Philip’s third week of rehearsal
Philip on Oct 29 2005 at 9:43 pm | Filed under: Productions
Monday, October 24, started with a Management Meeting at around noon. This meeting was to discuss the programme and front of house matters. The plan is to have as much of The Bahamas featured in the foyer as possible. The first thing that we have is the Music of The Bahamas video playing as audience members arrive. We also discussed creating some displays featuring various aspects of The Bahamas and of You Can Lead A Horse To Water. Some of the people working in front of house have gone off to the library and to other places to see what they can find to add to the displays. I did not bring anything with me, except the video, so they are also looking for a Bahamian flag and other related material that will help to create an effective lobby display. They have a good size booklet for their programme and they are in the process of getting cast bios. With a cast of almost thirty people, I would expect that those bios would be pretty brief.
Monday night’s rehearsal plan was to do our first run-through with everybody being off book. After Thursday’s rehearsal and our first full run-through, with the book, I was not really looking forward to this rehearsal. Surprisingly, it was not as bad as I had expected. There were still quite a few lines that had not been learned, which added about ten minutes to the run, but I had not expected that Mother and Son would be totally off book because of the amount of lines that they both have. I did, however, expect that some of the smaller characters would have had their lines down and some of them did not. As for the Jury, they are coming along. Each time they run, they get a better sense of how to get prepared for the next number. They still have to work on everyone coming in on the right notes, in some of the numbers, but it’s good to at least know which numbers have to be worked on in a rehearsal where we are not running the play. My plan had been to do a run at each rehearsal this week but, after this rehearsal, I felt that it would be more beneficial to spend some time fixing stuff on Tuesday and then running again on Thursday.
Sometime last week, my Stage Manager had asked me if she could go home on Friday because she knew that that would be her last free weekend until the run was over. She said that the Assistant Stage Manager would be there to take notes and to write up and email me the rehearsal reports. She said that she had a certain feeling that something might be happening for her at home on the weekend and I agreed to let her go. When I saw her, at the Management Meeting, in the morning she said that what she expected, and had hoped, would happen, had indeed taken place. She then proceeded to show me her engagement ring.
Tuesday night I had the opportunity to work on specific scenes. We got a lot of stop and start work done which hopefully helped the Jury members know just how big or small they have to be during various scenes. One of the problems, during the run on Monday, was that they were too loud, too soft or just laid-back in specific scenes.
Chris is a music student here at GVSU and in this production, he is kind of a ringer. By that I mean he is not going to be in the entire production, sort of like how Charlie Bowleg was in the Nassau production. He is the person who will sing Faithful Old Truck. Anyway, I mentioned him because he was very helpful at this rehearsal, going over specific note problems and teaching the Jury We Peeped Through The Curtain. I felt that this rehearsal achieved a lot and if all that we worked on is retained then we are moving along in the right direction.
Wednesday, there were no rehearsals.
Thursday morning I had a one on one with the Social Worker. We actually talked a lot instead of running anything. She wanted to understand her character’s place in society and her relationship to the other characters. I think that she had a better understanding of her role after we were done.
Thursday afternoon gave me an opportunity to work with Mother, Son and Old Fool. Mother and Son have been trying to get off book so we have not had a chance to work very much on specifics. We went through all the scenes that include the three of them, adjusted some blocking and worked on specific character intentions. After a while, Old Fool had to leave for work so I continued to work with Mother and Son and then I left them working on their own.
Thursday evening’s plan was to run the show. The cast, having had a break on Wednesday, and with Tuesday being a fixing rehearsal, it was time to attempt a full run again. There was a warm-up for the first fifteen to twenty minutes and then places was called. This turned out to be one of those nights where, had I been watching from the Dundas lighting booth, I would have shut off the lights, left the actors on stage, jumped in my car and drove home. I only hope that these students don’t have very sensitive ears because my notes for this rehearsal lasted well over a half an hour and I held nothing back. What really pissed me off was the fact that some of what they got wrong, they had previously done fine so I know that they were just not focused. I had expected them to still have problems with a few of the singing numbers because they are still learning them but a number of the speaking Jury pieces just fell apart and needless to say, to put it mildly, I was not a happy camper. That was the first time that they got to see that side of me and I don’t think that they would like to ever see that side of me again. It will be interesting to see what happens when we attempt to run again on Friday.
Friday afternoon was our weekly production meeting and there was a lot to cover as we move closer to this production going up. We had to plan out the schedule for all tech rehearsals and the set builder informed us that he could actually move the Horse set in on Sunday afternoon, since the last production in the theatre, before Horse, is a dance show, which is scheduled for Saturday evening. This means that we might be able to have rehearsals, in the theatre, starting as early as Monday, but more likely on Tuesday, and not have to wait until Thursday to move in. We discussed other major and minor aspects of the production and one item that came up is that the students usually order T-Shirts with the show’s logo on them and some quote from the show is also then placed on the shirt. I suggested that the quote be You ain’ my pa, you can’t do me nothin’ and I think that that’s what they will be going with. One other suggestion, by one of the cast members, was He gone to da bar, he ga come back drunk but that was thought not be appropriate for University life. Apparently, there was another quote that’s been floating around by some of the cast members, more as a joke. It is a quote that has been attributed to me and I don’t deny saying it, I just don’t remember at which rehearsal and under what circumstances it occurred. Apparently I said it at some point, during the past three weeks, and had forgotten about it but it’s now a new quote (to them) that is widely used throughout the University, at least throughout the theatre department and the quote is Your ass is grass and I’m the Lawn Mower. Anyway, it was a pretty productive meeting all around as we look to a very busy week ahead.
Friday night. Well, what a difference a day makes! After Thursday’s disaster, I arrived at room 1506 at around five minutes to seven for a seven o’clock rehearsal and the entire cast is not only there but they are three quarters of the way into their warm-up. Al has dropped by to see another rehearsal so that he can continue to work out his lighting design and Jill, the person in charge of costumes here, had also come by to watch. Both of them had mentioned to me, at the production meeting, that they were planning to attend. Brie is also in attendance and it’s the first time that she will actually get to see a run of the show to see how the Jury numbers, that she has been working on, are fitting into the production. By now, she has already heard quite a bit about Thursday night’s rehearsal and she has come prepared for the worst. At around seven fifteen places is called and the run starts. Outside of the expected note problems in a few of the Jury numbers that have only recently been learned, this rehearsal, compared to what I saw on Thursday, was one hundred percent better. Everyone was focused and all of the Jury numbers were on cue. There were still some line problems from people with a major amount of lines to learn but, for the most part, the smaller scenes were off book. During notes, Brie asked them what made the difference between the Thursday and the Friday night and one of the actors said, “The f-word is very powerful”. So, there it is. I was finally able to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Saturday’s rehearsal will be used to clean up whatever choral problems remain so that, starting Monday, we can finally begin to run each night. The show is by no means ready. All of the elements are in place but it’s very static and it needs to run a number of times to achieve the proper flow. Also, the Jury members have not yet started to have fun. There is some fixing that I have to do with a number of the scenes and some character work that still needs to be explored. I’m hopeful that next week we can run and also have the time to fix.
Saturday morning we got right into our four-hour Choral rehearsal. The first order of business was to learn the last Jury number, Is the man in the house. After working on that Brie decided to work backwards so we moved that way through the script and worked specific numbers. We took a break and came back to run all Jury numbers from the top straight through to the end of the play. This included all spoken Jury pieces. This run went smoothly with stops here and there to fix minor problems. We came to the conclusion that the number that still needed work was Get Away, so once the run was finished Brie spent the rest of the rehearsal working on both Get Away and Run Away Boys.
So, another week has come to an end and on Sunday, I’ll go over to the theatre and watch as they load in the set. I’ve had a look in the workshop where the set has been constructed and the pieces all seem to be there so I look forward to seeing everything put together and then actually moving into the theatre.
