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December 23, 2009

Three

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 1:20 am

Three

Three

Count ’em. Three posts today. I don’t want to hear any crap about some of them being after midnight. You know what I mean.

Well I figured it out. See, most of us here have been feeling a little under the weather. I keep going to bed early because I don’t feel so great. When I get up early, I get back in bed because I feel like my body just needs a little more time to rest.

Well I have unlocked the secret of how some people can blog so much. See I go grocery shopping with some people. And I know some people buy Mountain Dew by the case. I buy a once-daily supply of Monster drinks, but I try to limit myself to one right when I get up, and some coffee when necessary at work, but other than that I try to drink water. As a result, by bedtime, I’m ready for bed. I have been a caffeine addict of varying proportions, and have done my share of blogging, gaming and web coding sessions that last until 6AM. So tonight I thought about how I keep trying to blog and get sleepy, and then realized that getting sleepy at 10:30 is perfectly normal, and that if I drank caffeine at night it would be easy to stay up a few extra hours. So, having enough energy drinks in the fridge to last me till the next grocery run with a few spares, I cracked one open tonight.

Three posts. Fear my blogging stamina!

I could keep going, I just don’t want to tire you guys out with reading. Goodnight.


A Lesson in Taking Blocking

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 1:07 am

OK stage management students. I know you googled something like “stage manager blocking” or “professional stage manager blocking,” so before you click on that link from SMnetwork.org or something like that, I’m glad you’ve landed here.

Here’s what it’s all about.

Here’s a photo. You’ll have to click on it to see it in full size to get the full education from this.
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This is an excerpt from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Act III Sc. 3.
The notation on the page reads:

(FL) treats (R) like a little bitch DL

In the key I’m using for blocking, FL is Friar Laurence, R is Romeo, naturally.
(For more about what Friar Laurence has to do with stage management, you really should read my post on the subject.)

To cover all my bases, I have also included one of my much-beloved groundplan stickers, upon which I have indicated an area of the stage marked “region of holy pwnage.”

Now under this page is another one which contains all sorts of details like who crosses where and whatnot (which is why there are corresponding numbers on the text page), but the page you see pretty well sums up the action of the scene.

I hope you had a good chuckle, you can carry on being all serious now. Someday I swear I will do a good page on the website about how I take blocking, as well as how I do my calling script. I even have scanned a couple of pages of previous scripts, but I really want to take the time to do it right. Until then, I will take 10 minutes to be a wisegal.


Week 3… or Something

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:41 am

I have no idea what today is. I have given up trying to describe our process in weeks. I know today is “the day before the day off,” that is, we have one more rehearsal (tomorrow) before the day off — which, conveniently, is an almost unheard-of TWO days off, namely Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

In order to amass this wealth of days off at one time, we’ve been working approximately forever since our last day off, in accordance with the Equity rule that allows you to rehearse more than six consecutive days in order to provide a day off for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, one of which is required to be a day off. By getting both, we screw up our schedule for a couple weeks (continuing the confusion because we took New Years’ Day off as well). The nice thing is that at the end of all this we end up with two days off in close succession right before tech, which will be welcome.

So it’s starting to feel a bit like the last day of school. We finished staging the show today, and then did a run of Act II. Tomorrow we’re doing just a few little pieces and then running the show for the first time. If all goes well we then plan to do notes and will be let out of class early to romp in the snow!

The last few days have been interesting. We’ve been trying various methods to gather up some more accurate rehearsal props — actual wicker baskets instead of backpacks, period rapiers instead of modern fencing swords, cloth handkerchiefs instead of tissues, that kind of thing. With our props having to be built or shopped in New York, we’ve had some setbacks in getting everything, and a few days ago I began what if I were a politician I might term a “surge” to try to get some extreme action taken to help us.

One of the solutions involved our swords. When all is said and done, our dueling families will confront each other with sword canes. We’ve had some delays getting the canes from the supplier, so in order to start fight choreography we had been using some borrowed fencing rapiers. As a halfway point between the modern rapiers and the sword canes, it was suggested that we use the 18th-century rapiers from last year’s The Spy, which were kept in the props box when the road boxes were loaded in New York. Not-so-conveniently, the truck is waiting in a lot about 20 miles from Minneapolis until load-in day. So early Monday morning, Team Stage Management got up and drove out to the trucking facility and climbed a snowbank into the back of the truck to retrieve the swords, and another cardboard box of props that we found. It actually probably took us less than 15 minutes once we got to the truck. We came prepared for the lock, doors and everything else to be frozen shut. We had flashlights, hammers, multitools, and a travel mug filled with hot water. We had permission from the office to break the lock if needed. As it turns out, the only tool we used was the key, which had been overnighted from the office the day before.

The snowbank even helped. My biggest concern about the trip was that I have never successfully climbed into the back of the truck from the ground. I would guess the floor of the truck is about shoulder-height on me. The first step is probably about waist-high, and there’s not really anything to grab onto to hoist myself up with the proper leverage. So when I saw the snowbank, I was relieved. It gave me the few extra inches I needed to get on the step, and from there I found a few little metal protrusions to grab, as well as the handle on the hamper strapped to the wall. Getting down was another ordeal. As I complained about how there aren’t grab irons, and how anyone was expected to do this, Nick was telling me to stop being a wuss and trying to explain what I was supposed to be grabbing, and then as he watched me actually try to do it that way, he says, “Oh, I get it — your arms are just too short!” I was like, “No shit my arms are too short! That’s what I’m talking about!” Anyway, I got in and out without hurting myself, so I was happy about that.

The truck had only arrived the night before, and the lock opened easily. The #2 road box — the weapons case — was the very last box in the truck, as promised. It was strapped with the doors facing the wrong way, which required moving a bunch of blankets and removing a couple load bars that were on the floor in order to pull it out, but after a brief struggle with two load straps, only one of which was ornery, I squeezed between the rows of boxes and pulled out all the weapons that were in any way useful. Then we pushed the box back, strapped it up again, closed the doors without too much fail, put the lock back on, and headed to rehearsal.

The one disappointment of our trip is that we couldn’t get to our stage management road box. We have been given a vague hint that there was a snarky note for Nick put in the box when the truck was loaded. Despite our frustration at having to make this early-morning journey, the bright spot was potentially getting an early look in the box. Unfortunately, behind the weapons box, the wall of road boxes was formed by three wardrobe gondolas and the TD’s box. Without a dock to unload on, and with limited open space in the back of the truck, there was no way to even locate our box, much less play Tetris and try to get to it. And we also couldn’t get a glimpse of any of the set either, which would have been the other item of interest.

Despite the not-wanting-to-go-anywhere-at-eight-AM and not-our-job reactions to this event, it was really fun to see our truck again. Despite the early mornings, late nights, inclement weather and hard physical work that always come along with it, I really enjoyed touring last year. I’ll be honest, I load the truck out of guilt that I’m the only person on the bus who doesn’t have to load the truck. Can I sit in my bunk and watch TV, sleep, or play on the internet while everyone else I live with is working their ass off until 3AM? But despite the obligation of my conscience, I took pride in being part of the crew. I am perfectly capable of getting my hands dirty, though I don’t have to do it anymore. I was a carpenter. I was a (very short) electrician. I can help. So I enjoyed knowing every inch of the truck pack, I even kind of enjoyed the day we all had to build the set ourselves because the venue didn’t hire enough crew. I learned exactly how the set was assembled, bolt by bolt, and for the rest of the tour I was able to use that knowledge to have a better understanding of situations. So of all the people in the employ of The Acting Company or the Guthrie in Minneapolis at the time, Nick and I were uniquely suited to going into the truck, getting what we need, and securing it without any trouble.

I’ve been eagerly looking forward to the truck’s arrival at the Guthrie — the day we walk up to the theatre and see it in profile next to the street, proclaiming our arrival to all passing cars. To me the truck represents our movement, the excitement and anticipation of a new place. It heralds our arrival and our departure. So just to see it sitting in a lot, here in Minnesota, is a step in the right direction. I’ve learned it’s actually going to make an appearance at the Guthrie tomorrow, so they can unload the marley floor — I guess the cold isn’t good for it and they want to give it time to thaw before laying it. I’m not sure if the trailer is staying on the premises or going back to the yard again.

I meant to more heavily document our adventures on the truck, but the whole thing happened so fast (once we got through the 5 or 6 people at the storage yard who had never heard of The Acting Company or a truck arriving the night before from New York, and found the one guy who knew where it was) that I forgot to take pictures until we were pulling away. Take a look at the next Pulitzer for photojournalism here:

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So here’s a brief glimpse of our set, our equipment and our tools, like an embryo in the petri dish of a frozen truck lot.


December 16, 2009

Homework & Coffee

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 1:35 am

Step 1: Coffee

photoI’m kinda tired, and I still have some work to do tonight. So I decided to experiment with an area of domesticity that I don’t generally dabble in: making coffee at home. I don’t generally make coffee. I’m a far better stage manager than a PA. To me, coffee is something you pay $4 for, and a barista makes it using some mathematical formula of beans, water, milk and sugar that I don’t need to be involved in.

When we started rehearsal I brought my travel mug that I bought in New Mexico during the tour last year, and threw together some concoction of ingredients that tasted OK. I was kind of excited by this experiment. Our awesome intern Ashley makes the coffee every morning, and sometimes when I ask, “Is the coffee ready?” I am directed to take note of the freshly made coffee that is already in my mug and on my desk, formed of some combination of creamer and sugar that we have landed upon as “the way I like my coffee”, but that I don’t know how to make myself!

So suffice it to say, I consume a lot of coffee, but the act of putting water in a coffee maker and passing it through a filter filled with coffee grinds into a pot isn’t generally something I do on a regular basis. When I do, it’s because it’s part of my job (which it isn’t, technically, but that’s another story). On tour last year making coffee was usually my job, because on load-in day the crew would be working hard for about 8 hours while I took a nap and played on the internet. The tradeoff for this was that they could call me on the radio about 10 minutes before a break, and I would have fresh coffee waiting on the bus when they arrived.

Anyway, I bought some coffee in the supermarket (for possibly the first time in my life, for my own consumption at least), for reasons I don’t actually remember. I guess I decided that since my apartment is furnished with a coffee maker, I could use it, maybe to save money on energy drinks. And since the day we arrived, the coffee has sat on the kitchen counter unopened. Tonight I was tired and cold, so I actually attempted to make some to solve both problems. I did OK, as seen above.

Step 2: Homework

Now properly caffeinated, I turn to the main bulk of my homework for the night: our company manager, Joseph, has created weekly schedules for the entire tour. These need to be submitted to Equity to be checked for rule violations in terms of travel and performance hours. So my job is to check them for accuracy and any violations before they go to Equity. I’m kind of excited to see.

As many rules as there are about rehearsal hours, there are almost as many about travel. The reason I find it a little more difficult is that I never travel with the cast, so the whole thing is kind of a theoretical math puzzle as opposed to something remembered instinctively after having done it so many times.

After a refresher course through the LORT rulebook section on tours, and transferring the basic rules into a Google Wave that Nick and I (and anyone else we might need to include) can use for reference, I began looking over the schedule, checking each performance time against my database to make sure they all match up.

After having spent 3 hours doing this, I feel like I’ve gone through our entire tour, picturing a chronological trip through what our daily life (or more accurately, what the cast’s daily life) will be like on the road. What time the show will end, what time the bus call is the next day, how long the rest period is, how many hours of travel there are in a day vs. how many performances that day. Also checking to make sure there’s a day free of performances in each week, and a full day off from travel and performances every two weeks.

Joseph sent me the schedules in PDF, which would have been great if I had thought to print them while I was at the theatre. But in absence of a hard copy, I marked up the PDFs in Preview.app, and made notes of rest periods, overtime, and possible problem points if the show runs too long. As I went, I composed an email to Joseph listing my concerns (sometimes just correcting a typo) by date.

Some things may be tweaked a bit to avoid overtime, and sometimes there’s nothing that can be done, and it’s an expense the company just has to pay in order to make the next show. I’m sure the OT is small potatoes compared to the advantages of fitting in an extra performance in the schedule.

I’m just glad there are people at Equity whose job it is to approve this for real. It’s just one really long math problem, and I hate math.

A bus containing the cast of Romeo and Juliet leaves Baton Rouge at 10AM…


December 14, 2009

The Friar Laurence of Stage Management

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 2:16 am

One of my favorite parts of the process is table work. This is where we sit around and read the play several times, while discussing anything that comes to mind about the text, character development, the meaning of the language, and plot points. It was during this time that I found the one character that truly speaks to me.

About Friar Laurence

One of the things we explored during table work for Romeo and Juliet is the arc of the supporting character of Friar Laurence. He is the confidante of both Romeo and Juliet, and throughout the play spends pretty much all his time trying to untangle the complications that prevent R&J from being able to happily marry, publicly declare their love, call off Juliet’s wedding to the eligible young nobleman to whom she has been betrothed, and end the ancient feud that has been dividing their families and disrupting the entire city of Verona with violence. With skills in spiritual matters, politics, and botany, the friar actually does a remarkable job of getting the young lovers out of some difficult situations.

So why do R&J, and a bunch of other people, end up dead after all?

Well it seems that every time Friar Laurence comes up with a brilliant plan to fix everything, fate intervenes to screw it all up again, usually worse than it was before. It was determined that the subtext of this situation is that every time this happens, Friar Laurence should say, Will Ferrell style, “SON OF A BITCH!!”

Let us examine:

Romeo comes to him with girl problems: he’s in love with Juliet, but their parents are not going to be happy. So the Friar sees this as an opportunity to fix everything by marrying them in secret, at which point they can consummate the marriage and it will be too late for the families to object, and suddenly they will all be in-laws and the feud will be over. Right?

So far, so good. They just need a few hours for the marriage to be consummated. And somehow, on his way home from the secret wedding, Romeo manages to kill Juliet’s cousin, which makes him a less-than-ideal son-in-law for the Capulets, and gets him banished from Verona. Oops. Problem #2. SON OF A BITCH!

No problem, Friar Laurence is on it. He hides Romeo at his cell, and in cahoots with Juliet’s nurse, arranges for Romeo to sneak into Juliet’s bedroom at night to say goodbye until they have time to explain everything and get Romeo’s name cleared.

So they say goodbye, and after Romeo leaves, Juliet is upset. Like really upset. Mom and Dad of course don’t understand why, so they’re like, “Hey, you know what’ll make you feel better? We’ve arranged for you to marry this guy Paris — two days from now!” SON OF A BITCH!!

So now there’s a very short timetable for the Friar to solve this problem, or else Juliet will be married to Paris, which is not only bad cause she doesn’t love him, but also a personal problem for the Friar because Juliet is already secretly married to Romeo, and for the Friar to knowingly marry her to two guys presents a serious religious dilemma. Oh, and on top of that, Juliet is holding a knife to her breast and threatening to kill herself if she has to go through with the second wedding.

But again, the Friar knows just what to do. He’s got a sleeping potion that Juliet can take on the night before the wedding, that will make her appear dead just long enough for her to be interred in her family tomb, after which point Romeo can bust her out and sneak her out of town. It seems like just sneaking her out of town awake would be easier, but I guess he likes the elegance of also convincing everyone that she’s dead so nobody bothers looking for her. The craziest thing about this plan is that it WORKS! Even when the wedding is moved up by a day (mini-son-of-a-bitch!), Juliet has the potion ready to go.

Woohoo! Good job, Friar Laurence! That one was really impressive. He’s covered all his bases here. He sends another Friar with a letter to Romeo explaining the whole plan, so that Romeo doesn’t freak out and think she’s actually dead, and will know to come to the tomb to rescue her. Except that Friar John gets delayed and doesn’t quite grasp the urgency of the letter, so it never gets delivered. And the whole wedding/death thing happens a day earlier than it was supposed to. SON OF A BITCH!!!

But it’s OK, the Friar will just have to get to the tomb in time to wake Juliet up and then they can wait for Romeo and fill him in.

Meanwhile, Romeo’s friend Benvolio thinks he’s doing a big favor by rushing to Mantua with the news that Juliet’s dead. So together they hire some fast horses and go immediately to the tomb so that Romeo can kill himself over Juliet’s not-really-dead body. SON OF A BITCH!!!!

But Juliet herself is still alive, and Friar Laurence tries to help her out to become a nun, until she finds out that Romeo’s dead, at which point she stabs herself. SON OF A BITCH!!!!!!

So as you can see, what we have here are a number of people who are all trying to do the right thing, and all do quite well at compensating for the obstacles in their way, but through a series of misfortunes outside their control, still manage to get totally screwed by fate.

Now About Me

It occurred to me this past week, as I was trying to schedule conference calls, that I am the Friar Laurence of stage management. My whole job is to solve people’s problems. And honestly I think I’ve been doing a nice job of it, but just when some extremely complicated situation has been perfectly arranged, something happens to ruin it all, and now I have a new problem to solve, and usually less time in which to do it. So I have taken some comfort in the shared plight of Friar Laurence, and the knowledge that even if some people can’t make the production meeting, or the rehearsal shoes arrive a day late, at least it’s highly unlikely that all my actors will wind up dead before opening night. And really, there’s a lesson in that for all of us — sometimes no amount of preparation can save you from pure bad luck. And in most cases, no matter how frustrating your day has been, Friar Laurence is having a worse day.


Rehearsal Update

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:13 am

I know I haven’t blogged much this week. Believe me, with the Guthrie’s most famous blogger sitting next to me 8 hours a day, I get reminded when I’m slacking.

The Meet & Greet

This week we began with our Meet & Greet. Traditionally this would be done on the first day, but it was postponed to allow for a date when the artistic directors of the Guthrie and The Acting Company — Joe Dowling and Margot Harley — could both be present to speak at the ceremonial beginning of the rehearsal process. They both spoke of the great collaboration between the two companies that was started with last year’s Henry V, and how they were looking forward to keeping up the partnership with this production and others to come. Joe introduced our actors individually, who stood for applause from those Guthrie staff members gathered. They then introduced our director, Penny Metropulos, who introduced the production team (myself, Nick, our choreographer Marcela Lorca, and our voice and text consultants, Andrew Wade and Sara Phillips). Penny gave a basic overview of the concept for the show, the set and costume design, and the period the show is set in (roughly 1912), and why these choices were made. She gave a very moving talk about why the show is important and timeless to audiences.

Week Sort-Of-1 (Staging)

Once these festivities were done, we took a five, and crossed the doorway back into our usual rehearsal room, where we began staging from the top of the show. Now that the week is over, we are staged up to the first part of Act V, Scene 1 (Benvolio comes to tell Romeo that Juliet is “dead”). I think it would be safe to say we are about 4/5ths of the way through the show. We also spent the end of today’s rehearsal doing a stumble-through of Part I (i.e. the part of the show before intermission). We have also run other large chunks of the show, which provides a good perspective on how the whole thing fits together. There is still much that needs to be worked in more detail, so we are far from done, but we have a solid structure after little more than a week. Our cast is off book for a surprising amount of the show, and I think we’re all pretty pleased with how much we’ve accomplished so far.

Outside of Rehearsal Room 2, we have had costume measurements, some costume fittings, and a consultation for facial hair provided by the Guthrie’s hair department. Next week we have more fittings, and we begin sessions with our actors and voice/text consultants, where they will get one-on-one work on the text.

Outside of rehearsal hours, we had two conference calls this week. Navigating the schedules of about 20 people in three time zones, and trying to get all of them in the presence of a telephone at the same time has had my head close to exploding for much of the week, but we managed to get a lot hashed out. We had a small call on Wednesday between our set designer, lighting designer, director, staff director, and stage management team. Our designers (one in New York, one in San Francisco) only had 15 minutes each before they had to go to appointments for other shows they’re doing, so we very quickly went through the most pressing questions — new dimensions for our infamous platform (named Fred), and clarification of how the masking allows traffic on and off stage, and access behind the set. Our real production meeting involved a larger selection of Guthrie and Acting Company staff, where we checked in on a number of issues, and I accomplished my main goal of getting everyone to agree to a schedule for the actors’ call times for tech/preview week.

The Database

In technology news, our stage management database has really come into its own this week. I know I always talk about it and never actually explain it in depth. It’s still very much in development so the idea of stopping to blog in depth about it always seems premature. Features get added to it sometimes in the middle of rehearsal when the need for them is discovered.

With Nick and I on the same network, I open the FileMaker file on my computer, and create a local server. Nick opens FileMaker and loads the file that my computer is serving, so we’re both working on the same copy of the database. As long as we’re not trying to work on the same record simultaneously, we can each make independent changes at the same time, which has proven to be very helpful.

The database has a lot of different parts, but the one we’re using most in the context of blocking rehearsals is what I call “tracking.” It’s a chronological log of basically everything that happens in the show: entrances, exits, prop moves, sound cues, costume changes, etc. Initially, it was just filled with entrances and exits based on what is indicated in the script. As we have been rehearsing, that gets filled out and altered to reflect the actual staging, as well as provided with details like where a character enters from. Nick, like most ASMs, is in charge of props, so he primarily deals with adding props to the tracking sheet, as well as to a related sheet which is more for the purposes of prop shopping — it notes whether we have the prop (a rehearsal version, the final show version, something that might become the show version, or none at all), and if we have it, where it came from (so we know who it belongs to when we’re done with it), as well as any design notes, and the date the prop was added to the show (that part came from my good friend Josh, who likes recording dates, and helped me develop and test this part of the database while working on Inventing Avi Off-Broadway this fall).

So since I’m taking blocking, and Nick is tracking props, a lot of the time I fill in the entries related to entrances and exits, and he fills in the props. But sometimes one of us is busy working on something else, so we cross over a lot. And sometimes we neglect to whisper to each other “I got that,” and then we both create a record for the same thing, or both try to edit the same record. But it’s really cool to see the tracking table get filled out by both of us at once.

My favorite part of the database right now is a new one, that didn’t exist at all during Avi: the daily schedule and rehearsal report. The daily schedule has some fun features that inform you of conflicts for the date in question, does some basic math to stop you from breaking the basic Equity rules, and allows for the construction of a work list for the day that then automatically is added to the rehearsal report. The report is basically a bunch of text boxes, but it tells me with color if I’ve left something blank that can’t be left blank, or if I’ve marked it with my customary “(?)” sign, indicating that I need to come back and review something.

The true beauty of the report is what happens after it’s done: I press one button, labled “email,” and it creates a PDF of the rehearsal report, attached to an email addressed to the distribution list (determined by a checkbox on each person’s contact file). It also includes in the body of the email a plain text version of the report — not an exact copy of what’s in the PDF, but a bunch of code that includes exactly what I want, in the format I want. At the same time it creates a PDF of the daily schedule, and a plain text version, addressed to the cast. Filemaker could send these emails with no interaction if I wanted it to, but I prefer to use this opportunity to proof them before hitting “send.” The new little trick I added a few days ago reminds me to update the company Google calendar with the upcoming day’s schedule. It doesn’t do anything automatically, it just prevents me from forgetting by opening Safari to the calendar address. So far I’ve had that step in the script for two days, and both times I would have otherwise forgotten, so I’m very excited about that feature!

Moving On

The rehearsal process is interesting, but I also can’t wait to get to tech. I find rehearsal far more stressful, especially in this coast-to-coast environment. With the parties all spread out, I have to be the switchboard for everyone else on the production, making sure that everyone is in possession of all the knowledge they should have. That’s true in any production, but it’s easier when everyone is in one building, one city, or one time zone. Once we get to tech, we start to have more of the people we need on the scene in real time. We won’t have everyone in Minneapolis with us at once, but the collaboration becomes more and more in-person, until finally the show is frozen and we, the traveling company, will have everything and everyone we need to make the show happen each night, wherever we go. I am excited for all aspects of the process, but I’m trying not to get too much ahead of myself. First we still have a bit of staging and a couple more weeks of exploration to get through!


December 8, 2009

Day Off

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:53 am

I’ve come to a realization about my days off. I don’t actually do things. When I do things, they’re generally work, but they feel less like work because the day off allows me time to get things done that will otherwise make my work days more difficult if I don’t.

For instance, my day:

9AM – Woke up

10AM – Went to the Guthrie for the grocery run

11:30AM – While waiting for van, answer emails on prop construction, production meeting, and travel plans of lighting designer

12PM – Return with groceries, have lunch, return 1 or 2 emails, get tired

1PM – Do laundry, take nap while laundry is going

4PM – Wake up, put laundry away

4:30PM – Return to emails. Find out tour performance date needs to be changed by the venue, check Equity rule book to make sure new date doesn’t violate any rules, report that to the GM. Brief email chat with Nick about what this means for us.

5:30PM – Respond to earlier email from costume designer, confirming that we can accomplish all his requested fittings next week, giving prospective schedule.

6:00PM – Exchange several emails with director about tomorrow’s meet and greet.

6:30PM – Realize I had intended to call my parents. Video chat with parents for 1 hr.

8:00PM – Receive email asking about the approximate run time of our partially-completed read/walk-through of Act II. Figure this is the time to fix what’s broken on the database run time summary, since the data is in there, but the report is not working. Added features to the report so that you can quickly search for specific criteria (such as an act) and see the run time just for that part. It turns out really cool, and tells me that the answer I’m looking for is 42 minutes, 17 seconds.

8:30PM – Realize I’m missing Monday Night Football, turn on TV. While watching football, check my to-do lists in OmniFocus. I notice that one of my topics for the upcoming production meeting is to decide on a schedule for the actors in tech week. And I don’t have a plan. So I make a list of the Equity rules regarding that week, and then enter a proposed schedule into my personal Google calendar (using iCal), which is where I put things about the show that I need to know, but I don’t want to clutter up the official R&J production calendar with.

Even though I think I’m relaxing by watching the game and poking around on places like Twitter, Facebook, and Fark.com, without even realizing it, I’m still kind of working. I’m cleaning up my inbox, checking off little tasks, backing up my files, cleaning up my desktop.

I’m not sure where exactly the time goes, but there are very few times when I’m not doing something in some way related to work, and I wonder if that’s a problem. I think it’s pretty much confined to sleeping, showering, going to the bathroom, and spending the occasional 10 minutes playing a couple songs on Rock Band for iPhone. And maybe blogging, except that this post reminded me that I should share my personal tour calendar with Nick, so I took a minute to do that. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m supposed to be entering all our vendors into the database so my contact sheet will be able to fully replace the old one. Good night!


December 7, 2009

End of Mini-Week 1

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 1:34 am

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After three days, our first half-week of rehearsal is done.

I told you about Day 1. Day 2 and 3 featured a continuation of table work. Basically after the initial read-through and some general discussion of the play and production as a whole, we began back at the top, working slowly through each scene, discussing plot points, character development, and any other insights people have. It’s also the time for actors to ask questions about meaning or pronunciation, which sometimes has no right answer, but we can decide to standardize — for instance today featured a debate on whether we should use the written “corse” or the more contemporary “corpse” to make it clearer for our audiences.

The thing about Shakespeare is that there isn’t just one script. Often there are multiple versions of the dialogue based on various texts from the period, so companies are free to mix and match text that makes the most sense to them. Also, due to time constraints, most productions cut quite a bit of text. We are using a version of the script prepared specifically for this production by Dakin Matthews, in collaboration with our director. This is the text that the cast began rehearsal with. Over the course of our table work, as we pass through each scene, the actors, director, staff director, and vocal/text coaches are free to call attention to cuts or alternate text that they would like to consider including in the show. Many of our actors are familiar with other versions either because they have done the show before, or from their own research prior to rehearsal. There are also a number of different reference books on the table with notes on the various known versions of R&J for the group to use to clarify questions. After discussing the matter, we then decide whether to change the text. We have made a lot of small alterations of words here and there, put a few lines back in, taken a few lines out, or traded one couplet for another. As the changes get made, I have been marking them and flagging pages in my script while Nick is making changes in our Word document. We will then cross-check them to make sure we got everything, and send out the revised script to the team. In one case we reprinted a page for an actor who had a pretty sizable chunk of text changed.

After we finished working through the show we took our meal break and cleared the tables. When we reconvened, I led the cast on a two-dimensional tour through our set taped out on the floor (with the detachable staircase from the model in my hand, because the pillars are kind of hard to explain in two dimensions). The speed with which that was able to be accomplished was a good sign. I was surprised when I quickly ran out of things to say — I guess the set is simpler than most I’ve worked on, though that’s not to say it isn’t big. Just not a lot of doors, tricks, or nooks and crannies.

The purpose of all this was to prepare the cast for our next exercise. They were immediately turned lose on another read-through, with instructions to get on their feet and use the space however they saw fit — not to worry about what proper blocking would be for the stage, just to focus on relating to the other characters.

It was a lot of fun. Our cast continues to impress me with their talent, inventiveness and sense of humor. Sonny and Laura gave a great early view of Romeo and Juliet’s romantic scenes. I can only imagine what an audience of a thousand 9th graders is going to think about all the smooching! Well you can’t say it’s not accessible! In all seriousness, this cast is already developing a sense as an ensemble of the line where heightened language meets the relaxed way that people speak in real life, while at the same time coming off as honest, rather than intentionally “modern”. I think it will be a real eye-opener for the kids (and adults!) who have never seen Shakespeare acted well, to realize that the words in those dusty old books actually do say the same things that we would say today, they just use slightly different words or syntax.

Tomorrow is our first day off, concluding our short week. On Tuesday we will have our official meet & greet, which would normally be held on the first day, but was pushed back to allow the artistic directors of The Acting Company and the Guthrie — Margot Harley and Joe Dowling — to lead the festivities. That will kick off the day, and once the invited guests have departed, it will be back to work for us!


December 4, 2009

First Day of Rehearsal

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 11:06 pm

4159527044_5fdba1ff4b_bWe began our day with the Equity meeting. Nick and I had met most of the cast the day before, when they happened to arrive from the airport at the time we were working in the rehearsal studio. At the meeting we introduced ourselves to everyone else and talked very briefly about the basic structure of the company before launching into the four votes we needed to take about rehearsal hours. We have a relatively large number of new or almost-new Equity members on this show, which is kind of fun. I actually did some paraphrasing of the spiel that we’re supposed to give about the deputy election, and the duties and importance of the Equity deputy. I was still bumbling through the conclusion of this speech, wondering if by mentioning what it entailed, I was discouraging anyone from doing it, when we suddenly had a volunteer! Everyone quickly consented, and thus concluded our Equity business.

Once we opened our secret chamber, we were joined by our director, Penny, our vocal coaches Andrew and Sara, and our prop master, Scotty, who was bearing some boxes of things vaguely weapon-looking. We spent about an hour doing basic introductions, going around the table giving our name, role, and something interesting about ourselves, and quickly got to know each other and build up a rapport.

We then began our first read-through, which was also attended by our sound designer and composer. On this show I really wanted to be caught up on everything to be free to pay attention to the table work, just for my own interest because I love table work. I had to respond to a couple emails and arrange a last-minute costume meeting before our designer left for the airport, but for the most part I was able to sit and just listen and take the occasional note when something interesting was said.

There are very few shows other than R&J which could begin with the type of table work that we did today — maybe no other. Once the read-through was complete and we reconvened after lunch, Penny began by asking everyone in the room — everyone, not just the actors — a group of questions:
1. How many productions of R&J have you worked on? (answers varied from none to eight)
2. What was your first experience of the play ever? (most people credited their 9th grade English teachers)
3. What are your feelings about the play itself? (everything, ranging from cynicism about love to it being the reason that people wanted to do theatre).

I can’t imagine another work where you could ask a room of 20 people these questions, and be sure that every one of them would have some prior experience to work with. In some ways it’s even more interesting, because this play is so well known that any production has to deal with the fact that both artists and audience will have their preconceived notions of how it should be done, and what they think of it, before they ever set foot in the theatre. We also discussed how we, as a company who will often be performing for students, have the pleasure of maybe being the first live production — or the first experience of the play ever — for some of these kids.

We continued to discuss the play, characters, and period until the end of our day, and I could tell everybody is eager for tomorrow to continue the discussion we had going.

After rehearsal, the Guthrie had arranged a reception for us at the bar, which was a great way to celebrate the end of our first day. We have a really great company — very talented, and it seems like a good group of personalities, which is especially important given how closely we will be living and working together for the next five months. I always appreciate a process that actually makes me look forward to getting out of bed in the morning, to go to work, no less!

And in meteorological news, the honeymoon is over here in Minneapolis. When we arrived (four days ago) it was in the 40s with a wind chill in the 30s. Today it was in the teens with a wind chill in the negative numbers, and snowing lightly but steadily all day. Which is already a lot milder than it was last year, for which I am grateful.


December 3, 2009

Groundplan Stickers

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 9:43 pm

Everybody’s got their own thing when it comes to how they set up their script for blocking, especially as it pertains to having a shortcut for drawing blocking on top of a premade groundplan of the set.

I don’t generally bother with having big pages with a large groundplan on them once or twice. I have a template for that in the database, and will print some out because I know our lighting designer likes them, and in case I need to draw a really big stage picture for some reason, but the way I handle my groundplan drawing needs is with stickers.

I buy some label paper (Avery 5164 usually, although it doesn’t have to be), and print a bunch of mini groundplans on it. With the paper I use, there are six stickers per page. I fit two groundplans on each sticker and then cut them up, so I get a total of 12 per page. But that’s totally up to your preference for how big you want or need them to be. The really low-maintenance way is to pick a label size that’s exactly how big you want your picture to be, but I stick to this size because it gives me the flexibility to make bigger ones if I want.

I like to keep most of my facing page of the script free for blocking, and then have a tiny diagram only where I need it. This way I don’t have to bother printing lots of sheets with groundplans on them for every page. When I come across some complicated blocking that requires a picture, I peel off a sticker and place it exactly where in the script I want it.

Depending on what kind of show you’re doing, the amount of work and expense to make all the stickers might be worse than just printing the groundplan a couple times on all the back pages of your script, but I find it very flexible. I can have no groundplans on a page or 10, and they can be wherever I want to indicate exactly where in the text they relate to.


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