Final dress, my ass October 8, 2004 ~ 4:19 pm
Posted by Julie in : Daily Grind , comments closed
Bleeding hearts, W. 75th Street, Manhattan
Last night I got home at 1:30 am. Part of this was because the subways were knackered, as always, and it took me an hour to get home instead of a half hour. So it took me an hour to get home. Which means I got out of rehearsal at 12:30. Rehearsal was supposed to end at 10:30.
Last night was our “final dress” rehearsal, supposedly. The one where the actors finally get a chance to do the show start to finish, with all the tech stuff neatly put in so that they can work with the lights, the sound, the costumes, the set, whathaveyou, in almost show conditions. This did not happen.
The company I’m doing R&J with is a repertory company, which means that they run several shows at the same time. One week it’s R&J, the next it’s something else. It’s very cool, and not done very much these days, because it takes a lot of work. You have to have two rehearsal processes running at the same time, two sets being built (and one has to be taken down and stored when the other is up)…all sorts of things the people don’t want to deal with. It’s simpler to have one show going at a time. I saw why this week.
Although we’ve been rehearsing since Labor Day, we didn’t get to work on our set till Monday night. The behemoth that is Dames at Sea was on stage, and they couldn’t take it down for just one night like they normally do. It’s just too big. So we’ve been rehearsing in studios, on the Dames set, in the theatre’s cafe space, anyplace we could. Have I mentioned that our set includes ramps, stairs, and a four foot high platform? It does. And swags of fabric that have to be manipulated by the actors to create different settings. Again, very cool. But we didn’t get the ramps and stairs and platform until Monday. And we didn’t get the swags of fabric in place till Tuesday. And while this was going on, they were teching the lights to figure out how those should look. All of this is going on while the actors are trying to get a handle on playing 25 characters in a new space. There are six actors, did I say that? Adding new things every night is not good for the actors morale. They feel like they’re not prepared. But they’re troopers, they worked through it.
I was at rehearsal for my other show Wednesday, so when I came in last night and the Stage Manager said “We’re going to get through the whole thing tonight,” I said “Hell yeah, we are.” See, I thought they’d been able to do that the night before. I was wrong. Up until last night, the actors had never had a total run-thru of the play in costume with lights, sound, set, swags, etc. And they didn’t last night, either.
The director/adaptor had decided to cut a minor character from the final scene, and insert another character that had been previously excluded. This meant the last ten minutes of the show had to be re-staged. They stopped the run-thru at that point to do so. The Artistic Director of the theatre and I just looked at each other - it was a surprise to both of us. The director staged the end of the show. Then he wanted to hold off on staging the curtain call until before their performance tonight. Their first preview performance. Uh, NO. Everyone in the room (Artistic Director, me, Stage Manager, Lighting Designer) said no and made him do it then. Then he decided he wanted to give notes before tonight’s performance, instead of then. The actors were tired and wanted to go home (it was already half an hour past when rehearsal should have ended), but they wanted to be able to think through their notes. So we did notes then. And by that point we were all exhausted, but more things had to be gone through. I thought I was never going to get out of there. At 12:30, I left. I have a day job. I can’t be out all night because we can’t get our shit pulled together.
Now, I like this director. I think he’s a great guy, and he knows his shit when it comes to translating and adapting plays. However, he gets frantic at times, and becomes literally unable to communicate. He can’t get the words out. And why he decided to make the cut now is just beyond me. I don’t know, I give up. But before I left last night, I made damn sure that every actor knew that I appreciated how hard they were working last night, and how great I think this show is going to be because of them. Just give them a few nights to process all this shit.
I’m still exhausted. But now I have to go to another rehearsal and then go to Rick’s to watch the debates. I’m probably going to fall asleep, which is a shame because I was looking forward to it. Oh well.
