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December 8, 2010

First Rehearsal, Minneapolis

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:10 am

Today we began rehearsal for The Comedy of Errors, the second of the shows we’ll be touring with this year. After our successful remount and fall tour of last year’s Romeo and Juliet, we’re starting from scratch with a new and very different production.

As is the custom in recent years, it’s co-produced with the Guthrie Theater of Minneapolis, who invite us to use their amazing facility and staff to rehearse and premiere one of our shows.

I got into town on Sunday, and yesterday Meaghan and I spent the day at the theatre, meeting with people and setting up our rehearsal room.

In the lobby I got my first look at our new posters. The Guthrie did their own logo for R&J last year, and now we have a Comedy logo to match!

This morning we had the great pleasure of having our truck show up bright and early to unload part of the Comedy set, which consists of a series of curtains suspended by towers at varying depths across the stage. Because of the very specific design of the curtains and the intricate uses they’re expected to have, we have taken the rather ambitious step of having the actual scenery in our rehearsal room for almost the entire process (from day 1 until the day they’re needed to go upstairs to the stage). The arrival of the truck also allows us to have some of our road boxes in the building, namely the much-appreciated stage management workbox, and some other boxes which contain useful items, and things of a fragile nature that would not benefit from spending a month in a frozen trailer parked in a field in St. Paul (such as wigs).

The Guthrie crew set up the towers and curtains this morning, under the direction of our TD and set designer, who are also in for a few days to oversee the beginning of the process.

At noon-ish, Meaghan and I went up to one of the classrooms in the building, where we conducted the Equity meeting, to allow the crew time to finish in our rehearsal room. It was a casual and fun-filled meeting (it’s quite easy when the whole company has already been working together for months), the highlight of which was one of our actors who had clipped an article from the Equity newsletter by union president Nick Wyman, and read aloud this very funny and accurate piece about what usually happens when it comes time to elect a deputy, and encouraging members not to dread this duty.

With the meeting done, we returned downstairs to our rehearsal room for the meet & greet, which at the Guthrie is a big production involving the whole community of staff, not just those involved in a specific production. Artistic director Joe Dowling introduced Acting Company artistic director Margot Harley, and both spoke about the continuing collaboration between the two companies. Our director, Ian Belknap was introduced, and he spoke a bit about the play and his ideas for it, before introducing brief design presentations from scenery and costumes. It was really cool that in addition to the set model, the gathered audience was actually sitting within most of the actual set in 1:1 scale. The cast and the rest of the creative team were introduced, and then there was some time for mingling, before we were left to begin rehearsal.

It was a good day of table work. I find it really interesting to start a process with a bunch of people who pretty much all know each other intimately already. The whole cast, stage management team, and our staff repertory director have been through a 4-week rehearsal process together, followed by weeks of touring, so it’s already very much a family. Ian hasn’t been our director, but as associate artistic director of the company, he’s been very much a part of our lives throughout the process, so there’s not that usual weirdness of everybody feeling out the director’s personality. The majority of us have worked at the Guthrie before, so there’s a familiarity with many of our “new” collaborators already. I definitely feel the difference that it makes in the early hours of rehearsal when everyone already feels safe and has nothing to prove in the rehearsal room.

Most of our costume fittings were done in New York during the R&J rehearsal process, and tomorrow and Thursday we’ll finish them up. It was a huge pain trying to get everyone into the shop outside of R&J rehearsal time, but the payoff is that we don’t have to deal with it now. We have some wig fittings later this week, and then hopefully that should pretty much be it.

All-in-all it was a very smooth first day. It was a lot of fun to see everybody at the Guthrie. It definitely feels like coming home. We don’t have a stage management intern to guide us through the Guthrie system this year, but between Meaghan’s experience spending a full year as intern and ASM (including the initial Acting Company/Guthrie collaboration on Henry V), and my two previous shows as PSM, we have pretty much learned all the procedures and people that need to be known to stage manage here.

As much as I generally find it frustrating to go back into rehearsal when we’ve already rehearsed, teched, opened and toured a show, I’m actually looking forward to this process. So many of my collaborators are old friends by this point that I’m just excited to work on it. Also, this is the first comedy I’ve done with the company, and it’s short, so that’s a nice change from the 3-hour tragedies and histories we’ve done before!

I think Comedy and R&J are such polar opposites that this tour will be incredibly fun to perform in rep. One show will be easy to load in, funny, short, but probably more hectic and stressful to run. The other will be hard to load in, emotionally intense, long, but more easy and slow-paced to run. There will be things to look forward to every time we switch shows, and I think that will keep us always looking forward to whichever one we’re doing.

And I’m once again staying in what I have come to call my “winter apartment,” which I will have lived in for six months of my life by the time we leave for the road. Sometimes I think a change of scenery might be interesting, but I had loads of fun getting dropped off at the garage door with my suitcase and my groceries, and just busting in and unpacking everything in about 10 minutes. Everything already has its place, its shelf, its drawer, which outlet it gets plugged into, as comfortably as if I’ve lived here all my life. Almost every time I come home to my NY apartment (which I moved into in 2006) I fumble around for the lightswitch on the wrong wall. So I feel at least as comfortable here. It’s nice to have some consistency in my rather inconsistent domestic life.

I think I’ve said before that I believe that when you tour a certain part of your brain gets set aside solely for remembering your hotel room number and which way to turn when you get out of the elevator. Usually, for me at least, this works surprisingly well, even when you have to memorize a new 3- or 4-digit number every day or two. I think it’s somewhat related to keeping a mental picture of what the hallway looks like and that somehow helps you to remember the room number. Very seldom do I experience something that happened to me in Tucson a few weeks ago, where I went to the front desk for something, and they said, “what’s your room number?” and I went, “…uhhhhh….” (what city are we in? Tucson. 8th floor, turn left, turn left, turn right, turn left…802!). So being in an apartment that’s familiar for two straight months might as well be like owning a house.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention something about the weather. I was afraid that coming from California and Arizona, this would just be torture. The temperature has been in the teens since we got here, but so far it doesn’t bother me. I think it’s some kind of sense memory, that when I see these streets and buildings, my body just expects to be frozen solid, and 15 degrees feels warm, because it is, relatively speaking. I love this city, and I swear some day I will see it not covered in a sheet of snow and ice, and it will be awesome.

The underside of the Endless Bridge, as seen from the rear of the lobby. I love the Endless Bridge. It’s just ridiculous. It’s one of the longest cantilevered structures in the world (this photo actually makes it look much shorter than it is), and it doesn’t really have a purpose other than to be cool. Working here for the first time was a big culture shock in terms of theatre architecture. Broadway houses are so much about efficient use of space and maximizing seating capacity, that they don’t even allow room for things like an elevator, or adequate restrooms. And then there’s the Guthrie, that has a 178-foot-long, 30-foot-wide, two-storey-high bridge to nowhere, just because. It definitely makes you feel like you’re working someplace special, and by extension, your work must be important because this impossibly flamboyant building exists just to house it. Working here is kind of intoxicating. Everything is a heightened experience because the building itself is so weird and intriguing. You just go to a meeting and you’re like, “Why does this room have diagonal yellow windows?!?” It makes working anyplace else seem incredibly dreary.


October 16, 2010

On the Cusp of Tech

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 11:54 pm

We finished our three weeks in the rehearsal studio today. I don’t think I got a break all day from 9AM to 8PM, except about 15 minutes to scarf down a slice of pizza at around 4:30 while Meaghan minded rehearsal. We rehearsed lots of scenes, ran Act II, loaded out all our props, furniture and road boxes from the studio, rehearsed some more scenes, and then restored the rehearsal room to its natural condition.

As soon as we had the studio looking clean and orderly, with all the chairs and tables stacked exactly as they were when we found them three weeks ago, Meaghan and I lugged the last remains of our rehearsal supplies down to the theatre (the Schimmel Center at Pace University) to check out the set.

We’re not planning to be back until the morning of tech on Tuesday, so we wanted to stop in and make sure everything looks good. The theatre is really nice. It’s much wider and less deep than I pictured, but it seems very intimate. It reminds me of some of the venues we played in the early days of the tour last year. The deck is of a nice size, with sufficient wingspace on both sides, a large-ish shop upstage and enough room for an onstage crossover. The backstage area reminds me a lot of our venue in Philly where we closed the show last year.

I had been warned that the dressing rooms were up a long flight of stairs, but what we found up there was not at all the dark and dirty dressing rooms I pictured from my experience of narrow backstage metal staircases. The staircase, though very long and somewhat narrow, is sturdy and safe, and leads to the cheeriest backstage area I think I’ve ever seen. The color scheme and lighting create a warm and cozy (cozy as in comfortable, not cozy as a euphemism for too small) atmosphere. The green room is off the hook. Everything is red and gold — there’s an entire wall covered in gold silk. It looks like it should be Queen Victoria’s sitting room or something. I’ll have to get a picture sometime this week.

Feeling very good about the accommodations, we returned to the stage to scope out the set. If we encountered this house on the road, it would be a very good day, so it’s nice that we get to spend a week here. The set looks pretty much as it always has — it was initially a little disorienting when we first saw it from the back of the house because it’s been cut down a little, I think by 2 feet. I did my usual inspection, walking up the staircase shaking everything looking for loose bolts. It feels like we’ve never left. I feel very confident because we’ve had most of last year’s crew involved in some part of this process, so there’s a clear handing off of experience with the show to our new crewmembers.

Tuesday we’ll start tech. The cast has been running the show for about a week and a half, so they are very accustomed to the sequence of the show. We’ve had all the show props and the actual prop tables in the rehearsal studio, so I think they will adjust quickly to the stage. Navigating the stairs, and adding the element of costume and wigs will be the biggest adjustments for them. Tech-wise, the show already exists, it will just be a matter of seeing if everything looks and sounds the way it did before, and if we still like the way that was. Including rehearsals, I’ve probably called this show about 90 times in the past year. I’ve never teched a show that I already knew so well. I’m prepared that problems may crop up, or there may be things we’re asked to change, but it’s nice to have a very solid framework to follow, and to only need to make changes to that, rather than starting from scratch, as one normally does in tech. I’ve also gone through three weeks of rehearsal knowing what my cues are, and have watched this cast with that in mind.

We’re very close to our departure. Just three days of tech, culminating on the third day with an invited dress rehearsal, then three performances, and the next morning (Monday) we get on the plane to California. This weekend is our last time off before our first day off on tour, on Halloween in Phoenix, AZ. Crazy! I need to pack!

I’ve got a lot of work to do this weekend, mostly with the script. We’ve been making changes to the text up till today (and might make more), so I didn’t want to commit to a script until today’s rehearsal was done. I’m going to send the revisions to the production team so they can show up on Tuesday with all the changes, and then re-do my calling script with the current text. I’m going to start with last year’s calling script and just edit the text, as that seems easier than adding hundreds of cues into the new script (as each cue involves messing with margins, borders, underlining, colors, etc.) Check out the scripts page to see what it looks like. You can even download last year’s script from that page.

It’s still tech, but I am determined to have fun.

And as we depart New 42nd Street Studios, I want to share my favorite bit of signage:
DO NOT DISMANTLE THE PIANO.
You know for every rule like this, there’s a good story.


October 5, 2010

Big Pieces of Show

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 11:33 pm

Today was an unexpectedly exciting day.

First of all we began at the crack of 10AM, staging the tomb scene. Which is like, a total downer — not to mention a 13-person traffic nightmare. It’s not really something you want to jump right into, but we were working around fittings so we had to. But as they have all along, our cast picked up their blocking and executed it expertly right away, and in less than two hours we had it all done and run a couple times.

We finished up another rather complicated group scene that we ran out of time on yesterday, and staged a quick easy one, and then spent the second half of our day reviewing everything we had.

We have all but three scenes of our first act staged (and the ones remaining are short and pretty simple). We ran the act, skipping over what was missing. Aside from the jumps, we didn’t stop much, so it felt more like a run than a work-through. We didn’t stage the show in any semblance of order, so this was the first time for everyone to feel the flow of the show. I think it was encouraging for everyone to see just how much we’ve accomplished, and how solid our foundation is with the show already. We’ve been in rehearsal for 8 days, but we didn’t start staging until the end of day 4, so it’s really amazing how much we’ve done.

Our second act is where most of the work remains. We have the first scene, one scene in the middle (Act 3 Sc. 5, which is a pretty serious one), and the final scene in the tomb. However, those three scenes are the most complicated, so even running those felt like a great accomplishment.

This morning before our crack of 10AM rehearsal, Meaghan and I began fully setting up the prop tables at the crack of 9AM. One awesome thing about our rehearsal situation is that we have all the prop road boxes in our room, which includes the folding tables that travel with the show and already have the tape marks laid out to divide up and label the prop tables. Meaghan is new to the show, and I have only a passing acquaintance with how things went backstage, so it was a good opportunity for us to bumble around figuring out exactly where everything goes. We set up the tables on the appropriate sides of the stage and populated them. It’s great that we have this opportunity to get the actors accustomed to which tables to go to for each prop before they ever enter the theatre — and basically all the work was done for us.

The room feels much more alive to me with the prop tables out. I think it’s because it very much resembles a stage. The set is just tape on the floor, but the prop tables are all in the right spot, and I can pretty easily imagine a set and a theatre surrounding us, and it feels like an old friend.

It’s very comforting to return to a production I remember fondly. One of the best things from a professional perspective, is that I’m finding I don’t have my head buried in the book all the time. When I want to make sure the actors are speaking and moving correctly, for most scenes I can do it by looking up at the stage, instead of down at the book, and that allows me to be more aware of everything that’s happening. I also don’t have to look up the answers to a lot of questions, or look at the script when someone calls “line” (which has caused me to step on Meaghan a couple times, because my mouth says the line before my brain says, “you’re not on book”!)

Tomorrow we stage a good deal of the remaining scenes, and it looks to me like we’ll finish staging as hoped on Thursday. That will give us two days to review so we have something nice to show Penny (our director) when she arrives on Monday.


September 30, 2010

Early Rehearsals

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 8:35 pm

Today was our fourth day of rehearsal remounting the Acting Company tour of Romeo and Juliet. Our process has begun somewhat unconventionally because our director, Penny Metropulos, is finishing up a show in Oregon and won’t be joining us until about halfway through rehearsals. But because this is a remount, Corey (our staff director from last year) and I can get our new cast up to speed on the basic structure of the show before she arrives. We also have four returning cast members who can help us, two former cast members who will help teach choreography and fights, and our original fight director, the amazing Felix Ivanoff (for a little more on Felix, see Nick’s post from last year — and we’re not crazy, he’s changed the spelling of his name since then).

We have one new major addition leading our cast through the first couple weeks: Liz Smith is our voice and text coach, and she is really great. She’s one of the most respected people in her field, but also has been working with the Acting Company since its inception nearly 40 years ago, because she was running the voice program at Juilliard when the company was founded. Her job is to help the actors in their interpretation of the script, both in technical matters like making sure they pronounce things correctly and place emphasis on the right syllables, but also in their understanding of the meaning of the text, and how an analysis of the words Shakespeare chooses can help to explain the meaning. Even our returning cast members are learning a lot of new things.

We also have the wonderful Andrew Wade returning as our voice and text coach at the Guthrie, who I miss very much, but it’s a great opportunity for the cast to draw on the talents of both of them over the course of this year.

Picture Day

One of the first things we did this week was a photo shoot. It seemed a bit premature, but venues need images to go with their publicity, and our first tour performances are less than a month away. We took a number of shots of our new Romeo and Juliet, and a group photo of the whole cast.
Don’t they look like a nice group?

They are:
back row: Whitney Hudson, Ray Chapman, Sid Solomon, Jason McDowell-Green, Kaliswa Brewster, Benjamin Rosenbaum
middle row: John Skelley, Jonathan C. Kaplan, Alejandro Rodriguez, Jamie Smithson
bottom row: Elizabeth Stahlmann, Elizabeth Grullon, Stephen Pilkington

Below is a shot of how the magic is made. Our new touring wardrobe supervisor, Mariela, adjusts Kaliswa’s hair before another round of photos. It was really cool to have them in costume on the second day of rehearsal. I think stuff like that early in the rehearsal process always makes the experience more real. We hadn’t even read the play at that point, but already we’re made aware that someday there will be a finished product and these pictures are very close to being seen by people, who will be inspired to spend their money on tickets and will have their butts in seats ready to be entertained when we come to their town very soon. It reinforces the importance of all the messing around in jeans and sneakers, walking between lines of colored tape. It will be real before we know it.

We spent a day-and-a-half on table work. The script has been cut a bit since last year. The hope is that we have eliminated 10 or 15 minutes, to make it easier for schools to attend the show and talkbacks afterwards. The running time of the first read-through was much improved. Obviously that doesn’t always translate to the finished product, but it’s a good sign.

Hooray for Skype

Yesterday we had a video conference with Penny. The internet at her house had been having trouble, but she soon found a spot where the video signal was good enough to make it work. There was a slight delay, which seemed to get better as we went on, so it wasn’t as fluid a conversation as it would have been in person, but the video wasn’t choppy, and she was able to speak to the cast for a while, and ask what we had been working on, and then everybody in the room stepped close to the camera and introduced themselves and what they’re doing on the production. I think it must be very helpful for her and the new people on the production to put a living, breathing, talking face to the other people they’ll be collaborating with.

As Skype conferences go, I considered it a great success (which is not really saying much). We knew she might have connection problems and had planned that we might have to do audio only if the bandwidth wasn’t good enough, so I’m just happy we got intelligible video, even if it was a bit like watching a TV journalist reporting in by satellite.

I also was able to borrow some cheap computer speakers from the office which were more than loud enough to let everybody in the room hear. That’s usually the main problem with full-company conference calls for me. The MacBook Pro speakers don’t do well if you’re not sitting right near the computer.

Staging

Today we finished our table work earlier than expected, and after lunch began staging! Meaghan and I were caught a little bit off-guard, but we jumped in, and everything went pretty well. All I can say is that I’m glad I got in a little early and put most of the furniture spike marks down before rehearsal.

Recreating an exact production is something new for me, so I’m excited to try it. We began with the prologue, which doesn’t really leave a lot of room for personal exploration, blocking-wise. It’s very much an “enter at this time, hit this mark, talk, and exit this way” type of thing. You are umbrella number 12. You will be assimilated. The cast did very well. They seem to be picking up on the ground plan quickly. It may help a lot that some of them saw the production, and there are many photos available of what the set looks like.

When they got that down, we continued staging onward. We quickly hit the first brawl, and sketched out the basic shape of it, without actually addressing detailed fight choreography. So everybody pretty much understands what’s happening, what weapons they have, where they go, and who they fight with. Then we let most of the cast go, and finished the day with the following scenes between Montague and Benvolio and Benvolio and Romeo, which are both more free-form, and in fact changed blocking numerous times (much to my dismay) during the rehearsal process. Corey pretty much let the actors feel it out, but it was actually really fascinating to see some very surprising similarities pop up on their own.

I hope that we can continue to strike a good balance between recreating the previous production while letting our new actors feel like they’ve been given ownership of their roles.

Tomorrow is our dance and fight choreography day, and we also have some scene work happening. I’m actually really intrigued to see how well we can all collectively put the huge puzzle of the party scene back together.


July 7, 2010

Company Video – Shipoopi

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

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

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

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

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


June 5, 2010

Five Midnights Gone – And Happy Every After

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 8:44 pm

Day 5. The show is staged. The show was staged by lunch. Done.

Obviously there’s plenty of work still to come, but it’s really remarkable that such a complicated show can be taught, staged and choreographed in four-and-a-half days. This gives us lots of time and freedom to refine things and make the show really special.

Today the crew worked nearly 12 hours on stage while we were in the rehearsal studio, and over the course of the day, we were able to peek in and see the stage go from bare, to a tree-covered forest, to covered with the giant “book” platform which dominates the vast majority of the playing space. Tomorrow afternoon we’ll be able to rehearse on stage, where we will start from the top, adjusting to having the actual platforms and levels that we have to work with. Everyone is very anxious to get a real sense of how the show will play with the very 3-dimensional space we have.

After tomorrow’s rehearsal we have our sole day off before opening, which I’m very much looking forward to, knowing that we’re ahead of schedule and in great shape to begin week 2.


June 4, 2010

Three Midnights Gone

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:58 am

Day three of rehearsal for Into the Woods, and already I’ve had my first inquiry of “when’s the next blog post?”

We’ve been moving very quickly. Tonight we almost finished blocking Act I. We started blocking last night at 5PM. We stopped in the middle of the Act I Finale (in this show the openings and finales of the acts are probably the majority of the running time). Then we went all the way back to “Once Upon a Time” and ran as far as we could before the end of the night, which was to the end of “It Takes Two.” It was really amazing to see how much of a coherent story we’ve already constructed. We also continue drilling music throughout the day, because, well, the score is evil. I continue to be amazed at how well the cast can absorb and retain it.

I am also becoming aware of the fact that calling the show is not going to be a cakewalk either, and that by tech I probably will need to know the score as well as the cast does to be successful. I’ve started marking my script where obvious cues should be, because there will probably have to be a whole lot of them as focus bounces all over the stage at a rapid pace. During our run tonight I actually started circling a couple places where those cues might best be called. I always feel good when I can get to that point, because it makes rehearsal relevant to my preparation for my part in the show, rather than just being a secretary and furniture mover for other people’s process.

I’m having a great time just enjoying the performances that are taking shape. We have a great group of character actors who also happen to be very strong singers. I found myself wondering why some of them aren’t Equity yet, and then remembered that they’re still in college! I’ve been here for six years and still can’t get over how much talent of all ages and experience levels can be found hiding out in the Boston suburbs.


June 2, 2010

First Day of Rehearsal: Into the Woods

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:33 am

Well our first day of rehearsal has just ended. Or my day has. It’s 11:46PM. My brain is very quickly shutting down, but I need to drink more water before bed, so you’ll get a post while I take some time to wind down.

Like most first days of summer stock season, it was crazy. We began with a production meeting at 12:30. I got in at 11:30 to make some copies, and had a chance to meet and talk with our director, Stacey Stephens, who is new to Reagle this year. We had the standard director/stage manager talk where he explained his style of directing and how he likes to run rehearsals and what he wants from me in that respect. It all sounds great, and I’m looking forward to working with him.

Then we went to the meeting, which was attended by pretty much everybody — a great turnout which makes it very easy to reach decisions and move forward on projects.

That led right into rehearsal where we had a very brief and informal meet & greet, and then dived into the music. With ten days of rehearsal before tech, no time can be wasted in teaching a Sondheim score! Our music department attacked their task ferociously, being very meticulous with every note, but the cast came prepared and rose to the challenge. We had a very ambitious schedule, and still finished it all with an hour and 10 minutes to spare, which we were able to use to work some solos that weren’t expected to be started until Sunday.

So it was definitely an encouraging day. I feel a little bit in over my head because my union is apparently of the opinion that I don’t need an assistant this year. No crises so far, but I’m not sure how long that can keep up. We’re hoping to get somebody to do it for next to nothing — anybody — but until then it’s just me and thankfully only 17 actors. But still, there are a million little things that come up many times a day that simply require another body to operate seamlessly. But I felt supported and appreciated by our creative team, so maybe they won’t hate me if something inefficient happens because I can’t be in two places at once.

Our cast seems very talented — those who I don’t know. The ones I’ve worked with before, I knew were talented already. Starting with Rachel York, who is going to be as amazing as the Witch as she was as Dolly. Which was not to be missed. So get your tickets!

Strangely, not having an assistant has given me the opportunity to get to do things only the ASM usually gets to do. Like keeping an eye on fittings, and people off in far-flung corners of the theatre. Since music rehearsals don’t require constant attention, I was able to move about a bit, sometimes even getting to spend a few minutes in the hall with actors who were not being used. I actually feel like I got to know something about the people I just met, and I had a decent amount of time to catch up with Rachel and some of the others I haven’t seen in a while. My experience of this part of the process in past seasons has usually been that Paul gets to actually talk to people on a personal level, and then as actors come up in conversation between us he tells me about them. I find it very frustrating sometimes that no matter how hard I try, I often can’t find any time to just talk to most people. I’ve done entire shows at Reagle with people I’ve been friends with for years, and despite being thrilled to hear they were cast so we could hang out again, I end up having hardly spoken to them in four weeks. So maybe having to be all things to all people will get me in on some of the socializing that only the ASM gets to enjoy.

But as I said, it was a very good day. I haven’t done a musical since last year at Reagle, so it’s very nice to check back in with that, and remind myself why I do this ridiculous job. I also realize that I’ve never actually done a Sondheim show, and there is much to be excited about. I’m glad I’ve had time to actually sit in music rehearsals and listen while the nuances of the score are explained. There’s a lot of musical symbolism that I wasn’t aware of, except in the sense that it leads you to exactly the feeling you’re supposed to feel. But having it pointed out why it has a certain effect is really cool. I love processes that provide an education in theatre itself in addition to just the teaching of music, choreography and blocking.

So my life might or might not be a living hell for the next two weeks, but I think if I can stay on top of everything I will have a great time. The production meeting set a very good tone, and despite not having an assistant, I feel like everyone has each other’s backs and I once again have a team I can turn to for support from their respective departments. Most importantly, there’s no doubt in my mind this will be a fantastic show that is one I would not have wanted to miss out on in my career.


January 29, 2010

The One-Hour R&J

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 6:35 pm

This is my post where I talk about the one-hour condensed version of Romeo and Juliet that we’ve been rehearsing in between performances of the full R&J, which is designed for younger student audiences (roughly 5th and 6th grade), schools that for some reason can’t come to see the Big Show, or to be performed in places where the Big Show can’t go.

The beauty of the show is that it can scale down to the tiniest venue imaginable. The only requirements are some floorspace (even a regular classroom would work) and 16 chairs (3 of which have no arms and can be stood on), which are provided by the venue.

The actors wear street clothes, and the only props are carried around in a small trunk under the actors’ bus.

The reason the trunk is on the actors’ bus, as opposed to say, on the truck, is that one of the tricks the 1-hour does is to be able to perform in a city the day after the Big Show performs. When the Big Show comes down, the set is immediately struck, and within a few hours of the end of the show, everything is packed up and the truck and the crew drive through the night to the next venue, where the load-in starts at 8AM, for another show that night.

Meanwhile, the cast wakes up the next morning in the same place they went to bed, and boards their bus to head to a school, or sometimes the same venue from the night before, only now on a bare stage. The 1-hour can be performed without any support from the Big Show — all the props are different or duplicates of the show props, and in our case this year, the only sound support will come from a boom box with a CD in it.

There’s only one tricky fact, which leads to the part of the 1-hour that most affects me: if the crew already has the set halfway up, hundreds of miles away, by the time the 1-hour starts, how to stage manage it?

The solution The Acting Company uses in these cases is that the ASM stays behind in a hotel and travels with the cast to the 1-hour performance, and then rides on the cast bus to the next venue, while the PSM loads out with the crew as normal, and advances the Big Show. This is necessary because sometimes immediate decisions need to be made based on the situation found at the venue, which might impact everything from where the set is placed to what spaces should be set up as dressing rooms. The PSM is the person who has to be available when the call comes over the radio, “I need you to come look at something…”

When I took over as PSM last season, I was given very little instruction on how the 1-hour worked. The above situation was explained to me, in the sense that the ASM needs to be able to do the 1-hour self-sufficiently. Now my personal philosophy of management is that if you’re going to make someone responsible for something, you have to also give them authority over that thing (i.e. if the ASM is dealing with props, they are in charge of props, and I won’t do a thing that involves props without clearing it with them.)

So in the spirit of The Acting Company, and its mission to bring professional theatre to new audiences, while also giving young theatre professionals a chance to work on their skills, I took the approach that the ASM should essentially be the PSM of the 1-hour show. I don’t know if this is exactly how it was done before, but in my mind it makes a lot of sense.

Contractually I’m the PSM of all 3 shows we’re touring with, and I’m responsible for the operation of the tour in general, so I can’t entirely check out when it comes to the 1-hour. I could step in if something truly ill-advised was happening, but I’ve never had to do so, and I doubt I ever will.

When we started 1-hour Henry last year, I told Nick he was in charge and could organize things as he saw fit, and in cases where I was around, he could use me as his assistant. It’s nice for me, because I get to switch gears once in a while, and it’s good for Nick because he gets to do the tasks and making the decisions that a PSM gets to make. Some may be big or small, but I think the concept is pretty brilliant. What ASM doesn’t hate something about their PSM’s show report or other paperwork? — or maybe while assisting, thinks of something new and has to wait for their next job as a PSM to get to try it out. So the 1-hour is like a sandbox for the ASM to do things their way.

It’s also good for me, because I don’t assist that much, and when I do it can take time for me to start seeing things the right way. Until I get my head around which job I’m doing, my brain doesn’t naturally react to situations in the way most helpful for an ASM or PA. When a director asks for a prop to be used in a scene, for instance, my instinct is to take a note first, rather than to hop up and get the prop. To have to switch between the two from day-to-day or hour-to-hour within the same job is an interesting exercise.

It’s also been funny these past couple weeks because we’ve been rehearsing every day around our performances, but alternating from day-to-day between Alice and 1-hr R&J. We’re in the same room, we don’t even bother to switch seats because Nick, Ashley and I have had “our” spots at the desk for months now, and there really aren’t many clues as to who’s supposed to be in charge each day.

The other day in 1-hour rehearsal, we were sitting at our desk on a break, and Nick said, “We’re back,” and while finishing up what I was doing, I said, “Thank you.” Then I got up out of my chair, and while crossing to close the door, said, “I mean, yes sir!”

Nick gave me “the look,” and I explained that whether he heard the difference or not, my “thank you” was the PSM thanking the ASM for pointing out the time, not the ASM responding to the PSM’s declaration that the break was over, and I was trying to get myself out of that frame of mind.

I think I was successful because the following day at Alice rehearsal, I was repeatedly disappointed to realize that I was in charge!

Required Reading

For the opposite perspective on the 1-hour, you must read

NICK’S POST

No, seriously, you must. Click on it now. If your browser isn’t total crap, ctl-click on that link (on a PC) or cmd-click (on a Mac) to open it in a new tab, and as soon as you’re done with this, read it. It’s a really good post.

So good, in fact, it got a special entry in the Guthrie’s Big Blue Blog. I might have felt a little left out, were it not for the fact that Nick and I had already had a conversation in which I said it was such a great post that I was just going to add a little bit and then put a giant link saying, “Read this!” Well as it turns out, I had a little more to say about it than I thought. But still, read Nick’s post. He covers some other stuff, as well as the whole PSM/ASM dynamic from the other perspective.

Okay, go now.


Final Guthrie Week

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:57 am

This week I transitioned to calling the show off my new script, with the cues color-coded and typed into the script. I had the script done since previews, but mostly due to running out of paper, and our hole punch getting temporarily lost, I hadn’t had a chance to finish it until this week. It’s always scary to call from a different script, but it’s actually very easy to read. Right away it actually felt more comfortable than the script I’ve been calling from for weeks, which is pretty amazing.

At the same time, I called my first performance with the video monitor turned off. Since tech I’ve used the infrared view for five cues that occur in blackouts or near-blackouts. Knowing that I won’t have that luxury on the road, I have spent the whole run here studying what happens in the dark, looking for ways to call the cues that are reliable and can be done without seeing in the dark. As the cast is now comfortable with their blocking, they are reaching their positions in plenty of time, and it has been very consistent for weeks.

All last week, I had the monitor on, and would close my eyes until right before I called the cue, at which point I would glance at the monitor to check that it was OK. Now I have completely weaned myself off of it. At the end of the first act I will have our prop supervisor giving me a “clear” stage right to make sure that Tybalt has made it offstage before the lights come up. Today for the first time, our local crew member Craig gave me the clear so we could get used to it, though it has been very easy for me to do without it here. However, at other venues where the distance to get offstage may be longer, or the actor may not be as sure of where he’s going, it will be a good idea to get a clear.

Today was our last student matinee — here, at least. We have many more on the road, some of which are our one-hour version of the show.

Today before the show Nick and I were hanging out by the production link, which is the giant hall/bridge area that connects the scene shop across the street with the two mainstage theatres here. The Scottish Play is in the middle of their tech, and we were getting an update on their progress from Trevor. As usual the subject turned to how awesome their set is, and I was saying that I had seen it on their model, and on the video monitors in the green room. Trevor asked if I had time for a tour, and he showed me all of the cool stuff they have, while the crew did their morning notes. Amazingly, in four months working here, I had never actually had the opportunity to set foot in the thrust theatre, though I’ve seen many pictures of it. It was really cool to finally get to see it. From the stage it feels incredibly intimate, although it’s actually much bigger than our theatre. I wish I could see a production in it, but I can see already why its design is so much talked about.

Tonight was our last day of rehearsal for our Alice in Wonderland reading tomorrow morning, and we ran through the show and finished early. Our Artistic Director and Associate Artistic Director, Margot and Ian, just arrived in town for the reading, and treated the cast to drinks to celebrate the end of our long rehearsal weeks.

Between all of these events, I think we all feel the pull of the road growing stronger than the inertia of our long stay here. Every day there are more signs that our time is coming soon. Our crew is here and trailing their local counterparts, tomorrow we get our company manager, we’re almost done with rehearsals (for now), our touring light board and sound package have been delivered. Everyone is packing, sending boxes home, and cleaning their apartments. Very soon our truck and buses will be here.


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