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January 25, 2010

Treasure!

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 9:39 am

Last night was road box spring cleaning day for Nick and I. We load out in exactly a week. We had put off doing an inventory of our first aid kits for almost two months, and finally on the last day it was practical to do so, we brought all the first aid boxes to the green room between shows and made a shopping list.

After that we threw out all the paperwork from last year that’s no longer useful (well I saved the calling script for the original, never-performed version of The Spy for my personal collection).

At some point before our time, there were two inflatable mattresses and pumps in the box. Last year one of them was no good, and didn’t have a working pump anyway, so we decided it was time to let it go. It had been kept rolled up in our valuables cabinet, which is a little cube-shaped cubby that can be separately padlocked to secure the actors’ valuables.

When the time came, we inspected the mattress to make sure it was the bad one, Nick encouraged me to get it the hell out of our lives, and I bent down and began trying to yank it out, while Nick went back to his ASM station to work on something else. The mattress was caught on something, and after much pulling and tugging, it began to unroll. What happened next was amazing.

The mattress unrolled and wrapped up in it, perfectly preserved like a long-forgotten buried treasure, was a giant unopened bottle of Ketel One vodka! I called out, “Nick! Nick! It’s treasure! Treasure!!”

I held up the bottle and he picked it up and cradled it in his arms and we both ran out to the upstage hallway to share our discovery with our deck crew, and to tell the rich history of this bottle of vodka.

The Leektini

Any understanding of this bottle’s origins begins with the leektini. When we were touring Henry V last year, we had a fresh leek in every performance, that had to be beaten over an actor’s head and then eaten. The leeks were purchased by our prop supervisor at any supermarket we could find in our travels, and lived in the fridge in the crew bus. Some people were particularly offended by the smell of the leek in our fridge. Having leeks in our lives every day for six months made them so pervasive in our consciousness that we began thinking strange things about leeks.

One of my favorite drinks is the appletini, and I’m not ashamed of it. The frequent sight of an appletini in my hand led the crew to speculate if one could make a leektini. We decided it would probably be absolutely disgusting, but it should be tried. There was also simultaneously a plan we had been discussing for a while to play a practical joke on the cast towards the end of the tour. We called it the “leeky bunk” — to leave one of the discarded leeks in somebody’s bunk so it would stink.

Eventually the two ideas combined, and instead of stinking up someone’s bunk, we decided that at one of the last venues, during the show some of the crew would sneak onto the cast bus, and make leektinis, which would be waiting for the actors when the show was over.

In order to accomplish this we needed copious amounts of vodka, among other things. When we were in Philly on a day off, we visited a liquor store, almost exclusively for the purpose of gathering supplies for the leektinis. One of the things we bought was the giant bottle of Ketel One. We then put it in the stage management road box until the appropriate time could be found to pull off our plan.

In the last week of the tour, one of the venues we visited was a high school. Realizing we had a giant bottle of vodka in our road box, in a high school, we wrapped it up in the inflatable mattress and put it in the valuables box where it would be cushioned and hidden until we found an appropriate place to use it. Things got complicated in the last couple cities, and the situation wasn’t conducive to pulling off the caper, and somehow we forgot about the bottle.

Until today, of course. Here Nick shows off our prize. I don’t know what we’re going to do with it, exactly, but I’m sure it will be mixed with something more appetizing than a leek!


January 23, 2010

Best Prop Note Ever – With Video

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 10:04 pm

Tonight Nick was checking the prop preset and found something amazing: a wonderfully humorous way to remind actors not to take props back to their dressing rooms instead of returning them to the prop table.

Nick and I report from the scene:

Spoilers:

The object in question was a kazoo, which an actor had taken to his dressing room in his costume pocket. Around the kazoo was attached a note: “Return to prop table! Or face the wrath of the fearsome Kazoo Beast!”

Artist’s rendering of Kazoo Beast:

Backstory

In the background at the end of the video you can hear some offscreen noise. This could have been edited out, but was left in, because Nick and I find it as funny as the Kazoo Monster. So here’s the story:

Last year we did this play called The Spy, which contained a scene in which the American revolutionary Captain Lawson confronts the British officer Colonel Welmere. He says, “Why is it, Colonel, that I don’t trust you at this moment?” right before getting stabbed by the Skinner who was supposed to be helping him, as seen here in this production photo:

Of course this scene was run at fight call every night before the show, starting from the line before the violence. Since Wellmere was not actually involved in the violence, he didn’t need to be there, and Andy, who played Captain Lawson, would have no one to talk to. So somehow it came about that I would stand in for Wellmere so Andy didn’t have to talk to the air. Thus at fight call, the line became, “Why is it, Karen, that I don’t trust you at this moment?” before Chris Thorn, who played the Skinner, would stab him.

At one of our last performances of The Spy, our wardrobe supervisor hatched a plot to dress me up in Colonel Wellmere’s costume as a surprise for Andy at fight call. Here’s a photo of that incident:

So anyway, back to the present. In our show there’s a moment where Tybalt leaps off the stairs from the balcony, does some fancy cane-twirling and says “Turn thee, Benvolio, look upon thy death.” After fight call is over, just before we open the house, Isaac practices the jump and the cane-spinning. Since I’m milling about the stage trying to open the house, I’m usually in his way, so I’ve taken to placing myself where Benvolio stands, so I’m doing something useful rather than just being in his way. Chris Thorn is in the company again this year, and after witnessing this one night, said “Why is it, Karen–” and we all had a good laugh remembering the fun we had with that last year.

So tonight while we were filming this little video, Chris wandered out onto the empty stage and exclaimed to no one in particular, “Karen–? Why is it, Karen…?” and it happened to get captured on the video, which Nick and I thought was hysterical. So we left it in.


January 19, 2010

Two Households

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 11:16 pm

Crazy story from rehearsal:
Today we had a morning matinee of Romeo and Juliet, and then began rehearsal for the second of our three shows — a development process of a new adaptation of Alice in Wonderland that will culminate essentially in a series of staged readings around the country.

After doing a read-through of the first draft, we began with some physical exploration. One of the exercises required the cast to be broken into three groups. The usual way this is achieved in such exercises is that everybody counts off numbers from 1 to 3, in a circle based on wherever they are in the room at the time the director decides to do so — creating more-or-less random groups.

When everyone had counted their numbers, and moved into a corner with their respective groups, we were amazed to discover that they were divided into the Capulets and the Montagues, with the third group being the neutral characters (Friar Laurence, the Nurse, the Prince, etc.). There was only one person out of the 13 who was out of place.

Like last year when we began rehearsing our second show, it was really fun to hear everyone that we have grown to know so well take on new roles. It’s especially refreshing because this show is very different in style than Shakespeare, and even for the actors that I did two shows with last year, I’ve never heard them perform contemporary language, so I’m experiencing part of their talents that I’ve never been able to see before. After a very early, very long day, many of the actors remarked on how good it felt to get to exercise different acting muscles.


Snackting

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:54 pm

What happens on headset stays on headset.

Unless it’s really funny and not insulting to anyone.

In our show there’s a scene where Romeo and the Nurse are talking for a while and Perrin (our combined Capulet servant character) is hanging out on the staircase for the whole scene. Today I noticed she was eating something, or appearing to at least, so I asked Nick and our local prop person, Sara, what she was eating. Neither of them knew — apparently it’s a personal prop that was added just before we opened.

Nick suggested, “maybe she’s schmacting” — i.e. only pretending to be eating.

To which Steph (our light board op) says, “Well if she’s pretending to eat, wouldn’t that be ‘snackting?'”

Not bad at all for a 10:30AM show.

Incidentally, I hear the term “back acting” a lot (in the context of when it’s OK to turn upstage in a scene), but never hear it called “backting.” If nobody has beaten me to it, I hereby coin the term.


January 8, 2010

End of Tech

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 2:35 am

The show, she is teched!

Just as we got down to the wire, we finished the show with about a minute to spare! To be perfectly honest, we were writing light cues as we went through the tomb scene and I never got to call them, but they’re fairly simple and Michael and I felt we could see them in the first run-through. In our last moments we just ran the last few lines of the show again to make sure we got the final music and fade to black looking good, and then dismissed for the day.

Tomorrow the cast is called at 12:30 (making Nick, Ashley and my call 12:00 noon — yes, afternoon!), and we work for four and a half hours on a few notes (some funereal choreography and a wig quickchange) and then we’ll do our first run of the show around 2:00. After dinner we come back like it’s a regular show call, with a voluntary warmup, followed by fight call, and then the house opens at half hour for our invited dress. How “invited” one of those is can range from a few close friends of the creative team to a wider selection of friendly theatre people, to what we have tomorrow — 300 high school students from local Thespian societies, who are apparently so excited to attend the show that at least some of them have planned to wear formal wear. In response to this I am rearranging my wardrobe for the week to wear my dressed-up-for-calling-a-show outfit to the invited dress rather than to one of the public performances this weekend.

A few thoughts from the day:

We experienced one of the funniest, most pure forms of comedy I’ve ever witnessed in a tech: towards the end of the show, Romeo visits the shop of an apothecary to buy some poison, and calls out to the apothecary when he arrives. This scene is staged right in front of the staircase, and Sonny tried to knock on the set to summon the apothecary to crawl out from his hovel, where he keeps his business apparently somewhere under the stairs. Seems like a simple task. So Sonny knocks on the side of the stairs, and it’s rock solid and makes no sound. So he knocks on the decorative spindles on the staircase. Same thing. He tries the handrail. He tries the bench which is right downstage of the stairs. Every surface he tried to knock on had absolutely no resonance. Every time he tried something else everybody in the theatre howled with laughter. The stairs are steel encased in wood, and I guess this proves that they’re very well built! Eventually, the staging was changed so that he goes up the stairs to the first landing. From there he can stomp on the floor, which is lexan over metal grating, and that makes a satisfying noise.

Today was the first time the database has saved me by giving me an error when I schedule something against Equity rules. It’s always been a good guard against typos, but this time I was so sure in my incorrect math that I was actually digging in the formulas to figure out why it was broken. The formula actually thinks of the problem in a more correct way than I was counting it in my head (span of day minus length of meal break), and showed me that I had reduced the meal break without reducing the span of day, thereby making more working hours than allowed. So I felt like the time I took to build some rudimentary rule-checking into the schedule form was well spent. It doesn’t understand things like tech days, but when I get a chance to revise it before my next show that will be something I flesh out.

Another somewhat funny observation:

At one point we must have spent 10 minutes sitting watching the director, staff director, prop master, costume designer and prop crew gathered in a quiet circle, apparently discussing how Juliet can conceal a dagger on her person. As our lighting designer and I decided, we were witnessing the costume equivalent of everybody standing on the stage looking up in the air (it’s sort of a tech stereotype that if you see a large group of stagehands, a stage manager or two, and especially a director or designers all standing on stage staring silently and thoughtfully up into the grid… you’re not going anywhere for a while!)

Ow, My Ear!

By the end of today I have had a headset on my ear for 28 of the last 49 hours, and my ear was starting to hurt, despite the recent modifications I’ve made to my headset with a Dr. Scholl’s pad. I don’t have a default ear preference, though I generally have a strong preference on a per-show basis. It almost always has to do with which ear will generally be pointed at what I’m listening for — either at the stage, at people who might come up and talk to me, or at an audio monitor — and then putting the headset on the opposite ear. For example at Phantom on the deck I’m most often standing stage left facing upstage, meaning my left ear is pointed at the stage, so I always wear my headset on the right. Twice I’ve been cushioned from head injuries because I just happen to wear my headset on the right side, so I guess it’s a good choice. However, when calling the show I wear the headset on the left because the audio monitor is next to my right ear.

During a long tech I will usually try to switch ears every few hours, but in this case the comm rack is to my left and I’d be getting tangled all the time if I put the headset on my right side. I do think the Dr. Scholls was a great idea though. It’s definitely more comfortable than any on-ear headsets’ padding I know of. My custom orange earpiece foam cover is really starting to rip, and that’s making me sad (it’s a little smaller than it should be to fit properly, but it’s the only non-black one I could find, and I like it because no one can take my headset by accident, or “accident” even).

One more cute story:

In a fascinating example of how light and music can tell a story, we were kind of hanging out waiting for a light cue to be written. Ray (Friar Laurence) was lounging on an onstage bench up against the stairs. Laura (Juliet) was lying down in the tomb, where she had been for probably hours, with an occasional break.

While the cue was being built, a single par on the floor stage left was turned on, casting a wash of sidelight across Friar Laurence in his priestly garb, and creating grotesque shadows of the staircase all across the wall of the set. At the exact same moment the light was turned on, the sound department, completely independently, tested a sound cue of very loud, ominous music that we had never heard before. Everyone in the room had been just kind of doing their own thing, but for the few seconds that sound cue played, there was a very specific story happening onstage that captured everyone’s attention — the young woman laid out in a tomb surrounded by candles, the mysterious priest sitting nearby — was he there to dispel the demons, or might he be possessed himself, concealed in the disguise of a man of the cloth? Once the mood had been established, Laura played into it, reaching her arms up from under her shroud, an overhead shaft of light on her being the only other illumination besides the par and the candles. All the while Ray just sat there, silently contemplating… what?

And then the sound cue was cut off, and more lights were added to the cue, and it was just another moment in rehearsal. I feel like I studied directing for years where my teachers tried to teach us just that: it has nothing to do with your budget or resources. You can tell an entire engrossing story with a single light, the right music and some simple costume pieces like a priest’s collar and a sheer piece of fabric, without a word even needing to be spoken. I absolutely sucked at that when I was in school, and here it happened completely by accident. It was just a wonderful little moment that highlights the things that really make theatre work.

Tech Table

Finally, here’s a picture of my tech table, which I love very much, and will be sad to say farewell to after the afternoon’s rehearsal. I saw the booth for the first time today. It was rather uneventful. I don’t expect anything about it to bother me, but I didn’t see anything that blew my mind either (knowing this place, there probably is something, but like the electric pencil sharpener built into the cue light panel, you just need to know where to look).


January 4, 2010

From the Archive: How I Got Home from Houston

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 7:26 pm

I was telling this story recently, and as the word “blog” hadn’t been invented when it happened, you haven’t heard it, and it must be told.

Some years back, when I was but a wee professional PSM, I was on tour in Houston. Houston was our last stop before returning to New York for two weeks layoff for Christmas, and then our New York run. As the tour had been a less-than-perfect experience, we were all very much looking forward to the end of the week in Houston, to return home for the holidays and generally escape from work for a while.

We somehow survived the week in Houston without anyone quitting, committing suicide, or murdering anyone (which was an especially precarious feat because due to the two weeks off, we could have quit at the end of the Houston stop without breaching our contracts).

This backstory informs the desperate events that followed.

Our flight out of Houston was from George Bush Intercontinental Airport, around 8AM. We had four actors, myself, my assistant, and the production manager. We arrived at the airport and lined up to check our bags, thrilled that we would be home in just a few hours. When we checked in we were told it was snowing in New York and our connecting flight had been canceled. We decided to take the first leg of the flight to Atlanta and see if we could get on another flight if the weather cleared up. I should also mention, we were flying AirTran, which if you didn’t know, is the name that Valujet changed themselves to after they killed all those people due to their negligence. I also should mention that our producer and some other folks I can’t remember were also flying out that day, but had a direct flight on Continental.

We checked in, went through security, and arrived at our gate. Our flight to Atlanta was delayed. And delayed. And delayed. The other flight on Continental was boarding nearby, and we said goodbye to our colleagues, and waited more hours.

Sometime during this waiting period, we started to go a little crazy (this is where you have to bear in mind all the things leading up to this day, and why just getting home was of such great importance). We had a fake cake in the show, that our set designer had lovingly built. It really did look like a realistic ice cream cake. Due to its delicacy, whenever we flew it traveled with someone as a carry-on. This day was my turn to guard the cake. It was in a cardboard box, which if I’m remembering correctly, was tied up with string so it could be carried.

I’m sure so many years later I can’t adequately explain how it started, but we began creating an entire scenario about the importance of protecting this cake. Everywhere we went, we would say, “Do you have the cake? Is the cake OK? The flight’s cancelled, but the cake is still safe!”

Sometime around 3:00 (so 7 hours after we were supposed to leave Houston), our flight to Atlanta finally made it into the air. We landed in Atlanta in the early evening.

We went to the AirTran desk, where they were totally unhelpful, and because they’re a terrible airline, they had no relationships with other airlines and couldn’t help us transfer to another flight to New York, Philly, or anywhere nearby. By this point, the people who were on the Continental flight are home in their apartments.

The best we were offered was a flight to Baltimore. We figured if we could get that far we could take Amtrak or drive the rest of the way. While my assistant finished up the arrangements to get us on that flight, I was on the phone to Amtrak making reservations for the last train of the night from Baltimore to Penn Station, and the production manager was on the phone with Hertz renting us a car at the Baltimore airport.

With these options laid out, my assistant made her escape and decided to stay with friends rather than attempt our foolhardy mission to make it home to New York that night. And then we were six.

So we made our way to the new gate, guarding the cake all the way. As we traveled, the legend of the cake grew and grew. I recall at some point, after our flight had been delayed yet again, we began deciding who would be cast in the movie recounting our adventure to protect the cake.

Finally, sometime after 8PM, i think, our flight departed Atlanta for Baltimore. The last train was around 10PM. Nervously we would look up the aisles at each other, wondering if we just might make it. I think we landed at about 9:55. So we made our way to the Hertz counter, so grateful that we had bothered to book two different modes of travel.

I may have my times off a little bit throughout the story, but one thing I remember is that when we crammed all our luggage and 6 people into a minivan and turned the key, the clock said 12:00 midnight exactly.

Our production manager drove with the intensity of our desire to get home (and to protect the cake!) and when we emerged out of the Lincoln Tunnel it was 3:00 exactly.

The funny thing is, I don’t remember what happened to the cake at the end of all that. I remember getting let out of the car at 42nd Street and 9th Ave and making my way home. Someone must have taken the cake home for safekeeping for the two-week layoff. Maybe it was me.

Anyway, that’s my story of travel woes, perseverance, and the insanity that comes from being trapped in the airline system for about sixteen hours. It’s surely far from the worst kind of travel nightmare, but it was the passion with which we wanted to get the hell home that made it an unforgettable experience.


December 28, 2009

Load In

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 10:30 pm

One of my favorite stories from the tour so far:

This morning I came into the rehearsal room to find a shipping receipt folded on my desk. This isn’t completely out of the ordinary. Sometimes things get sent to the theatre in my name, such as props, the payroll/mail packet from New York, and so forth, and whoever receives it leaves the receipt for my records.

I didn’t recognize it, so I picked it up to see what it was. The delivery was itemized thusly:

Qty Description of contents Weight
1 trailer load of theatrical effects 21,000lbs.

It was a slightly bigger package than what I was imagining when I saw the receipt. I think the dimensions of the box are something like 53ft(L) x 8ft(W) x 13ft(H). I wonder if the Postal Service offers a flat rate box for that.


December 24, 2009

The Deadliest Catch

I call this: computers,mac,On the Road Again — Posted by KP @ 8:53 pm

or
“What Happened to Your Laptop?”

deadliestcatch
Entertain conjecture of a time in which I’m on the road with Henry V. We have just concluded our very successful run in New York, and have set out on the next leg of the tour. When our story begins, we’re in Nashville. We have arrived there the day before, after a layover in DC, to board our buses to go the rest of the way to our first performance at Mississippi State. No one understands how it could possibly have been cheaper or more efficient to do it this way, but nevertheless that’s why we were in Nashville.

After we spent the night for (as far as we can tell) no particular reason in a Nashville hotel, the cast departed in the afternoon and the crew was given the entire day to hang out in Nashville while our driver slept, as we would be leaving around midnight and sleeping on the ride down.

It wasn’t all that exciting, as the crew had actually been to Nashville earlier in the tour, because our bus’ water pump was broken and we had an extra day between shows, so we took a detour. While the bus was being repaired we ate ribs, listened to the live bands on Broadway, bought cowboy boots, ate way too much, and did all the things one does in Nashville. So for our second visit, we had lunch at a nice outdoor place we had visited the first time, researched potential sushi restaurants for dinner, and otherwise just kind of hung out on the bus watching TV.

Somewhere in the course of watching TV is where things get interesting.

Now I must introduce Daphne. Daphne was our props supervisor. We must have been watching the Discovery Channel, and it was at this point that Daphne realized that the season premiere of Deadliest Catch was coming up, and that we would be in the middle of our first performance in Mississippi while it was airing. My assistant Nick, who you have already met, was also disturbed when this was brought to his attention. Apparently Nick and Daphne really like Deadliest Catch.

It was something of an urban legend that the bus had a DVR. The satellite remote had buttons that referred to it, but when we tried to program the show to record, it became obvious that we were missing something that would allow that to happen, as it could be programmed, but nothing would happen. This was also one of our first experiences with our new bus, which we would later come to realize sucked in every imaginable way. Maybe the original bus had a working DVR, but this one didn’t appear to be fully equipped.

This minor setback was not going to dissuade us, however. We would just have to go a little low-tech. The bus had a VCR, we reasoned. All we have to do is find a place that sells VHS tapes and we can record it the old-fashioned way.

On our way to our sushi dinner, we passed a drug store. Daphne went in, and a few minutes later happily emerged with a set of three VHS tapes.

When we got back to the bus, we naturally set about doing a test run and trying to record a show. What we found was that the VCR apparently could play tapes, but the satellite connection didn’t pass through it, so it couldn’t record anything. This was very annoying! But given that all these electronics are mounted behind panels and on opposite sides of the lounge from each other, we didn’t feel comfortable tearing the whole bus apart to get at the wiring. We accepted defeat, and the VHS tapes were stacked on the kitchen counter.

Fast-forward a few days. My laptop was having battery issues, so after using it in the front lounge after the show, I set it down on the couch where I had been sitting, and left it to charge overnight.

It’s now the middle of the night. All of the crew are asleep in their beds. We encounter some bumpy and/or hilly roads. At some point in the night, a clattering is heard from the kitchen. This isn’t really unusual. Somebody’s coffee container or soda bottle is usually falling off the counter in the night. I, having the bunk on the other side of the kitchen wall, remember hearing this and thinking that it didn’t sound like anything breakable or containing liquid, so I didn’t even really wake up.

In the morning I was alarmed to find my laptop had 3 black smudges on it. I wasn’t concerned about smudges but at first I couldn’t tell if they were smudges or dents. I frantically rubbed on them, and thankfully the black marks came off. Two of them left no sign, but the largest of them revealed a dent in the aluminum cover of the laptop! I was totally confused about how this had happened, until we started to look at the forensic evidence. On the couch, laying casually, were the three VHS tapes. They looked like they had just been tossed there from when we were trying to get the VCR to work, until someone remembered that they had been stacked on the kitchen counter, and most of us had heard the crash from the kitchen during the night. So I went back to the tapes, and sure enough, each of them had a corner bashed in, where their black plastic had been worn off.

And that solved the mystery of how Daphne and Nick’s love for The Deadliest Catch dented my laptop.

The afterword to this story is that whenever I open my laptop I am reminded of Daphne and Nick, and how badly they wanted to see The Deadliest Catch. They never did get to see that episode. I’m not sure if they’ve seen it in reruns yet. I still have never seen an episode, but I am very curious to see what’s so special to have created such a fervor on our bus. And that’s the story of what happened to my laptop.


December 23, 2009

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.
4208186966_4eeb42c98d_b

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.


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.


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