I do not envy her this job- the child wrangler backstage at the Washington Ballet's Nutcracker. Good Lord, what a task. I also know one of the SM's on this show- she's a former OTC intern. She just posted this video on her facebook, which is also really interesting-

you can see her curly hair in front of the monitor in one of the backstage shots.

I would love to work on a show this big, I think it would be so much fun! The bank of cue lights at that console is intimidating. I also really want to call a show from the deck some time... The closest I ever came to that was Pops! and I didn't really call anything but rail cues for that because Joel took his own cues. I'm still bitter about that...

No really, never work with children.

This morning we had a school matinee performance of A Christmas Story. My 7-year-old actor playing Randy, the little brother of the main character, was late for an entrance. It went something like this:

Scene change where several things happen at once in a blue-out.

My realization- I didn't see Randy get behind the couch, but it's possible that I missed it in the scene change.

Mother's line "Randy, are you back there?"

Randy is not back there. Randy is entering the stage, from the wings. Sweatervest half on, suspenders dangling.

Mother has no idea that Randy is not back there, as she cannot see where he is supposed to be hiding, until he walks in the front door of the house like he's coming home.

Before Mother can attempt to cover this situation, he looks out at the sold-out audience of school children, says "I'm late," gives an apologetic shrug, and dives behind the couch.

Mother continues the scene, talking to the now-unseen Randy behind the couch.

I am thinking, at this point, "For the love of God, kid, just put your vest on before you come out from behind that couch."

Randy comes out from behind the couch. Randy has put on his vest. Backwards. Suspenders still dangling.

This kid is a hot mess, but he is so freaking adorable that it almost doesn't matter. Almost.

Things I'm Thankful For- Theatre Themed!

I saw this on Mallory's blog and thought I'd give it my own Thanksgiving theatre twist-

Auburn

I am so grateful for my Auburn family, the Auburn tradition, and my time spent in the Loveliest Village. War Eagle!

Black Sharpies

Sharpies of all types, really. I'm a huge fan of labeling things.

Copy machines

What would my life be without a photocopier? Even though I have a love-hate relationship with the POTS copier...

Days off!

Pretty self-explanatory.

Erasable Hi-liters

You have no idea how much I love my erasable hi-liters. Seriously, I've started to actually color-code things again!

Family

My parents who never really questioned my decision to major in theatre, my grandparents who still aren't entirely sure what my job is, but come to see as many of my shows as they can, and especially all of the support (emotionally and financially) they give me.

Grace!

The best props designer I've ever worked with, hands down.

Headsets

Working without reliable headsets has made me realize how lucky we were at Auburn to have such a nice comm system.

Intern family

Yeah, we fight a lot. Sometimes we get pissy. But at the end of the day, we all love each other. This has been true of every Intern Family I've had, and for that I am blessed.

Katharine & Kendra!

The best SM team anybody could ask for.

K is also for Kelsey: such a good SM- I learned so much more from her this summer than I expected to.

Laptop

I am grateful that my laptop wasn't ruined! Only minor water damage. Heart attack averted.

Microsoft Office

Another self-explanatory one.

Night-vision Cameras

I'm not a spy or a stalker, but I do have to call cues during blackouts. Having a night-vision camera pointed at the stage with a feed to the booth is seriously one of the most useful things for calling a show. I can't even remember what it was like to call cues without one...

Olney Theatre Centre

For taking a leap of faith to hire me for 2 weeks as an emergency substitute replacement temporary ASM, and for taking another leap of faith to hire me again to stage manage a show. My first professional contract(s)!

Playhouse on the Square

I am so thankful for a year-long contract and a whole season of shows that I am stage managing, a whole year of professional credits!

P is also for Pip- mentor, advisor, and artist extraordinaire. Auburn misses you and all your advice, your radical ideas, your motivational speeches, and your hard work.

Q-Lab

I'm actually starting to enjoy running shows in Q-Lab...

Rain onstage (or the lack thereof)

I am thankful to be working at a theatre where it doesn't rain onstage. After 4 years of tarping scenery & keeping towels backstage in the TPT, and a brief stint with a leaky ceiling at OTC, the fact that The Vane had just fully enclosed their theatre was a blessing, and even though Circuit is old, it's not leaky! Knock on wood.

SMNetwork.org

I'm a giant nerd and I love stage management. Everyone on SMNet is as well, & it has proven to be a wonderful resource for advice & just sharing stories about the absurdity that is our job.

Tech staff

I am thankful for a tech staff that I can trust, that knows what they're doing, that always has their shit together.

Useless (useful?) knowledge

My constant stream of useless facts actually come in handy sometimes, if only to give Jeffries a run for his money in Trivial Pursuit. I love to learn new things, whether it's who was the governor of Texas in 1933 (Ma Ferguson) or how to rewire a stagepin plug, and that is a personality trait I am glad to have.

Volunteers

Without volunteers backstage, I could not function.

Weathervane Playhouse

For an unforgettable summer. I learned a lot...

It's not quite the whole alphabet, but gimme a break! It's pretty darn close.

What is my life?

Today I spent 10 minutes with my arm shoved all the way inside a box covered with glitter, attempting to dislodge a wad of tissue paper with a wooden spoon. Then I swept fake snow, went on an Easter egg hunt for prop food scattered about backstage, and threatened to fire a 7-year-old.

Is this real life?

Surreal. That is the only word to describe the first run-through of A Christmas Story. At one point the actor playing Grown Ralph looked at the director and said "Is this for real? Is this really happening?" The director and I looked at each other and she said "We just did not think this through, did we?"

We were rehearsing in two different rooms- one for the Parker house, and one for the other scenes. Not ideal, but we were making do. Then came time to run Act I. If you've ever seen or done A Christmas Story, you'll know why this was a problem- the play is, essentially, the movie onstage. It relies heavily on cinematic-style montages of scenes- 2 pages in the house, 1 page at school, 1 page outside, 3 pages in the house, and so on. For 77 pages. The run-through took about 2 hours, for 1:09 of actual stage time (I'm pretty pleased with myself that I even managed to salvage an accurate run time from that fiasco).

Yesterday was The Great Rehearsal Migration of 2010- the Ballet moved out, which meant that Peter Pan moved their rehearsals from the small rehearsal room to the big rehearsal room, and so A Christmas Story moved downstairs to the small rehearsal room. This meant moving 2 sets of rehearsal furniture and props and all of the ensuing detritus that accumulates in rehearsal spaces, as well as taping out 2 groundplans.

Frantic taping ensued- the floor of the big rehearsal room is unsealed (whose bright idea was that?) so spike tape pulls the paint off the floor. Which means the sets had to be taped in painter's tape, and then spike tape got laid on top of that to color-code the various sets.

In other news, I worked the overnight electrics load-in for Peter Pan, which got me out of the Monday all-call for the scenic load-in. It was fun, and even though I worked from 1:00pm on Sunday-7:00am Monday with an hour break for dinner, it didn't feel like that much. I'm not going to say I was full of energy at the end of it, but I definitely wasn't as exhausted as I expected to be. We started with a bunch of set-backs- couldn't start hanging until midnight for various reasons, spilled coffee on the plot, and had to frankenstein the gel cuts for the cyc fixtures (you can get 4 cuts with the grain going vertically, but only 2 if it goes horizontally. Guess which one we needed? Guess what the ME didn't know when he ordered the gel?) but we prevailed! The hang went really well and we got everything done!

I say I started work at 1:00 on Sunday, but really I just watched the ballet. Ballet Memphis was in residency at POTS for the last 3 weeks, performing A Midsummer Night's Dream. I watched the show from the booth- our lighting designer ran their board for them, so I sat with him and listened to their PSM call the show. I wanted to shadow her, but she called the show from the deck and there wasn't really room for me to stand with her during the show. I really enjoyed the show, it was pretty gorgeous and surprisingly funny. I wish that there were more of the Mechanicals- it's just Bottom and Quince. I guess that's standard for the ballet version? I don't have anything to compare it to, so that's pure speculation.

Right now I'm sitting at the light board- I'm running the board for our lighting designer/master elec while they focus the show.

2 WTF moments & 1 War Eagle moment

Today I had 2 WTF moments:

First, as I was driving in to the theatre tonight for the show, I passed the front doors and saw our house manager outside talking to ... a cop? I pull around the side of the building to park and see that yes, there is a cop car parked beside the building. By the time I had parked and gotten my stuff, the cop had already gotten back in the car and was pulling out, so I high-tailed it inside. No house manager in sight, but our ME is in his office. I asked him why the cop was here and he says "Uh, I think he wanted to buy a ticket, actually." My heart was beating so fast, I thought I was going to go into cardiac arrest.

Then, I found 3 pencils, a pen, a cough drop (unwrapped, but uneaten) and a penny scattered around the apron of the stage. It was like a middle schooler emptied their pockets on the stage. It wasn't there last night, and nobody should've been in the theatre today... It's a mystery.

And I had a total War Eagle Moment this afternoon! My boss and our props designer both had errands to run this afternoon, so I had to meet the head of the theatre department at Christian Brothers University (this tiny little Christian college about 3 blocks away from POTS) to give him a Tele-cue that he was renting from us, show him how it worked, and get him to sign the rental form. Well, I was wearing my Auburn Theatre hoodie, and he War Eagle'd me- he graduated from Auburn with a Theatre degree in... '91, I think he said? His sophomore year was the year they hired Dan! Lynn & Robin were both there when he was, too. His class was the first one to do a haunted house. He also said that he came back a few years ago to visit and (ew ew ew) the green room furniture is the same.

Strangest Patron Ever

So last night, I had the strangest interaction with a patron I think I've ever had- ranked right up there with the guy who didn't seem to understand why I didn't want his 6-year-old daughter to go down the fireman's pole on the set of Alice in Wonderland...

I walk into the theatre at 6:15, a little earlier than usual. The doors were unlocked because of rehearsal in the big banquet room (normally we keep the exterior doors locked for as long as possible due to homeless people). So I walk in and there's this guy standing in the lobby, right inside the door. I gave him the quick Memphis once-over (are you dressed like a hobo? can I smell you from where I'm standing?) and then saw that he was holding a comp ticket voucher, so he was obviously in the right place, just really early.

Man: Is this Black Pearl Sings? Is that here?

Me: Yes sir. There's nobody here from the box office yet, but feel free to wait in the lobby until they open.

Man: Where do I wait?

Me: Right here, in the lobby. There are some benches here, or feel free to look at the art in the gallery through those doors.

Man: I can't go in there yet, though? (ie, into the house)

Me: No, not yet. You need to wait in the lobby.

Man: OK, thanks. What's your name?

Me: Becky.

Man: OK, thanks Becky.

Me: No problem, sir. Enjoy the show.

I went upstairs to the booth. This took me about 30 seconds. When I got to the booth I glanced out the window, and saw the man sitting on the chaise onstage. I leaned out the window and yelled "SIR! GET OFF THE STAGE PLEASE!" And he looked up all startled and saw me, and walked back out to the lobby.

At this point, I'm a little bit freaked out, so while I was eating my dinner in the green room I turned on the monitor for the stage, so I would be able to see if he decided to take another nappy-nap on the set. He didn't come back in, and I thought I'd seen the last of him...

Then, at 7:00, I was standing onstage with one of the actresses, just chatting about the little kids in the audience at the morning matinee, and he opens the doors from the lobby and walks into the house!

Me: Sir, you need to wait in the lobby, please.

Man: Becky!

Me: Please wait in the lobby until we open the doors.

Man: Oh, I thought I heard them say the show was about to start.

Me: No, sir, we've got an hour before the show starts. You need to wait in the lobby.

Man: What time does the show start?

Me: 8:00.

Man: What time is it now, like 7:30?

Me: No sir, it's 7:00. There's an hour before the show starts.

Man: Well what am I supposed to do until then?

Me: Uhhhhh

Actress: You could. Uh. Go get some dinner. Or something?

Man: I already did that!

Me: Well, sir, I'm sorry, but you're just early. The show doesn't start for an hour...

Just then our house manager opened the door and got him to go back into the lobby.

I'm not entirely sure if he had something wrong with him or what, but it was absolutely bizarre.

Tape.

Today I taped out 2 sets- first, I helped our mainstage ASM tape out the Darling Nursery for Peter Pan in our main rehearsal room, then I ventured alone to the wilds of the 5th floor to attempt to tape out the set of A Christmas Story.

I was excited to tape out the Peter Pan set because it meant I could use my nifty little drafting of the rehearsal room that I made for the first time! I was without a task for a little while one day at work, and decided to get a transparency and draft our main rehearsal room onto it in 1/4" scale, so that we can lay it down on a groundplan and know exactly how much of the set will fit in the room and also where that damn pole will end up before we start taping it out and realize that it's smack in the middle of something important, which is what seemed to always happen. Anyway, I did that, and this is the first time we've used it. It was actually pretty helpful, we smooshed some stuff around to make the pole land in the middle of the bunkbed where it would be out of the way.

And then I went upstairs. To the 5th floor. Let me explain about the 5th floor- it is empty. It is a desolate wasteland of empty office space, not even used for storage. Mostly it's just empty- a few of the rooms have scary things in them, like the kitchen with the breaker panel facing on the floor, and the bathroom with no ceiling tiles because the roof leaks- but it's primarily a maze of empty offices. Well, A Christmas Story is rehearsing in this empty maze due to an utter lack of space elsewhere on POTS property, and while it is not an ideal rehearsal space (none of the rooms are really big enough to get the whole set taped out) it's actually starting to grow on me. I've spent the last few days vacuuming, changing light bulbs (which caused a breaker to blow and all of the lights to cease working for a few hours) and Clorox-wiping every surface I can imagine these children touching in preparation for rehearsals to begin upstairs. I've also put up signs with arrows leading from the elevator to the rehearsal room and from the rehearsal room to the bathrooms, and signs that say Homework Area, Props Go Here, etc. I'm enjoying the fact that this space is 100% ours- we won't have to share it with anyone, and while it is not ideal, it's not half bad, either.

My real adventure today was taping the set out... I fit the house in the bigger of our 2 rooms, and the school and Christmas tree lot are going in the smaller room next door tomorrow. I was taping by myself, which is always an adventure, doing the whole "pull a few feet of tape and then step on the end and stretch" thing. The biggest challenge is the fact that this room has brown shag carpeting covering every inch of the floor. I'm not sure yet how well the tape is going to hold up on the carpet, but I do know that none of my lines are straight- pushing the tape down makes the carpet move underneath it, which makes the lines all wiggly.

I think that taping on shag carpet might actually be worse than taping out The Producers this summer when we ran out of colors of spike tape and had to make more by coloring dots and stripes with Sharpies. At least then the lines were straight...

Anyway, the moral of my story today is this: USE SCISSORS. Or a box cutter. Or a knife. Or a sharp stick. Something other than your fingers to tear copious amounts of spike tape, cause my fingernails are jacked up, y'all.

Lazy playwrights

We opened Black Pearl Sings! last night! It was a great opening performance, the audience loved it and the 2 actresses in the show had maybe the best run we've had so far.

The story of the play is great, but I just really have a bone to pick with the playwright. There are so many historical inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the script it's just ridiculous. None of them are so major that they couldn't be fixed with a little tweaking, but they're also big enough that anyone who does even a tiny bit of googling will notice them immediately. The fact that they're there in the first place is really just appalling- he either did no research into the historical accuracy of what he was writing about, or he chose to completely disregard it. I need a little time to rant...

-The biggest inaccuracy is the fact that the play is set in 1933 and Susannah states multiple times that she wants to be the first female professor at Harvard. The first female professor at Harvard was Alice Hamilton, an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial Medicine and a pioneer of workplace safety regulations who was hired in 1919.

-Another thing that bothers me is the terrible dialect that Pearl's lines are written in. She is from Hilton Head, and a part of the Gullah people. The Gullah dialect is extremely distinctive, and Pearl's lines are written phonetically in what I can only describe as some sort of generic, inconsistent, stereotypical poor grammar that bears no similarity whatsoever to the Gullah dialect. What bothers me the most, I think, is the inconsistency- she doesn't always use the singular instead of the plural. She doesn't always use incorrect verb tenses. She doesn't always drop the possessive. Just sometimes.

-Another historical inaccuracy- Pearl says "Those historical ladies last night say they got a motto- 'Well behaved women never make history.' " That phrase was coined by a woman named Laurel Thatcher Ulrich at some point in the 1970s.

-Another lovely inaccuracy- they mention in the play multiple times that the house across the street is "the narrowest house in New York" and "the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay lives there." Edna St. Vincent Millay really did live in the narrowest house in New York... for one year. 1923. A decade before the play takes place.

-Another brilliant lack of historical research on the playwright's part is the fact that in the summer of 1933, the governor of Texas (referred to in the play multiple times in the masculine, but never by name) was a woman named Ma Ferguson.

Plus the fact that he made the daughter's name Uniqua just irks me. It's drawn a laugh from the preview audience & the opening audience, and it's not supposed to be funny...

Walkin in Memphis

So. Since the last time I updated I have finished my summer at The Vane and then opened and closed a show at my new theatre, and started rehearsals for the next one.

I am now the Stage Manager for the Circuit Playhouse at Playhouse on the Square in Memphis. What I didn't know when I took the job was that, until February of this year, the theatre that I'm SMing was the mainstage, and the Circuit Playhouse was in another building a few blocks away. They just opened the brand new building across the street, aka POTS, and moved Circuit into the old mainstage, which is awesome for me- I was expecting a dinky little blackbox, but instead I'm in a 250-seat proscenium house (no flies though- boo!) in the historic Memphian Theatre (reportedly Elvis's favorite place to play when he came home to Memphis). How cool is that?!

My first show here was Superior Donuts, by Tracy Letts. I came in for the last few days of rehearsal, and then we started tech! That show was... interesting. All community actors, and I had no crew person backstage. That was a shocker for me- I knew I wouldn't have an ASM, but I was literally the only crewmember on this show. I ran the lights and sound through QLab (I wish so much that Sound Design hadn't been a complete waste of a semester, because it would be really helpful for me to know what the hell I'm doing in QLab), and there was no one backstage. I thought that was a poor decision on the part of everyone running the show before I got here- there were a lot of props in this show, and a few scenic things that needed to happen during Act 1 that the actors had to do. I did the intermission shift by myself, which took 12 minutes- so much for a bathroom break! Donuts ran for 4 weeks (man, it's been a while since I posted anything!), we closed on Sunday.

Now I'm in rehearsals for the next show to go up at Circuit- Black Pearl Sings! It's a relatively new play- it hasn't been published yet, and we're still in contact with the playwright, but it's been performed at a few other theatres (small world, my ASM at OTC saw it at Ford's Theatre when it premiered). It's a 2-woman play with music, and it's posing an interesting challenge with some historical inaccuracies and the utter lack of resources to find this music- the playwright sent us a CD of the songs, but we have been unable to find sheet music for most of it. It's tough going for some of this music, friends.

The work schedule here at POTS is tough- we basically work 10 out of 12's 6 days a week. 10-1, 2-5, 6-10. I work in the office in the morning, with the production manager/PSM, the props designer, and the mainstage ASM (once she arrives!) doing anything from photocopying scripts (which is what I'm doing right now, aka time for blogging!) to production meetings to helping make props. If I have anything I need to do for one of my shows, that's always my priority for the morning shift, and if I finish that then I get a job from the PM or props designer. If neither one of them has anything for me to do (which rarely happens) then I go play with the Master Electrician and the resident Lighting Designer. They like it when I come help- they were shocked to find out I actually know what I'm doing with electrics. The fact that I volunteered to cut their gel also endeared me to them somewhat.

For the afternoon shift, it could be one of two things- more of the same as the morning, or rehearsal. Directors have the option of having rehearsal in the afternoon in addition to the evening, but some (Donuts) don't use it, while others (Black Pearl) do. In the evenings, I'm either in rehearsal or a performance.

I've also run some auditions (A Christmas Story and Grey Gardens, both of which are mine, and Peter Pan, which runs on the mainstage at Christmas).

Also, another small world- a friend of mine from middle school was cast in the ensemble for the tour of Legally Blonde! I was so excited for him, and then a girl who used to work at The Vane was cast as Margot/Elle's understudy as well. I've had at least 3 friends from AU and 1 friend from The Vane that I know of who have seen this show. I wish I could see it so badly, but they aren't coming to Memphis. =/

Theatre is such a small world. Let me see how many times I can say that in this post, but it's true- 2 of the other interns (an acting intern & the master electrician) were on the National Players tour together last year, so I already knew them from OTC. How weird is that??

Hairspray, wow!

We opened Hairspray last week- the last show of the season! It's weird not being in rehearsal at the same time as performance...

Hairspray is a challenge- it's the biggest (also youngest...) cast of the season- 30 actors, 9 of whom are either in high school or just graduated- we have less backstage space than we did for The Producers, and the tent out back that we used for furniture/prop storage is now the dressing room for the male ensemble. The problem was also compounded by the fact that we didn't have a lot of the scenic pieces until final dress and/or opening night, in some cases. Opening night was the first time we had the giant (9 feet tall, 4 foot diameter) hairspray can backstage for Act I, which caused all kinds of traffic problems that actually resulted in the actor playing Edna Turnblad falling backstage during the quick change in Welcome to the 60's. We had to hold the show for about 5 minutes while we bandaged him up, his legs were scraped up pretty badly. His giant beehive wig probably saved him from a concussion, too. We (my SM and I) were complimented by a few people on how well we handled the situation, nobody panicked or anything and it only took us a few minutes to get him ready to go.

We've had a lot of problems with the set, actually. Casters coming off of rolling units, and most importantly- the turntables not working. We have two small turntables that rotate A LOT through the course of the show (the Turnblad house, Penny's house, Detention, etc). Apparently it was someone's bright idea that they didn't want to see people turning them, so the shop staff rigged up a pulley & caster system. Unfortunately, one of them has the casters done up poorly, which makes it extremely difficult to turn and really susceptible to malfunctions.

I'm also starting to get rehearsal reports for Superior Donuts, which is my first show at Playhouse! I start work there in 2 weeks! My first day of rehearsal is one of the final run-throughs before we go into tech. The current SM sent me a copy of the cast list and the rehearsal schedule, but I don't have a copy of the script yet, which unfortunately makes the rehearsal reports pretty useless. They're supposed to be mailing me a copy of it, so here's hoping I'll have a chance to read it before the first day of work!

geeking out!

My SM and I are geeking out in choreography rehearsal right now. We are super stage management nerds.

First of all, Kels found this:

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/theatre_performance/objects_theatre_performance/doyly_carte/index.html

It's a collection of pdfs of prompt books from a stage manager at the Savoy Theatre from the late 1800s. They are amazing. I cannot handle how cool this is. Or how much our jobs haven't changed in 150 years. They take blocking the same way we do, they just write in calligraphy. CRAZY. Absolutely crazy.

Also, I just found this website, www.smnetwork.org that is SUPER cool- it's just a bunch of forums for stage managers, and it's actually pretty active. I've been reading stuff on their message boards all morning, and got super excited about making a virtual call-board/website thing. I think I want to try that for Memphis- I'm the PSM for the theatre, and my boss said she wanted me to "make it my own," whatever that means. I'm messing around on googlesites right now, and it's looking pretty promising!

when it rains...

I am perpetually amazed at the things we have to deal with in theatre...

Yesterday I missed most of the day of Hairspray rehearsals (yeah, we're halfway through rehearsal for that already!) to go rebuild the sound cues for Alice with our resident sound designer. Our sound intern has left the company, and we were running the show from his personal computer. That worked out fine, it just took forever and a day. So that was fun.

Our resident sound designer has this thing where he doesn't like to take cues from stage managers. At all. I don't know why, but when he is running a show that he has designed, he takes his own cues, so having to run Alice now is going to make him INSANE. Well, he did not design this show, the intern did. There are 45 sound cues, many of which go off of light cues. He is not familiar with this show at all. Also, we don't have headset communication between the booth and the board (we lost 2 packs in tech, so I'm also talking to my ASM via walkie), so we had cue lights set up for me to call the cues for the intern. He kept bitching about having to take cues from me, and all I wanted to do was say TOUGH SHIT. SUCK IT UP. The show went fine, we didn't have any problems, but I had to listen to that all afternoon. Sound designers are a strange bunch.

Our Mad Tea Party scene is insane- the audience loves it, but it's a stage management nightmare. Last night our March Hare spat a piece of half-chewed bread onto on of the tables. I told my ASM that he had to clean it up himself- it's not in his blocking to spit chewed food on the table! That is disgusting! I was going to give him stage management dollars for picking up a tea cup that got kicked halfway across the stage, but he got sassy with me about cleaning it up himself, so NO SOUP FOR YOU, CRAZY RABBIT! Not that stage management dollars actually amount to anything, it's like Who's Line- the score's made up and the points don't matter! But that's disgusting. He can spit whatever he wants wherever he wants as long as he cleans it up himself.

Alice in Wonderland is a trip and a half.

meanwhile, back at the ranch...

SO it's been almost a month since my last post... I'm going to recap some stuff in bullet points.

-We survived The Miracle Worker. It was an excellent run of an excellent show. The set turned out gorgeous, and although I never actually saw them, I've been told that the lights were gorgeous too.

-We survived The Producers too! The actor who stepped in to play Max did a fantastic job, and the reviews of the show were fantastic. We struck that show last night...

-So about The Producers... the set for that show was so intense/had so many moving parts that we ended up getting the lighting designer, the ATD, the sound intern, and the carpentry intern to be our run crew, in addition to the 3 run crew members we already had. We tried at first to get by with crew and actors moving the set, but the scene changes took forever and were just dangerous, so we ended up with shop staff doing it. It worked out so well, though- it took 2 of the guys to move each wagon, where it took 4 actors to do it, and they did it in half the time.

-Another fun thing about The Producers is that there was not enough room backstage to store all of the set pieces, furniture, and props, so we set up a big pavilion tent outside and at intermission, we rolled up the elephant door and switched out stuff that was only used in Act I for stuff that was only used in Act II. It was ridiculous. There were also times (like the Accountant scene in Act I that required 5 rolling desks with chairs attached) that furniture came offstage and literally just kept going straight out the back door. We were scared about what would happen if it rained, but we got super lucky- there was only one night that it rained, and it held off till right after Intermission. We knew it was coming and did the shift in 7 minutes, literally running back and forth between the backstage and the scene shop, where we were keeping all of the props that could be damaged in the rain. It was really windy and the clouds were just black, and almost as soon as the Entr'acte was done, the bottom fell out. We group-hugged and said a prayer of thanks to Thespis and Dionysus for holding off the rain for us.

-A perk of having half of the tech staff on the run crew instead of high school apprentices was that things got fixed really fast, sometimes within minutes of it breaking onstage. That was super helpful when it came to things like the gun that kept misfiring or facing coming off of platforms as we move them on and off stage.

-Also, while all of this Producers craziness was happening, I was in rehearsal for Alice in Wonderland. I have neither the time nor the inclination to open the can of worms that is the recap of the rehearsal process for Alice at this moment, so that will wait for another time.

The vultures are circling.

There has been a lot of media attention regarding Matthew's death. All of it has been really tasteful and well-done so far, but a lot of the reporters themselves have been really insensitive regarding the fact that our friend, our boss, and the director of this show just died. Stuff like they want to come film our dress rehearsals (which they can't legally do anyway) and want to talk to the kids about Matthew and want to schedule times to come talk to people with no regard for the fact that we are not only mourning, we are also scrambling to pick up the slack on top of normal summer-stock tech week and we don't really care what time is best for you to come talk to us. Also, a group of people who worked with Matthew on a community theatre show wanted to come to the theatre to grieve in our lobby before a show. I know that he was loved by the community and impacted a lot of people, but we still have a show to do- not only would a group of people crying in the lobby be terrible for the other patrons, it would also be so saddening for us who are trying to keep working without breaking down in tears.

We made it through tech last night, with Brice & Erika, the two artistic associates, running it. It went really smoothly, which was a pleasant surprise for everyone. If we can make it through this tech process, we'll be ok.

The show must go on.

Matthew Trombetta, the Managing Artistic Director here at Weathervane, passed away at 3:30am today following a head-on collision with a drunk driver, on his way home from the My Fair Lady strike.

He was the heart and soul of Weathervane, and he had such an impact on so many people. I've only worked with him for 4 weeks, and I already cannot imagine what my career is going to be like without him in it.

We start tech for Miracle Worker tomorrow. He directed the show, so this is going to be an absolutely heartbreaking process. This theatre was his life's work, though, and I know from the brief time that I was able to work with him that cancelling anything is the opposite of what he would want.

Here's the story in the Columbus Dispatch. There was a nice piece on the local news as well.

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/06/15/troupe-mourns-loss-of-artistic-director.html

Kansas! Also, blind kids!

So tech at Weathervane is NUTS. We have 3 days of tech- one day of spacing, scene changes, etc. (it's the first rehearsal on the actual stage) and then 2 days of dress rehearsal.

The thing about My Fair Lady that made this whole process even more intense is that because of the renovation, our second dress rehearsal was also the grand-opening-ribbon-cutting-gala-ceremony-extravaganza with like 250 donors, season ticket holders, etc. Too bad we didn't make it all the way through the end of the show in the first dress! Wahoo!

So for the gala, they got everything ready and all fancy and made a bunch of speeches that we didn't hear because we were rehearsing, and we start the show, and halfway through the Overture we hear a siren outside, and then the Artistic Director yelling "HOLD! HOLD! HOLD!" There was a tornado warning (watch? warning? whichever one is the one where there's actually a tornado). So the actors are all in the dressing rooms, and the audience is chillin in the seats for about 10 minutes. One of our donors is the county fire marshall, so he had his radio and was getting all of the updates on the situation, which quickly progressed to a tornado moving in our general direction, so we evacuated everyone into the Children's Theatre, which is the safer building- no windows, lower ceiling, etc. So then we had about 300 people in the Children's Theatre, which isn't completely finished being constructed yet, so the crew was frantically carrying in chairs for the old people (most of the audience was old) and flashlights in case we lost power and it was a MADHOUSE. At one point the Artistic Director started serving cake from the gala, and then the cast was singing to try and keep people from panicking. All of the crew and the theatre staff were remarkably calm and composed during the whole ordeal, thank God.

My SM & I decided that if the theatre is actually hit by a tornado, at any point in the summer, really, we will be getting matching tornado tattoos. We thought we were all going to get blown away, the weather was absolutely terrifying outside! Also, wouldn't it just be beautiful irony for the brand-new building to get blown away by a tornado during the ribbon-cutting ceremony?

Anyway, we finally got to resume the show, we got started around 9:15. A lot of the audience left, understandably, but we had a fairly large number who stayed all the way through. And when I say all the way through, I mean we skipped large sections of the show that we had run in the first dress so that we could make it through the end of the show before midnight, which we barely achieved. The result of all of this was that we opened the show without ever running it from start to finish on the stage in one sitting.

We opened last night, and it actually went very well, considering. The other crazy thing is that the first day of performance for one show is simultaneously the first day of rehearsal for the next one, so we rehearsed Miracle Worker from 10:00-5:00 and then went to open My Fair Lady.

Miracle Worker is one of my favorite plays, I really like it. I wish I could see it performed in Tuscumbia, they do it every summer in Helen Keller's actual house. The character of James is such a great part, the actor who's playing it is doing a fantastic job. I really just think James is so funny, poor guy.

We have two girls playing Helen- the main Helen and then her understudy. Her understudy is one of those obnoxious Broadway babies. Also a very bossy child. Helen is fantastic, though. We played a lot of blindfolded games with the kids and the girl playing Annie, which of course resulted in us being groped by blindfolded 10-year-old girls, because they put their arms straight out and up, which is right at boob height. Classy.

We're rehearsing at a Lutheran church in downtown Newark right now- no more rehearsal in the abandoned elementary school/architectural firm gym! The irony of this situation is that the church also houses the Licking County Center for the Visually Impaired. We share a wall with them, and can hear them on the phone all the time. It's a little uncomfortable, actually.

Silly rumors!

So Winny's ex worked at Weathervane a few summers ago, and when he found out I was working here he was like "Oh no, I wish you'd told me before you accepted the job there- their SM quit halfway through the summer because the company was so awful!" which of course freaked me the hell out. I finally got the skinny on what actually happened- two years ago (my SM's first summer here), the current SM was hired as the ASM, and this girl got hired as the SM. She quit after the first week, on her day off, and didn't even tell anyone. So they bumped the ASM up to PSM, which is the job she's had for 2 years now. According to her, the original girl was a terrible SM to start with. Anyway, that makes me feel a LOT better. I mean, nothing that I have experienced so far would make me think that conditions here would drive someone to quit- most of the backbone of the staff is the same as it was 2 years ago, and they're all pretty great.
We "ran" the whole show today, sort of. It's rough not having a stage crew yet to handle the scene changes. What's worse is that a lot of the furniture will be on wheels, so it can be moved on by one person, but our rehearsal furniture isn't, so it takes 2 people to move it. I can't wait until I'm not the one having to carry this furniture around!

Also, I found out an interesting tidbit today- Weathervane's tech rehearsals are from 5PM-midnight, which SUCKS, and is NOT the norm. Turns out that the reason they're so late at night is because the theatre wasn't fully enclosed (hence the current incomplete renovation) and they couldn't start tech rehearsal until it got dark, because they couldn't set any light cues while there was still daylight. My SM was hoping that since we have a roof now, we could move the rehearsals earlier in the day, but the answer to that request was a resounding no- they've scheduled focus and scenic painting to be on stage during the day, so it's a no-go on us moving earlier. That was such a foreign concept for me- having to start tech at night because of the daylight. Also, we're concerned about actors not being used to actual blackouts now. We'll see what happens on Monday!

You know that old phrase...

So you know that old saying about theatre, "Never work with children or animals"? Well, we have decided that it should be changed to "Never work with old people." It is seriously ROUGH. You have to explain things to them over and over and over and then they just forget it again by the next rehearsal!
Speaking of never working with children or animals, we've cut the dog from Miracle Worker thank the lord, and we also requested (and were given) a child-wrangler for rehearsal. She's the associate choreographer/dance captain, so she doesn't technically have a job during Miracle Worker.

The lack of responsibility is refreshing.

I haven't been an ASM in a while, and I was afraid that I was going to despise it, but in all actuality I am loving the fact that I have almost zero responsibilities.
Today I:
-sat at a door & let people into the building (aka 2 people, the rest of the time I just read my book & drank my coffee)
-turned pages for the music director
-ran errands (for myself, not for the theatre)
-hung out with the shop staff in "the cabana"
-sat in rehearsal and drew pictures
-moved a few pieces of furniture around
-talked to the props designer

That's pretty much my day every day. I have to say, it's nice not to have to be the one in charge of things for once.

Scrumbles

We stumbled-through Act I today! Sort of... we didn't make it all the way through. I'm just amazed that we have Act I blocked in 6 days of rehearsal. That is so insane to me, it is SUCH a short period of time.

It was SOOO hot in the gym today, we opened all the doors to the outside to get a breeze in, and from where I was sitting (hidden in the corner so I could plug my computer into the one outlet with a ground so I could do paperwork) I could see these little boys playing in the yard of the house by the back door of the gym, and they climbed up on a picnic table by the fence and watched our stumble-through. It was absolutely precious.

Talking to Meg last night, and talking to Corey today, I realized I've been pretty lucky to work with legit companies and legit programs. I mean, as much as we bitched about our department, Auburn has a pretty good theatre program (definitely better than Belmont's!). And then talking to Corey today, the theatre she's working at right now? Geeze. Her SM is apparently a Nazi about where people sit in rehearsals. And also called 3 ASMs for table work. I'm just sayin, I've worked for some legit companies.

Day off, sort of...

Last night was the welcome picnic hosted by the Board of Directors. It was cute... also kind of a waste of time for everyone but the Board. We just ate, and then sat in the theatre and listened to board members introduce their children. But they give us money, and do things for us so I guess it's a fair trade.

Today we had our first day off... sort of... there was a production meeting and maintenance men interrupting it. Also ice cream and wandering around downtown Granville with my SM. And getting my car fixed for free! I'm a fan of this place.

I really wanted to write something tonight, but I'm SUPER tired and have rehearsal at 10AM so I'm going to bullet-point:

- My SM arrived today (had a flat tire on the way, poor thing!). So far she's pretty fantastic, I really like her personality and she was super competent in rehearsal today, even running on literally no sleep in 36 hours.
- A bunch of us went to Columbus tonight to a pay what you can production of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women at a theatre called Theatre Daedalus. The play was fantastic, I'd never read it before and I really liked it. Two of the three women were fantastic, the other one was only meh.
- Theatre Daedalus literally has lights made of coffee cans and paint cans. It was amazing, I was absolutely enthralled.
- Went to dinner after with the sound intern, costume intern, artistic associate, and artistic director at a fabulous restaurant downtown. Stupendous. Ate fried green beans and had a great conversation with them all.

This is my 2nd day of rehearsal for My Fair Lady at Weathervane. My SM won't be here until tomorrow, so I've been running rehearsals for the last two days. People keep saying "OH you just got here and you got thrown into this blah blah blah," but it's nothing that I haven't done before. Sitting in music rehearsals and taking basic blocking notes are the same no matter where you are, and the rest of the staff is super helpful.

The weirdest part of this whole situation is the fact that the theatre is still under renovation. They're almost done, supposedly. They keep telling us that the mainstage will be completely done by the time My Fair Lady opens in two weeks, but I'll be interested to see how that goes. It's been really rainy for the last week, which has thrown them off.

The result of that is that we are rehearsing in a borrowed space- the gym of an abandoned elementary school that was bought by an architectural firm, which obviously has no use for a gym. It's actually a fairly nice rehearsal space- it's pretty much the perfect size, has good bathrooms and kitchen we can use, so as borrowed space goes it's pretty sweet. It's really close to the theatre, too, and easy to find. The weirdest thing about it is that this elementary school is so old, there is only one set of outlets in the gym that have a ground! All of the outlets only have 2 plugs, and of course the one with the ground is on the opposite side of the room from where we set up the tech table. There's also no internet here, which blows, and the internet has been super sketchy at the theatre because of the construction. I had to go to a coffee house yesterday to email production meeting notes to the SM! At least it works on campus.

This town is the definition of "quaint."

I made it to Granville! I'm all moved into my dorm at Denison University, where the theatre staff is staying for the summer. It's pretty nice. A little bare, but it's a pretty big room that I get to myself, so I'm not complaining.

I went down to the Broadway Pub tonight after Mom & Dad dropped me off- there was a big gathering of theatre people there tonight. There was a lot of reminiscing about past productions from people who are returning company members, but I ended up staying to talk with the Artistic staff well after most of the rest of them left.

I've got a HUGELY busy day tomorrow- my SM isn't arriving until Saturday (she's walking at her graduation) so I'm in charge, but I have noooo idea where anything is or what's going on. I'll manage though! It'll be an experience, that's for sure.

Set sail on the failboat!

So this whole journal thing epic-failed. Being in rehearsal left me very little time for working on the show itself and still doing homework, as little as I had, so I did not have any kind of time left over to blog every day. I think it's pretty obvious from the dates, but Spelling Bee is over, as is Auburn Pops! which was the second show I SMed this semester (3rd of the year- I did Intimate Apparel in the fall). I got an A on it! ...I think all of us got A's. The only faculty members I got responses from were Dan and Daydrie, so there's that. I still don't know if I got a KCACTF nomination- I don't know if I didn't get one or if Dadyrie just didn't tell me, but the only noms listed on the website are the acting nominations done by the respondent.

In other news, I am officially an Auburn grad, class of 2010!

I'm leaving tomorrow morning to drive to Granville, Ohio- I have an internship at Weathervane Playhouse for the summer! I'm the ASM for 4/5 shows in their summer season, and I'm SM for Alice in Wonderland, which is the 4th show in the lineup. Looking at the rehearsal calendar just about makes me nauseous- 10 days of rehearsal for a 10-day run, rehearsing the next show during the run. Geeze.

My SM for the summer is the same age as me, which is a little daunting, but it's her 3rd summer at The Vane, and she's from VCU so I'm hoping she's a powerhouse. If she's not, well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Weathervane has been around for ever, but they hire really young. I believe my SM's words to me on the phone were "You're over-qualified for this job, so you shouldn't have a problem."

After The Vane, I'm going to Playhouse on the Square in Memphis. I'm a member of the Associate Company there, and while I'm technically an intern, I am the SM for all of the shows in their smaller space, The Circuit Theatre. They're a professional, non-union company that hires AEA artists (Guest Artist Contract? Small Professional Contract? I need to find that out).

I got both jobs at SETC, I'm really excited for them both. Neither is an Equity theatre, but they both had huge draws for me- Weathervane is doing a season of huge musicals (My Fair Lady, The Producers, & Hairspray, along with The Miracle Worker & Alice in Wonderland) and I have a dearth of shows like that on my resume, and that's what big theatres look for- SMs who have done big shows. Playhouse has a really great placement quota for their interns, especially for the Circuit SM- I will have basically spent a year as the PSM of a theatre, working under AEA rules without actually being union myself. I turned down Orlando Shakes for those reasons (and because spending a year as an ASM and only getting half the necessary EMC points out of it made me want to vom), so I hope it's all it's cracked up to be.

I'm going to try and actually blog this summer, and beyond. We'll see if I can stick to it any better than I could before... Maybe the fact that other AU theatre kids are blogging too will keep me motivated.