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March 4, 2009

Rambling Post of New York, Week 2

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:26 pm

I have some time to kill hanging out in my office at the New Vic. Can I mention enough times, I have an office? Not like a little corner and desk in the production office, I mean an honest-to-goodness private office for the visiting company, in the hallway between the dressing rooms and the greenroom, with full paging and comms, coat hooks on the back of the door, everything.

Anyway, I am sitting here after a student matinee, waiting for a package to be delivered by UPS to the Acting Company office. In this package is the new bag I have purchased spent way too much money on, the Booq Python Pack. Ever since my main backpack got into a little scrape with the underside of our truck in St. Louis, I have been thinking seriously about replacing it (that and the fact that the plate that holds the shoulder strap pivots was already cracking and will no doubt one day come completely apart). Despite many things I don’t like about my current bag, I have never found one better (and trust me, I look for new bags like it’s my job). I bought a Jansport sling bag in St. Louis while I attempted to clean and repair my bag, but that one, while it will be very cool for some things in the future, is not designed for
a) laptop travel
b) large items
c) organizing many accessories
d) comfortable wear of 30+ lbs of stuff

all of which are my requirements for my main bag. And also, I will never again buy a bag that has a black interior. It’s just stupid. I think we as a species should recognize that a bag with a black interior serves no purpose, and stop making them.

So I did some research, and I have decided this Booq bag fits my requirements, although I have some fears — I think it may be too nice. My current bag is big and decently organized, but carries like a basic backpack. It compacts pretty well and is lightweight, and it doesn’t give the impression that there’s anything interesting in it, so I have no fear of leaving it lying around in relatively secure places with my laptop in it. This new bag is made of rather fancy fabric, and is heavy, and I worry it may not flatten well when empty. Most of all, I worry that it looks like a $300 bag, and anyone with a mind to notice a $300 bag might wonder what’s worth putting in a $300 bag. If this disrupts my life too much, I may have to settle for a less-nice bag that allows me to actually get things done. I ordered it from ebags, who have a free refund policy, so I feel OK about taking the risk on buying it without being able to see it in person. I will check it out while I’m home and if I’m not happy with it, I’m going to return it before we leave. Of course I will do a review of some kind.

The show has been going well. I’m afraid we may be getting spoiled from sitting here so long. It’s easy to get used to 1-nighters when that’s just the way life is, but now that we’ve been comfortable back home it’s going to be hard to go back to doing real work. This leg of the tour is the most glamorous, though, so it will be a good way to get back into it.

We’ve had a lot of 10:30AM student matinees, which is always hard to adjust to, but the nice part is that a lot of them are the only show of the day, so it gets me out of bed and then I feel like I have a whole day and night left to do stuff.

I still haven’t done Phantom. I had too much work to do at home last night, and enjoyed the productive time so much I just can’t do it. I plan to do two shows in the half-week before we leave, when I have the time to prepare and enjoy them. It wasn’t just the idea of adding performances to an 8-show week, it was also the approximately 2 hours I would want to spend at home reviewing. I did a little bit of review of the Journey on Monday night, which went pretty well (I can usually tell by doing that and a couple other scenes how much time if any I need to spend looking over my script). I still intend to do a pretty much real-time calling of the show in my living room, even if I don’t need to be that thorough, as it has been probably four and a half months, though it feels a lot shorter than that. If I have a specialty as a Phantom sub, I’d say it’s the ability to come in after weeks or months away and call the show as well as if I’d never left. Unfortunately, I get lots of opportunities to practice that, so I have a large bank of experience to draw on, and can tell with a quick 2-5 minute section of the show what my level of comfort is if I had to call the show at any given moment, and how much review, if any, I need.

OK, this bag is really taking a long time to get delivered. I know the office tends to get packages late in the day, around 3PM, which it is now almost 3:30. I’m feeling pretty sleepy, especially since I haven’t really had a full meal today. I hope it comes soon!


February 26, 2009

New York, NY

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 8:26 am


Here we are, running at the New Victory in New York. I’m having a really great time here. Much has been made of the fact that it’s “on Broadway,” but I have learned in my career that the address of your theatre has no correlation to the level of professionalism, quality of production, or size of your paycheck, so I really wasn’t buying into that hype. But I’ve been pleased to discover it actually feels something like a Broadway show. The theatre is beautiful, which I knew, but it is pretty well-appointed like a Broadway house, has a Local 1 crew, and in general feels kind of like a shrunk-down Broadway show. And by shrunk-down, I mean like 80%, not like 50%, assuming we are talking about a play here.

A few cities before we arrived I talked with the staff by phone and they gave me the option of calling from stage left or from the booth, which I was warned was “miles away.” I’ve called from miles away before, but I figured this may be the only venue where I have the option to call from backstage, due to the fact that our set is a full 180-degree wraparound wall, and calling from backstage would offer zero visibility without color and infrared monitors, which we don’t travel with, and which most of our venues don’t have. The Guthrie had a rather nice camera setup, although I also had a very oddly-placed window to see most things in real life if I needed to. This is my first time calling without any real view of the stage, but it’s working fine since I spent the first month of the run calling off monitors at the Guthrie. It’s a lot of fun to be backstage among everyone else, and it’s so much easier to get around without having to trek back and forth from a booth. We even have paging at the calling desk and in our office (we have an office!). It really does feel like Broadway! So I’m having a good time, and I’m missing home a little less.

Speaking of home, I stopped by Phantom for about an hour before their show last night, after our student matinee and tech rehearsal. All is well, there’s new carpet in the stage management office and SR quickchange room, and other than that things seem the same. The in/out sheet had at least 10 understudies on it, so it was a fairly normal day. At some point before we leave town I’m going to do a couple shows there, even if I have to do them for free. The stage managers offered to trade shows with me for the next two weeks, which I gladly accepted, but they rescinded their offer when I described calling Henry as “calling the rooftop scene for two hours and 40 minutes, and then the last 20 minutes is like calling ‘Wishing’.” It makes sense if you know the show. I think “recoiled in horror” is a better way to describe their reaction.

OK, people keep coming in and asking me questions. See ya!


February 23, 2009

Reflections on Being Home

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:55 pm

1. I’ve been living on a bus which has independent thermostats for three different rooms. I’ve been in hotels, where I had to first figure out if the heat was controlled by a little knob under the window unit, or a panel on the wall. So I get home to my apartment and think, “I’m cold.” And then I realize that I pay $1200/mo. so that my landlord gets to decide when the heat should be on.

PHOTO: The corner of 45th/9th from the Acting Company offices, 8AM on the morning of our return.

2. 2/28 Today I was running late so I grabbed some breakfast at Pax: a Vitamin Water and a small rice krispy treat. It cost me $7. And I think something’s wrong with that. Am I becoming a suburbanite?

3. 3/1 Of the two shows, I find Henry especially not-interesting to call. Being able to hear some of the sound cues for the first time since tech, I am discovering a few new cues that I like. But overall the idea of a play, a 3-hour play, and one in which many of the light cues take anywhere from 20 seconds to 2 minutes to complete, is just not that exciting. Being on the road has been nice because the challenge comes not from the show, but from the venue. Making sure the show looks right in every cue, and executed correctly by every crew, is a process that takes up enough of my attention to distract from the fact that there’s otherwise not that much for me to do. Sitting now at the New Vic, there’s not much to worry about. After the first few shows, things were settled in. The ventilation is a little odd so the haze is the only thing that I expect to have to keep an eye on — sometimes I ask for a haze cue to be skipped, but even then, I think we’ve programmed them now in such a way that it usually doesn’t need to be messed with, weather permitting. So as a result of all this, combined with being in New York, where you can’t deceive yourself that Henry V is the only show in the universe, I am going a little bit crazy. Nick constantly has to take toys away from me. Lately I’ve decided I’m going to procure scraps of gel to experiment with different colored filters for my LittleLite.

I had long planned to find time for a performance or two of Phantom during these weeks, but I was concerned about either giving myself a 10-show week, or waiting until the little half-week before we fly to Baton Rouge. This afternoon’s matinee has convinced me that my brain may explode before the end of our NY run if I don’t call a big flashy musical with automation and pyro and 13 cue lights RIGHT NOW. So I’m aiming for Tuesday. I was even thinking about Monday, but it’s our day off and I hoped to keep it that way. Plus, I decided later in today’s show, I will be able to work through my tiredness at Tuesday morning’s matinee if I have something to look forward to.


April 28, 2008

Thank You, Bootleggers

I call this: theatre — Posted by KP @ 8:25 pm

I have two things to tell you:
The first begins in the stage management office of The Phantom of the Opera, a few short hours ago. We were talking about songs about months of the year, which after exhausting May, led to June, which of course led to “June is Bustin’ Out All Over.” This subject invariably leads to someone mentioning the infamous clip of Leslie Uggams performing said song at some event in Washington, DC and completely and utterly going up on the lyrics. It’s one of the most famous theatre-related moving pictures ever, it seems. We all got a good laugh just at the thought of it, so I swung around in my chair and headed over to YouTube so we could all enjoy it. But IT’S GONE!!! We searched under several different names and phrases. We did a Google search, which only led to broken links of YouTube videos that have been removed. If anyone reading this can point me to a working link for this video, many people in the Phantom company will be grateful. Bonus points if it’s the one with the subtitles speculating on what she might be trying to say.

After our disappointing failure, someone who had popped their head in at the prospect of seeing Leslie Uggams mentioned that on YouTube there was allegedly a video of the performance of Phantom where a certain Joseph Buquet had missed his entrance in “Magical Lasso”, and Meg (Heather McFadden) jumped up and sang the whole song. We found it quickly, and soon the halls of the Majestic were echoing with screams, laughter, and applause at this miraculously preserved moment in theatre history. Embedding is disabled so you will have to click the link to go directly to the page, but it’s well worth it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrzAKtZxK44

Heather is my new hero. Sally Williams is the Madame Giry, who is mostly holding herself together, even under the scrutiny of a close-up.


September 6, 2007

Why Phantom will Run Forever

I call this: theatre — Posted by KP @ 10:29 am

OK, I figured it out. Go with me on this:
I was thinking this morning about my new job, and how I will consider myself lucky if it even opens. This is not because I think it’s going to be a bad show or anything, it’s just the way my career has always gone. Some people have problems where their shows never run long. My problem is that whenever I get an open-ended run, it doesn’t just flop, it goes catastrophically bad from the moment I get the job. There was my first open-ended Off-Broadway contract where the show cut down to a 3-shows-per-week schedule on the week my contract started, and was closed nine performances later. Then there was the Broadway-bound play that was canceled before it even started rehearsal. If Frankenstein makes it through the first week of rehearsal, it will be the most successful open run I’ve ever had.

That’s just the background. So how does this relate to Phantom‘s run? I was saying to myself today, “Why can’t anything I do have a decent run?” Then of course I had to admit, “Well, except Phantom.” That’s when it hit me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say, “Man, every show that so-and-so does flops! Well, except Phantom.”

No one can explain why Phantom keeps running, in fact running so well that it’s keeping pace with every show except Wicked and Jersey Boys. They were talking privately about closing it just a few years ago, and here we are. Where does it get such good fortune? Obviously it’s leeching off all the good show karma of everyone who works on it, and when they go elsewhere there’s none left for their future endeavors.

I’m far from the only person whose career exhibits these symptoms, although my case does seem to be extreme. I do feel better knowing that my good show karma is somewhere, benefiting my friends and a show I love, which occasionally provides me some income, too. And if you’ve ever wondered how it’s possible for a show to run 25+ years, this is how it will be done. You heard it here first.


June 21, 2007

Second Week of the Run

I call this: summer stock — Posted by KP @ 10:56 am

So I’ve been sick for the last two days. Probably got it at the Majestic on Monday. There’s always some bug going around, and I don’t doubt that four hours in that building could send me home with something. At least that’s what I’m blaming it on. I’m not nearly as sick as a person could be, just an incredibly sore throat and a slight fever that I can’t really keep track of because I don’t have a thermometer up here. So I take some Tylenol whenever it seems to make sense, along with some echinacea, which it’s probably too late for, and my favorite cold remedy, Cold-Eeze. Calling a show sick never results in a particularly good show, it always feels a little bit like watching the show underwater — the music sounds muffled, and the timing of everything feels different. Not to mention if your illness is respiratory (which mine usually are) you can never be quite sure when you attempt to speak a short little word like “go” if your throat will choose that moment to get blocked up and not let it out.

But last night’s show was actually pretty good. I bought some ice cream in the lobby at intermission, and that was very soothing, so the second act was better. The key here is to not lose my voice. As I said, all the cues are verbal, so that would be incredibly bad. I can probably count on one hand the number of times in my life I’ve actually lost my voice to the point of no sound coming out, so I’m not too worried. I was careful not to push when calling last night, and although my voice sounds worse today, I think I’m probably on the way to getting better. The nice thing is that in the second week of the run there’s not much to do other than come in and do the show. We don’t even have any matinees this week, so I’ve been able to stay in bed as long as I need to and take it easy around the house.

When I came in before the show yesterday I noticed we had a new section of deck put down just downstage of the rain deck, in a spot that had taken a lot of water damage. At intermission I was informed that there was a section of deck all the way upstage that needed immediate replacement before the rain deck could be rolled back over it. About eight guys and gals with screwguns going simultaneously managed to put down a thankfully pre-cut piece of replacement deck with almost no impact on the length of intermission. I was impressed.

Since tech it’s been relatively common for there to be some kind of problem that threatens to extend the already-long intermission, and since I began my theatrical career in high school as a “techie,” in situations with non-union crews I sometimes enjoy pitching in and actually doing stuff instead of standing around and watching the clock. By now I’ve learned enough of the intermission changeover for this show that I actually know what comes next and can participate without needing to be told what to do or what spike mark I should be going to. Because of the very low grid height at Reagle, a lot of drops have to be clipped up to their pipes in order for tall pieces of scenery (like the rain deck) to move under them. Once the rain deck is pushed back upstage (which I often help with, although I doubt I’m actually taking much of the weight), a lot of intermission is spent unclipping drops used in the second act, which requires one person flying and about five people along the length of the stage to undo each clip, let the drop out, and reclose the clip, while holding the bottom pipe of the drop up off the still-somewhat-wet rain deck. Then the drop is flown until it’s stretched out, and we give it a tug to (hopefully) take out the wrinkles, and it’s flown all the way out. This process went faster last night than I’ve ever seen it, and I was glad I could actually be of some use.


June 19, 2007

Going home… wait, what?

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 9:51 am

I’m one of those people who will be on tour in a city for a week and refer to the hotel room as “home.” So it doesn’t really surprise me that when I slept in my own bed last night I felt like I was in a hotel room, and I’m now looking forward to going “home” to the Hardy Apartments in Waltham. I love my nice soft mattress and my nice soft sheets and my nice soft pillows, but I know that creaky twin mattress at the Hardy is where I’m supposed to be. In fact I just realized last night that I’m much more productive at Reagle mostly because it’s usually more comfortable to get out of bed than to stay in it.

So I’m looking forward to getting back to Waltham, mostly because that’s where a lot of my stuff is and I’m used to it. Plus it’s hot and I want to throw my heavy backpack in the trunk of my car and crank the A/C instead of standing on a hot train platform for 15 minutes, only to remain cramped in a subway car for another 45 minutes, only to walk up and down steep hills with my heavy backpack and up five flights of stairs. I would never want to live anywhere else but New York, but being in the suburbs, especially in the summer, has its advantages.


I took this photo as we left, and decided to mess around with my new version of Photoshop on a fake macro effect that I’ve been wanting to try for a while. I took the picture and then between New York and New Haven, worked on it using tips I found here and here. I probably spent about half that time on the sky. I have learned that suspension bridges are not your friend when you need to alter the sky behind them.

My night at Phantom was interesting. I walked in to a usual night of chaos: too many people out, not enough understudies. This is a fairly regular occurrence, and after nearly 20 years the process of covering the show is routine. This one was almost really messy, though. Since I was present for no other reason than to get my photo taken, I was placed in charge of stage-managing the photo shoot with the various departments. Because of the tight deadline due to the loss of our original photos, we needed to turn the captions in to Playbill by the end of the next day. I took it upon myself (because I’m crazy?) to see that it was done. Again, a little computer skill goes a long way, as does the convenience of an all-Mac office. We had to have a way to get a copy of the photos printed in order to do the captions. They had a card reader, we had a Mac. We plugged it in, grabbed one photo from each group and printed them.

With the photos in hand, I brought them around to the various departments to get names and spellings for each person, and then typed them up. This took the entire first act. I literally was stapling the final caption sheet to the back of the last photo as the chandelier was falling. So how to get them to Playbill in time? I had a hunch, and asked them where the office was. 7th Ave. between 38th & 39th. That was pretty much what I was hoping to hear. It seemed the easiest way to make sure the material was delivered was for me to drop it off personally on my way to Penn Station. That was very easy, and I got a Playbill pen for my trouble.

Anyway, with my work done, I watched the second act from the sound board. I was mostly interested in seeing the new pyro effects, which have finally gone into the show after some planning. I guess there’s a new law which has banned the effects originally used in the show (something to do with the fuses). I had been warned for months it would be lame. It wasn’t quite as lame as I was expecting, but it’s definitely not as good. All I can say is that I kept my eyes open for the flames at the end of the mausoleum scene and I could still see when the lights came up. And apparently it smells worse, but I was too far away to tell. It’s sad that future audiences will lose that part of the Phantom experience. So many people say, “I was in the back row and I could feel the heat on my face!” It was never that big of a deal for me, but I hate to see any part of the original show be lost.

It will be nice to get back to Singin’ in the Rain after clearing my head a bit by spending a day with Phantom.


June 18, 2007

My Weekend Vacation

I call this: summer stock — Posted by KP @ 11:12 am

Somewhat against my will, I’m spending my 36 hours off taking a little vacation. I’ve never been a fan of doing anything crazy on my days off at Reagle. I’m usually just catching up on basic things like sleep, laundry, groceries, and general relaxation. So today it’s Monday, and I don’t have to be back at work until Wednesday night’s show. And I’m currently on a train to… New York. Not at all where I would be going were I going somewhere. A lot of our New York-based actors go home on the days off, because they tend to have kids or spouses or some compelling reason to be there. I’m going to get my picture taken.

This is the stupidest reason I have ever had to do anything. On April 25 — I say again April 25, the photos were taken of the Phantom company for the Playbill Broadway Yearbook. This past Friday, I was at our opening night afterparty at a Waltham restaurant appropriately named Margaritas, just being served my margarita, when I received a phone call shortly before midnight. This was June 15. Apparently “due to a corrupted disk” they have lost the photos for the yearbook. I haven’t been able to get any more details about who lost them or when or how, or if it’s just Phantom or every show, or something in between. All I know is that in 52 days, somebody managed not to make a reliable backup of photos intended for publication.

The bottom line is that I was very pleased that the photos were originally taken while I was in town and available (as opposed to the first edition of the yearbook when I managed not to be in the book at all, despite having worked on three or four shows, and spent the entire year answering people’s questions of, “How come I don’t see any pictures of you in the yearbook?”). It was also a nice intimate photo of the Phantom stage management team, as opposed to the large group photos we’ve had in the past (see my profile pic for example). I was looking forward to seeing how it came out, and had made inquiries about getting a digital copy. So I was rather not-happy when I got this phone call telling me the pictures were lost and had to be retaken. The one good thing is that they happened to reschedule picture day for a Monday. At first I wasn’t intending to spend my weekend and a bunch of money dragging myself to New York just to get a picture taken. But I was so furious about the whole thing the more I thought about it overnight, I decided the money was replaceable, and if I threw enough money at it, I could make it a rather relaxing couple days off instead of a hassle. And I’d get to see my friends and sleep in my own bed, and most importantly, be in the picture for posterity and not have to be bitter about it the rest of my life.

I thought about driving, but I hate driving, and I didn’t feel comfortable parking the rental car in my neighborhood, and certainly wasn’t driving through midtown. I thought about the bus, but the whole prospect of five to six hours each way on a bus was unbearable. So I went with the train. I took the cheapest trains each way, and the ones in the most reasonable hour of the day. I’ll arrive just in time to take the picture and depart in the late morning tomorrow, and should be back in Waltham around 3:30, with more than 24 hours left in my weekend. Not so bad, really, and it’s more interesting than what I’d be doing if I weren’t going anywhere.


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