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October 10, 2009

Learning to Call

I call this: theatre — Posted by KP @ 2:03 am

Today we had another 2-hour rehearsal before the show. Rehearsing during previews has been getting tedious, but today ended up being very productive, perhaps for me most of all. When I arrived Josh told me that Mark planned to use the time for a speed-through of the whole show. I commented about what a shame it was that I hadn’t begun learning to call, since it would be a good opportunity to take a crack at calling.

Josh responded kind of positively to that, and I said, “well, how self-explanatory is it?” I had not even looked at the calling script yet. He thought maybe I could do it. So we got Mark’s blessing, and I worked out with the PAs how they would cover my deck track (without costumes it’s possible for the three tracks to be done by two people). Mickey will be doing my track when I call (the ASM will do his track), and he took the opportunity to practice, including a couple of the costume things, just so he could get the hang of it.

While Mark gave notes from last night, I looked at Josh’s script for the first time, and quickly read through as much of it as I could, trying to picture everything as I went. I asked Josh a couple questions for clarification. I got about halfway through Act II before Mark was done with his notes and we prepared for the run.

Calling the show went much better than I thought. I only screwed up a couple things, mostly due to wrongly anticipating a couple of the bumps on the repetitive but not-exactly-the-same scene change music. Mark was very happy with how I did, and he and Josh agreed that I would do fine if I had to call a performance in an emergency now. I’m scheduled to call both shows on Halloween, and maybe a few earlier, so we still have some time for me to practice.

I’m just so glad for the opportunity to have done it. Under normal circumstances, my only training would be working with Josh in an empty theatre and trying to picture the actual show going on. Then I would have to train my sub on the deck, so that I could go up to the booth to watch Josh call a performance, then call the show a couple times with Josh watching, before being able to sub for him. It’s not the most comfortable way to learn anything, and it creates disruption by pulling me off the deck for three or more shows. This way, I got a rare opportunity to actually practice calling the show with the cast doing a full run-through (and the fact that it was a speed-through added to the challenge). Generally the only time you get to do it with the cast is when there are paying butts in the seats, so there’s no room for mistakes.

Calling the entire show before even beginning to train removed any anxiety I had about learning the show. It also shortens our training time immensely because instead of having to take up several performances to learn the show I can just work with Josh privately and then do the show once with him watching to make sure everything goes well.

For the show itself, it was great to get to see it again. During rehearsals in previews I’ve sometimes sat in the house and seen the final product, but I haven’t seen many parts since we were in the rehearsal studio. The show was also very fun to call. One thing that I think helped me is that it’s mostly audio-based. Most cues are called on words or music, which helps me because although I can’t see the show, I can hear it, so I’m familiar with the music and the actors’ delivery. The stuff that’s visual I’ve been lucky enough to get to see from the house or watching the video monitor in the green room.

Knowing from the time I was hired that Josh had days off scheduled had me watching the whole process keeping in mind that I would probably have to call the show. We weren’t completely sure until recently, because we wanted to decide whether it would be easier to teach someone my deck track or to call the show. As the show evolved in tech, my track got about twice as easy, and the show became more complicated to call, so the decision became clear that I would call. The plan for Mickey to do my track came about because of all the quickchanges I do. He’s there every day to observe what I do, and the cast is already very comfortable with him, which I think is especially important because most of the actors I change are women. His track has gotten much easier lately and involves mostly “pull this,” “push that,” “be tall here” and “catch this prop, ” which will take much less time to teach to someone new than which pair of glasses Stanley should be wearing for which line of dialogue or how the clasp on Alix’s suit jacket works.

Today may have been our last day of rehearsal, unless we do a few hours on opening night, which I hope will not happen. It will be very nice to be in full show mode!


September 3, 2009

Thoughts on the Deck

I call this: theatre — Posted by KP @ 2:16 am

Late this afternoon I was doing some crap on my computer when the phone rang. My reaction was something like, “Oh what now?” for about 2 seconds until I actually looked at the phone and saw the happy little mask and text saying “Phantom SM Office.” Cautiously optimistic, I answered. At 4:00 I was put on hold for possibly doing the show tonight. I immediately started getting ready because I haven’t called the show in six months, and haven’t done the deck in probably a year, and had no idea where I might find black pants, black shoes, flashlights, deck notes, etc. A half hour later I got the confirmation call that I would be going in, though no specifics if I would be decking or calling. I decided to assume that I would be decking, as I felt more prepared to call.

I spent the remaining time at home walking through the deck track in my head (while I review periodically to remain ready to call at all times when I’m in town, I tend to completely ignore the deck until the day I get booked and then do a quick refresher).

I arrived at the theatre and found out I would be decking, which was good. Craig suggested I look around. I made a meandering path around the stage and trap room, saying hello to the stagehands doing their preset, making sure nothing had been moved since I’d been gone. Everything looked exactly the same. The same, but really, really clean. I don’t remember the place being a mess in the past, but I was really struck by how clean everything was. The white walls backstage were white, not white and covered in 20 years of grime. They looked like they had been washed last week. As I was mentioning how tidy everything looked to the head carp, he said they were due for a paint call on the deck soon. Now the deck has been painted every 3 months for the last 22 years. When it’s just been painted, it looks like a glossy black mirror. When it needs a painting it looks like a dull gray pitted mess, with large sweeping scrape marks showing where all the scenery gets rolled across it, where chandeliers crash on it, etc. It looked like it had been painted maybe a week or two earlier. I was very impressed.

Anyway, doing the show was a lot of fun. No one can quite remember when the last time I decked was (though we have a database to answer questions just like that, and nobody thought to look it up), but it’s possibly been over a year. Whenever it was, I haven’t decked any other show since then either, so it was kind of a weird experience.

Since then, I’ve been very used to sitting at my comfy calling desk (including at Phantom) and just watching a show happen around me. Being away so long has reminded me of the differences of doing the deck.

First of all, by intermission I was getting kind of claustrophobic. The Phantom stage management office is always crammed with way more people than it should be, but even doing the show itself, there were just so many people everywhere. Tons of stagehands, dressers, hairdressers, a decent number of actors, there are just people everywhere. Personal space is often very strictly regulated, like your track is allotted this square foot-and-a-half for this scene change and that’s where you go. People often say that the backstage traffic on the show is far more complex and exact than the onstage choreography, and it’s true. It’s the main reason I worry about doing the deck. Calling the show is kind of a solitary pursuit in some ways. You interact with other people, but basically you know what you’re trying to do, which is to put on this show, and you have all these cues to work with, and you react to what other people are doing, but basically your butt is in a chair and you make things happen with your voice and flipping some switches that turn 10-watt light bulbs on and off elsewhere in the theatre.

Doing the deck is kind of like the difference between playing a video game on your TV or computer, and playing paintball or laser tag. You are IN the game, and you’re right there, on stage, above the stage, just off stage (Monsieur Reyer pointed and screamed at me tonight, “This is a disgrace! Who is this!? She’s back!” during the chaos in Hannibal). You have to fit yourself in and out of the backstage ballet, and even if it’s been a year and you don’t know half of the people around you, you need to hit your allotted spot, not have your elbow sticking out, or be a half-step out of your track, because that’s probably somebody else’s space.

Calling the show, my focus is ultimately on what the audience sees. I feel I’m responsible for reproducing the stagecraft that people have traveled from across the world to see. I am also concerned about supporting the actors with a well-paced show, and keeping everyone safe, but ultimately all of that is a subset of calling a perfect show for the audience.

Backstage, I don’t really care what the audience sees. I mean I care that we don’t screw up, but I don’t think about it during the show. I’m not really aware of them, or of the story being told, or who cries when the Phantom is left alone. All I can see is that we are all like little hamsters in a giant machine, and I am for some reason tasked with being ultimately responsible that all the hamsters get where they are going, and nobody gets crushed by the machine, and the machine doesn’t get jammed up, and performs its functions perfectly. It’s really quite a responsibility when you step back and look at it from an outside perspective, as I have from being away so long. Just being ready to do an average performance is not that big of a deal. Having the level of comfort that I could make the right decisions in the event of a serious problem is what causes most of the stress. Everything that happens, I am thinking about the worst thing that could possibly happen and have my responses planned.

The one thing I enjoy about the deck is the idea of traveling around and seeing everyone. It’s a much more social way to do the show, especially if you’ve been gone a while. As you do your track you pass by and interact with various actors and crew, and have either a few seconds or a few minutes to say hello and catch up. Sometimes it means you meet new people. Tonight I reached the point in Hannibal that is generally “the spot where you say hello to Madame Giry.” Except we had never met. So we shook hands and introduced ourselves.

Then there are the other random things that I never thought too much about — like you’re on stage, in the dark, and five actors are about to climb down 20ft on a giant metal fence. They attach their safety cables in the dark. You check their cables — twice — in the dark, using only the sense of touch. Once a year.

The general idea of darkness is something I had lost appreciation for. The story goes that when the show was in tech Hal Prince had a policy that the stagehands were not to use any flashlights. The show is very dark, and he didn’t want any spill from offstage breaking the illusion. Nowadays flashlights are used occasionally, but the general theme remains that most of the time, people have just adapted to doing everything they need to do with very little light. I was looking around during Music of the Night, and realized, what I always knew but had never thought of — there are no running lights backstage. The prop tables have the teeniest, tiniest accent lighting (which is fairly new) highlighting just a few items, mostly the detailed ones like the letters.

The only thing that might be considered light for the purposes of seeing where you’re going are the ropelights that run up the ladders on each side of the travelator, the ropelight on the sides of the bridge that spans the traproom, allowing a crossover through the basement (which is good because the bridge has a little ramp at either end), and the ropelight on the angel bridge which is really dark, really narrow, and really high in the air. There’s a little bit of glow from other areas that are lit with normal lighting, like the hallways and the fly floor, against which you can see more things, and during much of Act II there are full-blown worklights on upstage for the big transformation from the Masquerade stairs to the mausoleum, but for much of the show, the only backstage light is spill from the stage. Some edges of things not visible from the audience are painted bright white, but even that is fairly recent.

It’s quite impressive how well everyone gets around in such a crowded environment, in the dark. Which maybe is why I tend to be incredulous when people ask for more running lights on other shows. I was brought up to learn where things are in the light, and to use that knowledge not to run into them in the dark. Anyway, I have a newfound appreciation of the special navigational skills of the Phantom cast and crew.

And P.S. watching Raoul jump in that trap when there’s so much fog that I can’t see the trap myself is always the most stomach-churning thing ever! I mean I know he won’t jump if he can’t see all the landing lights, but I always like to catch a glimpse of the hole myself and verify that it’s fully open.

Well thanks for reading. I know this post is kind of rambling, but I was filled with many random moments of discovery tonight and just wanted to share, cause if I waited to make a really carefully constructed post I would completely lose the point.


May 10, 2009

My Week “Off”

I call this: theatre — Posted by KP @ 10:11 pm

I feel like I hit a milestone in my career this weekend. It’s the first time I’ve been asked to call a show in performance without any rehearsal, based on having called a different production of the same show.  

Last summer you may recall I was PSM for a production of No, No Nanette starring Donna McKechnie. If not you can read about it in the August 2008 archives. Anyway this week we are laid off from The Acting Company, and my friend Brian is PSM for a production of Nanette for Amas, who in addition to producing Off-Broadway, also run a program for high school kids where they get to learn about theatre and at the end of the school year put on a full-length musical with a creative team and tech staff of working professionals. I have worked with Amas a lot, and worked as ASM on one of these shows a few years back.  So due to having the week off, I decided to support my friends and see what the kids were doing with Nanette.

Brian’s assistant couldn’t make a few hours of tech on Thursday, so I agreed to stop by to be a warm stage managerial body, and then stayed to watch the final dress. Which is a good thing. After the run, Brian found out the next night his other show, which his sub would be calling for the first time, would be welcoming the Times critic.  How could Brian call the show for the Times when he was supposed to be calling opening night of Nanette at the same time?  Unless of course there was someone who already had a working knowledge of calling Nanette and preferably had at least seen this production. The next morning at 9AM I got the confirmation that they wanted me to call. I finished reading through the script about ten minutes prior to the show, then listened to a couple bits of the original cast recording to remind myself of a couple bumps I didn’t remember and the end of the overture.

The show went fine and I didn’t have any major regrets upon actually seeing what the cues do. I came upon a couple funny situations due to the fact that the show was slightly cut down.  I had a restore cue and wasn’t sure if the tag at the end of the number was kept or if they would go straight on.  So I took the cue to be safe, and sure enough they did the tag.  A few bars before the end of “Hubby Gone Blues” I couldn’t quite tell from the markings if the entire boys’ section was cut or if the last bit was in, which greatly affected where the final cue went. So I had to ask on headset, “um, strange question, but do the boys come in in this number?” “No.” “Ok, so this is the end right here then.” “Yes.”  It was a fun time.


January 25, 2009

A Sonnet

I call this: mac,On the Road Again,phones,theatre — Posted by KP @ 11:47 am

Tonight I write a poem with pen and pad
Upon this two-show day of Henry V.
My iPhone rests behind my chair plugged in,
The cord supplied of insufficient length.
O what can I with simple paper do
Of import that would match my Facebook’s state?
An email might for many minutes sit
Unknown, unread, devoid of swift reply.
Tomorrow’s weather stays a mystery,
No picture sent to Flickr when it’s took.
I fear a post comes from my favorite blog,
And yet I’ll know it not upon this hour —
Perhaps to wait until I reach my home.
And oh for shame, however will I know
One of my apps perhaps is obsolete,
An update waiting in the App Store now
That was not there to get an hour past.
The world is changing, yet I can’t be told,
But sit and call a show five centuries old.


July 19, 2007

King and I Final Week

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 9:34 pm

We are quickly coming to the end of our run of The King and I. A large chunk of the 42nd Street set has infiltrated the back of the shop, as seen at right. The metal things in front are the marquee signs for the ballet, which have a place in my heart as I built all the marquees by myself when I did the show in high school. We don’t have a lot of height on our stage, so we will have to see if we can use all of them. One of the big vertical signs is 15 ft. tall, which will fit, but may or may not look silly.


I have to explain this photo. A couple performances ago, a mysterious paper fish on a stick appeared swimming across my booth window. I found this an excellent piece of entertainment during a long show, and the fish made several more appearances. Eventually it was joined by a squid or octopus of sorts, and they would have some sort of a battle. Tonight things quickly advanced: the fish and squid were present, but were later replaced by a shark and a larger octopus, who also did battle. In what I thought would be the highlight of my night, the fish appeared swimming peacefully, when a can perhaps representing a discarded piece of trash or a toxic spill floated down into view, causing the fish to go belly-up. Little did I know.

It was during Act I Sc. 7, Anna’s bedroom, that I was minding my business watching the scene, when I detected another stirring below the booth window. I was looking forward to seeing what was coming next, but completely unprepared for what happened. In one smooth motion, a complete panorama of suspended sea creatures was hung over the entire center panel of the booth window. I didn’t even have a chance to see it all before I completely lost it. I spent the rest of the scene laughing with tears streaming down my face and gasping for enough breath to give my warnings. They were only up for a few seconds because the ends had to be held by hand. By the start of the second act I was ready to enjoy them calmly, and as soon as the Entr’Acte began they were put back up with tape (which is when I took the picture, which doesn’t even show the full width of the display), and I happily called the rest of the show with my new sea creature friends.

Also, a small note in honor of a Reagle landmark:

This the majestic Eagle Lake, sometimes called Lake Eagle. We’ve had a few days of rain, and the lake was in full form today in our parking area most used by crew and orchestra. This isn’t the biggest it gets, as the rain has been intermittent, but this is the biggest I’ve seen it this year. I made the mistake of not pulling all the way up to the edge of the warehouse and had to go wading to get my bag out of the trunk.

Just a few more performances and we’re on to the final show of the season.


July 6, 2007

King and I Approaches Tech

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

I’m sitting in the theatre, approximately 21 hours before tech begins. I got my cues at the paper tech this morning and have some time to kill before the 1:30 rehearsal. The paper tech moved along quickly, and with some discussion of other production-related issues, came in just under two hours, which is pretty much perfection. I’ve done some for more complicated shows that have taken four hours. Approximately 140 light cues, so not a very busy show, but enough to keep me entertained. Just on paper, I see a few cues I’m already looking forward to. I think the “Small House of Uncle Thomas” ballet will be fun, but not too hard as to embarrass me, as long as I can keep following along quickly enough. Shouldn’t need to call anything off the score, which I like. My opinions on that change, but with recent shows I’ve tried to reduce it, because I find that following the score means keeping your head in the music too much and not looking at the stage. Even with Singin’ in the Rain, I called the 13-minute ballet off the score, but in reality I only really followed the music for a couple cues, and for the most part just flipped ahead to the next cue and knew what it was, so I could be looking and listening instead of being buried in the book and counting.

Took this picture just a few minutes ago:

They just put in our groundrow that will go behind the palace. The picture doesn’t quite do it justice, but it’s really nicely painted, and the set looks fantastic under the lights. I’m loving the gel colors on this show.

Another picture I shot a few days ago but never had a post for:

The drop you see downstage is brand new and was specially designed to match our set. This is the “Corridor drop” which is used for almost all the downstage scenes. The audience spends a lot of time looking at it, so it’s a good thing it’s pretty. This was taken right after it arrived and was hung.


June 16, 2007

What does a 9AM matinee look like?

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 2:51 pm


Stage… check.
Calling script… check.
Conductor monitor… check.
Computer in projection slideshow… check.
Clock reading 8:50AM… check.
Gigantic cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee… check!!! (I miss Starbucks, but I would have to take out a loan to buy a cup that big from them)

In the lower-left you will also find a homemade chocolate cupcake that I acquired when I unsuspectingly entered the box office before the show. It was only a slightly less-nutritious breakfast than the vanilla-frosted doughnut I had planned to eat, and it was very tasty.

The show is going extremely well. I’ve been getting lots of compliments on how smoothly everything is running, and I have been passing that on to the crew as well. It’s a big show, but everyone seems to have picked it up quickly and it’s been running at a level of comfort that I usually wouldn’t expect until the second week of performances. If we can just maintain the show here we’ll be in good shape, but I think it will get even tighter in the coming days. Three down, six to go.


June 11, 2007

First Dress: Looks Like a Show

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 11:06 pm

It’s 2AM and I just finished my duties on my daylight day of rest. I left the theatre around 1:06, having rehearsed 7PM-12AM, and then with a production meeting to discuss notes on the evening’s dress rehearsal, disconnecting my computer from the projector, and moving my crap off the tech table and back to the booth, it took a while. The show actually went pretty well for a first run, and my anxiety about calling was mostly unfounded. I did indeed sit in the very nice laundromat (they sure don’t have couches and coffee tables in any laundromat I’ve seen in NYC!) and put the warnings in my script, which gave me a chance to sit and focus on the order of the show and clean up my book. I’m pretty happy about it. I actually learned the show itself better than I expected before we started tech, and just needed to learn my cues. Today I started to feel like I’m also familiar with my cues, and even the ones I didn’t get right today now make sense. I wouldn’t want an audience to see the show tomorrow, but if they had to, I’d have a decent shot at not embarrassing myself. Which puts me in good shape, since I have tomorrow (Tuesday), Wednesday, and a special school performance (at 9-o-freakin-clock-in-the-morning) on Thursday, if you count that as “practice” before the first paid public performance on Thursday afternoon.

Even when things are going well I’m usually reluctant to give up the security blanket of calling at the tech table, where I’m closer to the stage and can hear and see better, and have an actual sense of the artistic vibe of the show. Once I’m in the booth 100ft away and seeing through glass and hearing through speakers, I have to rely on my memory of what it felt like in the house to know what the audience is experiencing and how I can shape that. In a perfect world I prefer to move to the booth having already settled on the ideal placement of all my cues, knowing I like what they’re doing, and then I can just try to recreate that from the booth. Of course I keep tinkering, but it’s a good foundation. I’ve been calling Phantom for over three years and there are still cues I’m not satisfied with. The biggest reason for that is that I’ve never been able to call it from the front. Such is the disadvantage of being a replacement or sub. It’s not just a matter of trying something and deciding if you like it. Just figuring out what the audience is seeing requires major research. And I’m a little bit OCD about Phantom — I won’t be satisfied until every one of the 400-odd cues are perfectly placed down to the nanosecond.

If it weren’t for the video component of Singin’ in the Rain, I’d spend another day at the tech table, but I’m eager to run video myself so I get a few tries at it. The VGA cable is just long enough to reach out the door of the booth to near the sound console, and the assistant engineer has been nice enough to let me call video cues to him so I didn’t have to be up there. I’ve noticed the response time when I’m calling video is longer than I’m used to, I’m not sure if it’s a delay in the computer because of the size of the files, or that the videos themselves have a second or two of black at the beginning, but it’s something I’ve had to make an adjustment for when calling, and getting to run it myself twice before an audience sees it will make me feel better. I also don’t like to get in the booth too late in the process, because sometimes there are surprises, like I discover I can’t see something as well as before, or the orchestra part I was listening to to call a certain cue is difficult to hear in the monitors. I’d rather discover these things while I still have one more chance to do it, so I can confirm I’ve solved the problem before there’s an audience. There’s few things scarier than changing something before the first performance and thinking it will work, but not having actually tried it.


June 10, 2007

And on the 7th Day, We Went to Work at 7PM

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 10:31 pm

Tomorrow is our daylight day of rest, which means our day off is not really a day off. It’s allowed on a lot of contracts for the week of the first public performance. It means that on what would normally be the day off you can rehearse, but you have to start after 7PM. At Reagle this feels something like a regular performance day. We come in, run the show, do notes and go home. If there is extra time and problems to be fixed, selected trouble spots will be worked either before or after the run. I find it a pretty relaxing day, because I figure we’ve gotten through tech, and even if something bad happens, it’ll be over in five hours or less.

The only anxiety left is how comfortable (or not) I am about calling the show. Sometimes I feel ready to do it for an audience, sometimes I don’t want anybody to see it. On this show, aside from a few musical cues I need to learn better, I find that the cues I miss are because I can’t talk fast enough to call them. Sometimes there’s more to explain than there is time between cues. Reagle doesn’t have a cue light system, so everything is verbal, which is challenging, but it’s good exercise. Once I have a better idea of what comes next and just how much time I have, I’ll know when I need to abbreviate. Better/earlier warnings will also help me to avoid having to say too much with the actual cues. I actually don’t have the warnings written in my book yet, I’ve just been flipping ahead to the cues themselves and reading them off. I plan to bring my script to the laundromat tomorrow and work on it then. That’s all I’ve got planned for the daylight day of rest. Well I might go to the Apple Store and see if they’ve got one of those DVI-to-RCA/S-video adapters. I almost needed it today for the projector and was kicking myself for not buying it during the week.


May 19, 2007

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.


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