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.

Notation...

Well, I finally got my lazy ass in gear and started the notation for the music. And by that I mean I have done the first song- The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee- which will probably be the easiest one of them all. It wasn't too difficult, but I'm afraid that I won't be able to get them all done before rehearsals start.

I'm having some formatting issues, a lot of which are caused by the fact that I'm using Office 2003 instead of 2007.

I don't even know how helpful this is going to be in the long run, I just wanted to make my senior project somehow different than every other show I've SM'ed here. I may have shot myself in the foot though, and bitten off more than I can chew. Nobody else (ie, the faculty) seems to care about what I do with my senior project, but I have set this goal for myself and as much as I don't think any of them would even notice if I didn't actually use the notation, I will be disappointed in myself if I don't finish it. I'm afraid that won't be enough motivation, though- I have gotten super lazy (maybe just complacent?) and I don't think that self-motivation is going to be enough to force me to work on it. Woof.

First Company Meeting

Our first company meeting was on Monday, after the BFA Performance Outcome. I think it went very well.

I got everything organized, albeit somewhat last-minute, with all of the forms and things. I also made all of the extra copies of the script- they only ordered 11 bound copies, and the Director double-cast Rona, cast 2 understudies, and cast the 2 Dads as separate actors (plus ASMs & the Assistant to the Director) so we obviously had more than 11 people who needed scripts. The tricky part was that the cast members needed copies of the score as well- I had a photocopy of the script and one of the conductor's score, but not one of the libretto (and not knowing till the last minute that there weren't enough scripts meant I didn't have time to copy the libretto out of the book), so 2 cast members ended up with the full score. They seemed pretty ok with it though, so I don't think it will be a problem except the sheer size of it.

I passed out all of the forms (Class Schedule, Actor Agreement, Emergency Health Info, Bio Form, & add slip for Applied Acting), and then passed out the scripts, the CDs from the MD, and their assignments from the Director & Dramaturg. It was a lot of paperwork for them all to keep track of, I feel like I should have put them in a folder or something, but I didn't want to have to buy them myself, and there was no one in the office when I was working on it.

I wanted to elect a cast deputy then, but I forgot to talk to the Director & MD about it beforehand so we will just do it at the first rehearsal. I know that Panch & Olive were both cast deputies once already this semester, so I think I'm going to tell them that they have to elect someone else. Also, should the Wranglers be included in the vote? I'm inclined to say no, but I feel like Daydrie is 100% about inclusion, so she might overrule me.

Speaking of the Wranglers, FTP has very graciously agreed to work around their schedule so that they can still audition for Tales of A Fourth Grade Nothing. That's good, because I think that 3/4 of them would have opted out of Wrangling in favor of auditioning for Tales.

After the meeting, the Director and I realized that Rocky Horror was having auditions that night, and wanted to use the Smart Classroom to put the video on the big screen. The director had not heard anything about this, and was very concerned about leaving the Smart Classroom open. I also did not know about it- no one in charge of Rocky has keys to the building. Granted, it was only about 8:45 when this was happening, but I was not about to stay in the building to babysit while they had auditions, and there is a reason why no students have keys to the Smart Classroom. She left me in charge of the situation, and I ended up just locking the door. I told their director what I had done, and I apologized for putting them in a tough place, and then went to lock the building. While I was doing that, I realized that there were about 20 people in the green room and I knew 4 of them, plus a couple of non-majors that I knew. I was super uncomfortable leaving them alone in the building, so I called the TD & let him know what was going on. He ended up coming up to the theatre to deal with it, so I left. I felt really bad because I love Rocky, I wish Rocky could be in the theatre every Halloween, but I was not about to leave that building unlocked with that many non-majors in there. Epic communication fail, in my opinion- they had signed out the space, but the sign-out sheet goes to 10:00 because that's when rehearsal is over and the SM kicks people out. Without rehearsal going on, the building gets locked up whenever the last person with keys leaves. I technically could have told them that they had to leave, but I didn't want to do that. Also, I am one small and unimposing person, and they were a lot of sketchy-ass people in fishnets. I almost got in a fight with someone about it, because he saw me locking the doors and asked what I was doing. I told him I was locking the building cause I was leaving, and he said "Well, I guess that's ok..." He guesses that's ok? Is he serious? Having keys to the theatre is a responsibility that I take pretty seriously, and I was not about to leave them alone in there. I don't care if they're having a performance- they didn't get permission from a faculty member and none of them have keys to the building, so I'm in charge. /rant.

Call-backs

I don't really have much to say about call-backs- They went very smoothly, but again, that was mostly thanks to The Director & Music Director. Even though MD took longer in the singing portion than he originally planned, we were still done before 9:00.

I emailed out the call-back list the night before, with the music files and pdf's that MD sent me. That took forever, because I had to keep clearing my sent folder and then logging out and logging back in- the files were so big they were filling my mailbox and then I couldn't send email. The only issue we ran into with sending the auditionees the files like this was that some of the songs were 20 pages long, and if you were called back for more than one part, that was an enormous amount of paper and ink to use, especially when they ended up singing one page of that in the actual call-back.

The Director had put the sides online well in advance, so the actors all brought them to the call-backs. Again, we kept them in a holding pattern in the green room, which worked well. The Director had given me a list in advance of the pairings/groupings she wanted to see for each side, so I posted one copy of the list and gave another copy to my ASM to use in rounding up the groups. Everything really fell into place with a minimal amount of effort on my part, which was surprising- especially considering the call-backs I've done in the past that have taken an enormous amount of time & massive feats of scheduling. I think the Director already had a clear idea of what she wanted, which is what made everything so quick and painless. She didn't need to see endless combinations of people or multiple scenes with the same characters.

Again, there was only one minor issue with the way this worked out- some actors, like Leaf and Chip, who were called back for multiple parts, ended up reading several times in a row with different groups, and did not get a chance to read that scene with those people before going on. No one seemed to really struggle with this onstage, but I know it made a lot of the actors nervous while they were waiting.

Auditions

We tried a lot of new things with auditions this year, and overall they went very well. I've gotten a lot of comments from actors about how smoothly they went and how they were the least stressful auditions they've ever had.

The biggest change with auditions this year was the audition blocks- we put the audition form online and made it available in advance. People could fill it out and turn it in to the basket in the office. Everyone who had turned their form in by Monday afternoon was given a block of time in which their audition would fall (ie, 6-7, 7-8, etc.). If they did not turn in their form by Monday afternoon, I told them to come at 8:00. I also planned for the walk-ups to fill out their form, get their name put on the list, and come back at 8:00.

The other change we made (I say we because I implemented all of these genius ideas, but none of them were actually things that I came up with. Also I had help in the form of the rest of the SM team) was to eliminate the epic trek from the lobby, down the stairs, and around the backstage to get onstage to actually audition. I gave each group my spiel and then took them to the green room. Everyone from the other audition blocks waited in the main lobby. This way, they could relax in the green room until 2 slots away from their time, then go get their picture taken, and wait at the end of the backstage hall when they were "in the hole," and then move to the anteroom when they were "on deck." (I also extended our baseball metaphor- we always just said "on deck" for everything, which was really confusing, but then they all were confused about what "in the hole" meant... Theatre kids need to get out more.)

The Department Chair sent me this email today:

Becky, SM, ASM, ASM, & SM

Your names all came up in the faculty grading session today with high praise indeed for your efforts in helping the massive auditions last week run smoothly and effectively. We would like you all to never graduate and stay forever please.

Just kidding.

Sort of.

Great work!

So that was nice.

I ran into two issues with this new system- the first issue was with the website. Putting the form online worked really well, it was just a huge hassle trying to get it up (that's what she said), and then sometimes it would disappear from the website altogether. I know we were right in the thick of updating the website, so hopefully that won't happen again.

The second issue was with people who did not turn their form in before Monday afternoon. I don't know how many different ways I can say "Bring your form at 8:00." I don't understand why every actor thinks that somehow I can alter the audition order because their printer ran out of ink or they left their resume at home when they left this morning. It's not "too late for an audition time," JUST SHOW UP AT 8:00. I also got 3 audition forms out of the basket in the office after I had put a sign in the basket that said "Do not put your form here. Come to the theatre at 8:00 and you will be given an audition time."

Speaking of resumes. That was another issue- I forgot to ask them to include their headshots & resumes with the audition forms, so only the people who did it without being asked had theirs copied & given to the director with their forms. The point of having things turned in ahead of time was to prevent the lag time of having to photocopy the forms and put them in order to give to the directors, so that was my fault. Hopefully in the future, we can include that memo in the audition info.

Also, I picked up an interesting tidbit in this audition- next time we audition for more than one show at a time, and one of them is not a musical, we should if possible put all of the people only auditioning for the non-singing show at the end, so that the department doesn't have to pay the accompanist to sit and listen to 20 people not sing.

I think that the new things we tried this time around definitely were the reason that everything went so smoothly and so quickly.