Well we’ve survived the first week of rehearsal. It actually went much smoother than I thought. I always relax more the closer I get to tech, which may seem backwards, but I take comfort from knowing what’s going on, even if what’s going on is huge and insane and may or may not work and it’s all my responsibility. At least I’m in control of it, and when the job starts to become more “stage” than “management,” that’s the part that’s fun. Nobody in their right mind would be a stage manager just because they need a job. There are plenty of other careers you could go into if you don’t care about doing something you love. So I always like to get to the part that makes me look forward to going to work.

A big hurdle for me yesterday was our production meeting. Our first week had been rather hairy schedule-wise, and I was becoming very unsettled about how late into the process we were getting without a full meeting, even if most people involved had done the show before. It was looking like we wouldn’t be able to have one until this coming Tuesday, but when I started to type the e-mail I just couldn’t bear to do it — that’s five days before tech. So with a little bit of begging and pleading, I managed to get everyone to clear their schedules so we could do it at 6PM last night, immediately following rehearsal. We had a lovely meeting, of an hour-and-a-half duration, at a rather relaxed pace. Nothing huge came up, but it was just nice to all sit down and say stuff out loud and face-to-face and make sure everybody was in agreement. We hammered out a slightly different schedule for tech, due to the need to record the orchestra and vocals for one of the movies-within-a-show. We got approval to buy additional dimmers, which is cool. Basically I just felt good that we all sat together and no major crises came up.

I was also feeling rather behind, as I’ve said before, because almost everyone has done the show, and I didn’t get much time to prepare before coming up. I was kind of dreading the production meeting because I was afraid I’d have stupid questions. So to prevent my displaying my ignorance at a meeting I’m supposed to be running, I had my “Meeting with Lori” a little early. I haven’t come up with a better name for this kind of meeting, but I’ve been doing it on a number of shows now, and it works wonders. This is when I find a couple hours to sit down with our very busy TD and she hands me a stack of paperwork if I don’t already have it (fly plot, scene shift plot, etc.) and I break out my script and we just talk through the show. It can take a while, because it starts out slow, going step-by-step. What drops are in, what pipes are they on? (I try to memorize the fly plot early because it gives me a good sense of proportion — how much room various scenes take up and where they play in reference to one another.) The real point of the meeting is to have it before tech so that we can be sure there’s no miscommunication or a change that didn’t get noted — she reads her paperwork and I read mine, and we state how we think the show goes and make sure we both think the same thing. This way when we get to tech nothing I call should surprise the crew, and nothing they do should surprise me.

We discuss absolutely everything that moves, and she will point out potential trouble spots from past experience — this unit is huge and barely fits through where it has to go; this move requires tons of crew; you can’t bring in this drop until the set is pulled upstage; this is a scene change that needs to be run in the light before trying it in a blackout. In places where I don’t quite grasp the enormity of it on paper, we walk out to the stage and I look at the set piece, look at the width of the wing, look at where the drop is hung, then we walk it, we stand where the pieces will go, we walk off like we’re carrying a huge table, the table goes off and turns this way, the doors go off and turn that way, meanwhile the stairs are coming in here. So when the stairs come on the big unit is clear to move to its storage space. It all starts to make sense, in a good way and a bad way — good because I now understand exactly what has to happen, and bad because I understand why it’s going to be so difficult. But as I said earlier, I don’t care if it’s difficult as long as I know what’s going on.

All these things are very helpful, but the best result of the meeting is that I start writing tentative cues in my book. Even if they’re not in exact places, it helps me the next time we do the scene in rehearsal to see the cues there and start thinking about where they might go. Do I need to learn an actor’s mannerisms to catch a visual cue, is it a piece of scene change music I need to concentrate on? Do I need to wait for an actor to cross downstage of a drop before bringing it in? When is he crossing? Then rehearsals stop becoming about the actors’ process with me just being an administrator. It starts to become my process, too, and I can visualize what I’ll be doing during these scenes we’re working on.

We didn’t quite get to do a run of the show as was optimistically put on our schedule for today, but we’re very close. I thought today was a great day. We did only the big group scenes, in order, including one big one we had not yet staged, and we took the time to make sure everything was running smoothly, not just that it was blocked. It was also the day the ensemble and the principals finally got to spend some time together. I always think that day is one of the more magical moments of the creative process.

With many shows, rehearsals are broken up and the dancers are rehearsing in one room with the singers in another, and the principals off doing their scenes somewhere else. There may be a principal leading a dance number, or a singer playing a speaking role in a book scene, but by and large the groups don’t get to spend much time seeing what others are working on, while all working towards the common goal of putting on this show.

Then comes a day when the show starts to be put together in large enough chunks that your rehearsal schedule for the day looks something like:

Then everyone gathers in one room, and sits around and watches everything. The ensemble finally gets to hear the leading lady sing her big song, the principals get to watch the dancers do the big tap number, and everybody laughs and cries at scenes they haven’t seen. Today one of the most minor of things we hadn’t staged was the few background crossovers that happen during the rain scene at the end of Act I. Just a couple people running by with umbrellas and stuff, as the two leads walk through the scene. But I would say it was one of the highlights of the day. There were very few props — Don had his umbrella and hat, one passerby had a page of a newspaper to hold over his head. Just a rehearsal studio, no set, no lighting, no rain. He didn’t even sing the song, just a few bars at the beginning and a few at the end, but I think we all saw the show come to life there. I’ve seen him do the whole number a few times, but there was something about doing the scene with the whole company sitting on the sides, and adding the people walking by that made it suddenly look like a show, and it was easy to imagine how magical the scene will be. Even skipping the song itself, the room broke out in sustained applause when we reached the end of the act. I definitely feel like today was the day the company became a unified entity, and I’m looking forward to the next week as we put larger pieces together — Act I on Tuesday, Act II on Wednesday, and then a run in the studio Thursday, a run onstage Friday, and finally starting tech Saturday.

Stay tuned. Tomorrow’s schedule involves doing laundry, going to the Burlington Mall (for needed clothes, The Body Shop, GNC, and a trip to the Apple Store), and spending too much time on the internet. Tuesday, if you believe the rumors, may see the release of the long-awaited Macbook Pro that I will finally purchase.