems in the modern age that most shows I’ve done lately have also had a favorite YouTube video that is frequently quoted and referenced.

On the Acting Company tour in 2008-2009, we did a play called The Spy, in which it’s revealed at the end that one of the characters has actually been George Washington in disguise. Our company video was this amazing “Washington” animated song (warning: bad, but very funny, language).

This past year’s Acting Company tour of Romeo and Juliet had the R&J edition of “Sassy Gay Friend.”

On this production of The Music Man it’s the amazing clip from Family Guy where they devoted a huge portion of an episode to a recreation of “Shipoopi” that includes an extended dance break with the original choreography. We can’t quite understand what percentage of the viewership appreciated this gesture, but there are about 70 of us on this production who do! Our Marcellus also does a pretty good Peter Griffin voice. I hope he’ll use it once during tech or something.


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