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January 21, 2010

Morning Matinees

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

This morning was the last of our 3 consecutive 10:30AM student matinees this week. Some people might look at that and think that after getting over our morning sluggishness, we must be enjoying our evenings off at least. Well no. We have been back in the rehearsal room, working on the 2nd and 3rd of the shows we are doing this year: Alice in Wonderland, and the 1-Hour Romeo and Juliet, which will be performed for student audience that are too young, or for whatever reason are not going to see the full-size show.

After our early shows we have a lunch break, and then 5 hours of rehearsal, until 8PM. So we’re certainly not resting on our laurels despite the fact that the theatre is dark in the evenings.

As for the morning shows, it’s been very hard to get up in the morning. A morning matinee is very hard to prepare for if you haven’t done one in a while. I was thinking this morning that I have no idea how I’m going to deal with 7:30AM bus calls and 8:00 load-ins when I can’t handle a 10:30 matinee.

It’s definitely an acquired skill. The one good thing is that when we have the bus, it’s easier to get out of bed when our beds come with us. If we have some free time during the day, it’s usually just a few steps outside the stage door, where we can take a nap in our own beds, so that makes it easier to get up.

We’ve been working on Alice for two days, then spent today on the 1-hour for the first time. Tomorrow at noon we have more Alice, and 30 new pages of revisions based on exploration we did earlier this week, which just landed in my inbox as I got home. In the evening we have a regular performance of R&J, which everyone is very curious to see the effect of, now that we’ve gotten accustomed to this strange routine of performing in the morning and rehearsing in the evening.


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.


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

On Stage!

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:36 am

A magical thing happened this week. The show has really come to life. It’s hard to describe, but it’s the difference between a show that just kind of happens, and a show that sucks you in and makes you feel like the action is really happening for the first time right now in front of you. In a few short rehearsals our cast has found many new ways to bring their characters to life. On one particular day, I left the room for maybe 15 minutes to make some phone calls to take care of set issues, and when I came back the scene was totally fresh and new. I don’t know what exactly occurred, but all week we have made leaps and bounds in the show. Our run-throughs in the rehearsal room have been highly complimented, even by veteran designers and crew, who usually don’t come to runs to be entertained or moved.

Today was our first day onstage, and the excitement of the show in the rehearsal room has been topped by the excitement of the show on the set. The depth and texture of the structure really makes the action pop off the stage. Everything just looks so good and feels so comfortable. A large part of what we had to do today was to adjust spacing for the actual set, but we haven’t hit any problems, just things we can now refine better in three dimensions.

In the most unexpected good news ever, our platform Fred does not appear to need brakes. Through some combination of the quality of castors and the fact that it’s moving on marley, it rolls almost silently, yet has enough weight and stability that it doesn’t move at all even under significant leaning and sitting. It moves easily when you want it to, and not at all when you don’t. It’s like the scenic holy grail! So we have had to take back all the nasty things we said about Fred.

The theatre has a very warm feel. It’s very intimate, yet also has a grandeur that feels like working in a real honest-to-goodness professional theatre. And of course the Guthrie facility provides all the little goodies a stage manager wants. At my personal tech table, I have plenty of power and ethernet, my headset console, with four channels (of which I assume we’ll use three — deck, lighting and sound), a paging mic, infrared and color monitor, and a cue light panel that I hope to God we don’t need. We have cue lights set up here, but I’d really rather not have to worry about that on the road if all our actor entrances can be handled by Nick giving hand signals off my cue. Anyway, the best part of the cue light panels here is that they have a built-in electric pencil sharpener. Uh huh. Yes, they do. I believe the reason I never blogged about this last year is that they removed the panel from my tech table before I got a chance to take a picture. So this year I made sure I did:

As you can see, it’s a regular electric pencil sharpener that just fits right into the casing. It almost makes me wish I used regular pencils.

My other favorite thing in the room today was our rehearsal mock-up of the victrola we have in the show (what does a victrola have to do with R&J? Well part of what happens at the Capulet party is that Capulet shows off his new technological purchases, such as this fancy device that plays music by itself, and electric lights). In the rehearsal room, we used a cardboard box that vaguely resembled a pizza box, so while waiting for the real victrola to be delivered (supposedly Tuesday), our prop master, Scotty, wanted to make us a more accurate mock-up to use on stage.

Here’s what it looks like before it’s unveiled at the party:

Looks pretty nice, huh? And here’s what it actually is:

I think it’s the greatest rehearsal prop ever. Most of the cast hadn’t seen under the sheet before we rehearsed the party scene, so the reaction when the new victrola was unveiled was very special!

Our day went very well today. Between getting spacing done for all the major scenes, and apparently solving the Fred problems, we’re in good shape. At my urging, everybody on the production team who’s in town was present for the entire rehearsal, as well as our two local carpenters, Craig and Sarah, who are awesome. It’s so nice to finally all be in one room and able to discuss things in real time. That’s why I find tech less stressful than the rehearsal process — aside from learning to call the show, what I really have to do is guide all these people who are specialists in their respective fields to work together and solve problems, and I find that fairly easy and relaxing, once all the people are in place.

We have a very welcome day off (our second in four days, due to our weird Christmas schedule shaking out back to a normal schedule), and then we begin tech on Tuesday.


January 1, 2010

Halfway

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 5:32 pm

Today marks the halfway point in our stay in Minneapolis. We arrived here December 1st, and we depart on January 31st, for our next performance in Moorhead, MN (right next to Fargo, apparently), on February 1st.

As one would assume, we are about to go into tech. Nick, Ashley and I will pack up the rehearsal room on Saturday night, and all of our stuff will be moved up to the theatre on Sunday morning. Sunday is a regular rehearsal day, but instead of being in our rehearsal studio, we will be on stage. Our local carpenters, Craig and Sarah, will be there with us for the first time, where they will begin learning the show, and becoming familiar with the props. I’m sure they already know the set better than us since they put it up.

Sunday’s rehearsal is about spacing, getting used to the ins and outs of the set, and troubleshooting any problems we discover in the course of that.

We have Monday off, during which the crew will complete everything that remains to be done before tech, and then on Tuesday morning we have our first day of tech.

My Team

Although being away from our company’s base of operations has its challenges, one of the things that has helped me stay reasonably sane is that I have a stage management team I trust. At this point Nick and I have been working together long enough that we often think of things at exactly the same time. This year we are taking part in the Guthrie system of using Google Talk to communicate in the rehearsal room and between departments and other shows. Usually at least once a day, Nick and I will type the same thing into Google Talk and send it to each other simultaneously. Yesterday I caught us both letting out an exasperated sigh at exactly the same time and duration. That being said, instead of always thinking of the same thing at the same time, we also often think of things the other has forgotten, which is far more useful than two people thinking the same thing.

Nick

I am a big believer in delegation in a stage management team. I believe the ASM should be an independent entity, and not just a someone who does the PSM’s bidding. I think the biggest part of that is not just to assign certain duties to the ASM, but to empower them to be in charge of certain aspects of the production. That might mean maintaining certain paperwork, or keeping track of certain aspects of the production (usually props).

In our production, I do most of the paperwork, because almost all of it is generated by the database I designed, so any changes to its function go through me, but once I get something working, a lot of the data is Nick’s domain.

Nick is also in charge of props, costumes (mostly because last year’s Henry V was so complicated that costume pieces had to be tracked like props), and I have put him in all the fight rehearsals because he likes it, and he was the fight captain for The Spy last year, so he’s got a good eye for fight choreography and weapons maintenance. When we get to the theatre, he will be the one who knows how things are backstage. I know he’s been watching the entire process with an eye towards backstage traffic, prop tracking, where costume changes happen and so forth, and in his head he has a much better picture of what things will be like backstage.

I have been more focused on what happens in front of the audience — blocking, light cues, sound cues, etc. Chances are we will finish the tour with neither of us ever fully understanding what happens in the other’s world, but that’s why we are a team.

Ashley

Ashley, the Guthrie’s stage management intern, is our liason to all things Guthrie. She knows the people in most departments, and knows who we have to talk to about what. Although this is the second time working here for me and Nick, we have a grasp of the way things are done, but we aren’t fully integrated into this well-oiled machine. Ashley has been with numerous productions here, and can keep us on track with what’s expected of us throughout the process, while freeing us from having to personally interact with all the little details of operations in such a large organization.

She is the keeper of the official Guthrie computer (largely because Nick and I prefer to use our own computers, and they don’t allow outside computers access to the network). Aside from the strangeness of switching computers, email systems, and document formats in the middle of our tour — I mean come on, why would we stop using Macbooks to use a Dell?

When emails go out on the G’s system, they go to Ashley and if it’s anything I need to know, she’ll tell me about it or forward it to me.

As we make the schedule every night, I create it in our database, which arranges it in a vertical format (which I’m not really happy with, but it’s the best I could design before we started rehearsal). The best I can say about it is that no one has ever missed a call because they didn’t read the schedule properly, in fact I can’t remember anyone even asking for clarification, even on the craziest days, which may be the best track record of any schedule format I’ve ever created.

Anyway, Ashley looks at my schedule as I’m making it, and copies it into the Guthrie’s format, which is more horizontal, and shows things going on in different rooms side-by-side, which is definitely a more natural way to conceive of it. The fact that we simultaneously create and then proof-read the schedule in two different orientations allows us to catch problems more reliably, and Nick can also watch my schedule from his computer, as we share access to the database over our network. So between the three of us checking our work, we have never made a scheduling conflict.

Ashley also has access to the magical document that shows who is using what rooms in the entire building. On days when we have multiple rehearsals, fight choreography, movement and voice work going, this can be very important. We also now have Macbeth in rehearsal next door, which is the big show in town and requires more space, but we have been very successful in sharing rooms with them, and coordinating our schedules so we can have time with members of our creative team who are working on both shows. Knowing what rooms are available the following day is essential when scheduling things outside the main room, which also affects what gets scheduled in the main room and when.

Honorable Mention: Corey

Corey is not a member of the stage management team. He is the company’s staff repertory director. If you’re wondering what the hell that means, he functions more-or-less like an assistant director in the rehearsal process, and like a resident director once the show opens. He tours with the company, and maintains the artistic integrity of the show. Which I kind of like, because it means I don’t have to do it! While I would enjoy the challenge, it would be very hard in this situation because I don’t travel with the cast, and rarely get to see them outside of performances. Also, with a two-person stage management team, I can’t swing out to watch the show from the audience, which is often vastly different than watching from a booth. Ian and I worked closely last year and would sometimes confer on things, or even watch and discuss the show together if the booth was comfortable and afforded a good view, but ultimately it’s the staff director who evaluates the performance and keeps up the original direction. Since I’m advancing the show with the crew while the actors are just waking up and boarding their bus in the previous city, I maintain the technical integrity of the show, while Corey will have time with the actors on the bus to give any notes he feels are necessary.

In the rehearsal process Corey and I don’t have all that much direct interaction, but sometimes after rehearsal we check in and discuss how things are going, or things we need to plan for in the future. In my experience from last year, I think that relationship is one of the most important for the success of the tour, because it keeps the physical production and the artistic side of the production working in harmony, which keeps the show’s quality consistent.

In Conclusion

So all in all, having a great team in the room with me has made the rehearsal process incredibly smooth, which has left me more time to deal with all the things that need to be coordinated out of the rehearsal room.

I’m very relieved that the hardest part of our process is basically over, or soon to be, and I’m excited to see what comes out on the other end of tech, which will become the show that we will bring to audiences in Minneapolis and all over the country.


December 31, 2009

Getting Close to Tech

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 7:21 pm

We’re in our last couple days in the rehearsal room. This morning Nick, Ashley and I went up to the theatre before rehearsal. The tech tables are already out. That’s mine closest to the stage in the center.

We’ve had some really complicated schedules as we try to squeeze every moment out of our rehearsal time, and finish all the haircuts, costume fittings and wig fittings. Yesterday the day was crazy. In the first 4 hours of rehearsal, we had 24 individual calls scheduled. Some of them were only 15 minutes long. So to keep track of where everyone needed to be, and to make sure they all got required breaks, I had to map out everyone’s day individually, at least prior to lunch. It was insane, but the chart was actually really helpful.

And finally, we used this time to take a portrait of Nick and I on the set. This is the “hobbit hole”: a small doorway tucked under the balcony stairs, used primarily as the entrance to Friar Laurence’s cell. In this photo, I demonstrate how there is absolutely nothing tight or uncomfortable about the size of this doorway. Nick does not seem convinced.


December 25, 2009

Twas the Day Before The Day Off Before Christmas

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 1:12 am

Just a visual tour of our final day of rehearsal prior to Christmas (Dec. 23rd).

The day began with the Guthrie’s weekly production staff meeting, which last year I attended weekly, but this year got a pass on — except for this week because we’re about to load in, and they thought it was, you know, kind of important.

And this year I had backup — Nick and Ashley were with me as well, and I didn’t have to sit in the “inquisition seat” where the rising sun aligns with the narrow yellow windows to blind the person sitting on a certain side of the room. The department heads had some tough questions for me, and I had a few questions for them, but overall it looks like we’re on track.

As the meeting was concluding, our truck showed up at the loading dock, to unload the marley floor so it can thaw and be rolled out flat for a few days before it has to be laid.

Trevor came down to the rehearsal room to return the key to the truck and tells us that the truck is at the dock if we want to take pictures. I love the fact that people are looking out for our interests as bloggers, as well as as stage managers. So naturally, we went to the dock and snapped some pictures, including Nick posing on the dock.


I didn’t get a good opportunity to get a clear shot of the inside of the truck. In fact, besides the endless rows of road boxes (they purposely sent us more than we need, so we would definitely have enough, and can return the unused ones when we play New York in late February), it was hard to see much. The set seems very flat (as well it should be), and is strapped neatly to the walls. The big staircase was in there in pieces, with what look like very handy castors inserted into the banister posts.

As it turns out, the marley was most of the way into the nose of the truck, so all our many, many road boxes had to be unloaded into the elevator to get to it, at which point they ended up loading all the boxes, and our infamous platform, Fred, into the theatre. The trailer was then parked on the other side of the parking lot to await load in day. It can’t remain at the dock because the Guthrie’s dock is this amazing giant garage-door-like thing that flips up. You can kind of see it in the below picture. With a trailer parked, the door can’t be closed, and while that may cause certain logistical or aesthetic problems, I think the primary one comes down to, “Close the door, it’s f***ing cold!!!” There are, of course doors between the dock and inside, but I’m sure the extreme temperature and wind would find its way into the building, especially through the giant freight elevator.

While the marley was being searched for, Nick and I went up to the theatre to examine the boxes that had come up, in the hopes of identifying unfamiliar ones that might be concealing rolls of marley. There we found our box, and without even opening it, saw the infamous message scrawled on it.

Backstory: when the boxes were being loaded on the truck from Spoon Group in New Jersey, where they are stored, our Associate Artistic Director, Ian, called me to check about which boxes we should bring, and so forth. Ian was the Staff Director last year, and probably the person Nick and I worked most closely with on the road, and Nick and Ian got great pleasure out of antagonizing each other for six or seven months. So before we got off the phone, Ian told me to pass word to Nick that there was a message waiting for him on our road box.

Nick and I tried to get to the box when we went out to the truck at its storage lot, but couldn’t get to it. So finally, we got to see what the fuss was about. And as I thought I heard, the message was truly on the box, not in it. And here it is, with physical commentary from Nick:


In a compromise, we have saved the tape, but it’s been moved to inside the box. And here’s a shot of some of our boxes (the other side of the stage has most of them).

All this happened before noon, and by the time rehearsal started I felt like I had so much work to do and so many questions to follow up on that the last thing I had time for was a rehearsal! But it was a big day, and a very rewarding one: we did our first full run of the show. It was a great way to take our two-day break for Christmas. After rehearsal ended, everybody stayed around for maybe a half hour, chatting, hugging, saying goodbye like it was the last day of school. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but we have a little over a week, and now have a greater grasp of the big picture. All that remains is to refine it.

I leave you with a picture of my desk as it has appeared for the last week or so. My mom sent a crazy springy Christmas tree. Last year I had a similarly-sized fiber optic tree, and kept it at my apartment. This one proved to be such a favorite in the rehearsal room on the day it arrived that I had to leave it for people to play with.


December 23, 2009

Week 3… or Something

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


December 14, 2009

Rehearsal Update

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

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

The Meet & Greet

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

Week Sort-Of-1 (Staging)

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

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

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

The Database

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moving On

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


December 7, 2009

End of Mini-Week 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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