Sweeney Todd - Running, Flying, Sitzprobe?

We’ve hit the home stretch. Tech week is upon us. We begin tonight and these past two weeks have been jam-packed with long and busy rehearsals, picking through and perfecting all the actors’ directions so that they can be fully prepared for the fast-approaching onslaught of technical elements.

                That’s actor preparation, but what was my preparation for Tech Week? Running. Literally.

                As an ASM, I have been assigned to the deck crew during performances. I am specifically charged to oversee all props, including tracking, upkeep, and storage. So at every rehearsal for the past two weeks I have been running from the house to backstage, handing actors rehearsal props. Then I go running back into the house to record the movement of each prop from stage right to stage left and from actor to actor. When I’m not running, I scribble down any and all notes about props shifts. There are props that don’t show up until halfway through the act, but have to be preset before lights-up because they appear from some obscure place on top of a platform. There are props that I have to physically hand off to onstage actors from the wings because they don’t have time to run back to the prop table before they have to say their next line. There are special effects props – a razor that spurts blood, a fake pipe that actually puffs smoke, a break-away birdcage, a body that drops from the sky – and I have to know how to operate every single piece. And there are a million props (keep in mind that these barely legible notes have to eventually be turned into a neat little chart so that the deck crew and I can quickly and easily execute the prop shifts during performances!)

                And on top of all that, I need to take notes for the rehearsal report whenever anything comes up. Often, Perry gives me a note for a designer while I’m in the middle of running backstage, and then an actor stops me on the way back to the house to tell me something about their costume or prop that should be noted as well. I’ve taken to keeping a giant mental laundry list of things I have to move and place and write down as I fly through the theatre, crossing them off in my brain as I accomplish them. I never seem to have enough time to write a to-do list for myself each night. So when I do get the glorious gift of moment to jot, “do these things in the next five minutes” on a sticky-note, I take full advantage of it! Miraculously, I have been able to keep track of every single note I’ve been given (and I am fairly impressed with myself).

                Fortunately, I was able to take a mini mental break in rehearsal this week. Tuesday night was the company sitzprobe. What’s a sitzprobe? I asked the same question too when I first saw that goofy-looking word on the calendar. Well, a sitzprobe is the first time that the cast sings with the full orchestra. After weeks of separate rehearsing, this is finally when the two musical halves can make a whole. During this rehearsal, the entire musical is sung through cabaret-style and the conductor makes adjustments for his musicians in the score based on how the actors perform. It is a time where actors and musicians can begin to synchronize with each other.

                That night, we decked out the choral space with enough chairs for the cast to sit in a half-circle around the small but powerful 9-piece orchestra. We set two microphones in the center of the room, and our conductor instructed the cast to stand at them during solos. With this all set, Curt, Perry, and the ASMs perched in a little corner and let the music soar.

                Remember way back when I first posted about Sweeney Todd and raved about how brilliant this cast sounded? Well the sitzprobe was brilliance times a hundred. The actors have now spent two months with this music, becoming friends (and sometimes enemies) with it, practicing and perfecting it, and now they were having fun with it. Everyone took it over the top – goofing around, making faces, dancing about, cracking inside jokes – all while maintaining such crisp precision with all the vocal musicality that they have spent so long perfecting. The room rang with the chilling sound of the stratosphere sopranos and the rich notes of the bellowing basses.  Every single face had a smile cracked across it as the cast realized that the show was finally knitting itself together. I found myself laughing hysterically, silent with awe, and bouncing up and down in pure excitement the whole night. I can believe without a doubt that the performances will blow audiences away.

                But now that our fun little excursion is over, we dive head first into Hell Week. Tonight. And our production is ENORMOUSLY tech heavy – moving platforms, a chair flying in from above the stage, fake bodies dropping from the sky, continuous fog and smoke, a trap door, actor scene shifts, miked actors, entrances from the house, an onstage orchestra pit, trick blood, and (last but not least) the monster of a mechanism that is the barber chair. This is sinister metal swiveling demon of a thing that whirs its gears to dump bodies (LIVE actor bodies) down a tight shoot. And because technical elements are so extensive, we have a freakishly long Tech run: a 5-hour Dry Tech without actors tonight, a 2-hour scene shift rehearsal immediately following Dry Tech, a 9-hour Tech with actors Saturday, a second 5-hour Tech with actors Sunday, a run-through to add the orchestra immediately following second Tech, a second orchestra run-through Monday, Dress Rehearsals Tuesday and Wednesday, a final production meeting before our open-dress preview on Thursday, and finally we open the show Friday night (that’s November 9^th, if you weren’t keeping track.) We perform for six nights.

                Doesn’t that sound intimidating? This production has the most extensive Tech run that I’ve ever been involved with (thank the good Lord for caffeine!). To be honest, I’m slightly terrified. But I’m a stage manager. I have to press forward. Preparation and focus are going to be the keys to success. I need to know my performance duties to a T (that’s what these past two weeks have all been about). Once I know that, I need to stay on my toes: moving swiftly, effectively, and efficiently (I’ll need to fly now instead of run). And I need to keep my head in the game: anticipating shifts, props movements, body drops, and the like. I need to dive in head first – there’s no other way around it. So, here’s to a Happy Hell Week. Wish me luck!

Sweeney Todd - "Type Faster!!"

Last Thursday I attended a production meeting for Sweeney Todd. It was my job to take notes, or “keep the minutes,” as Perry called it, during the meeting. “Notes,” you ask, “like taking notes in class? Easy.” Not really.  In addition to taking clear, detailed, and near-verbatim notes, it is the stage manager's job to keep the time at these meetings, moving discussions along so that every concern of the hour can be addressed. I had first experienced a production meeting when I SMed a student-directed show last spring, so I wasn’t unfamiliar with keeping minutes. But Sweeney is a big production. A big production means lots of notes.

                A production meeting is scheduled periodically outside of rehearsal times and shop hours so that all production team members can get together and brainstorm ideas, update each other on the progress of their projects, and problem solve when they hit obstacles. It’s the only way to get the team communicating collectively at one place and one time. And Sweeney has so many designers and technicians – from the technical director to the scenic designer, from sound to props, from music to costumes and make-up, from lighting to special effects. On top of that, most of our designers are guests and cannot always be on campus. It’s hard to get 20 people in a room at once all the time (even if we Skype some of them in), so we hold production meetings weekly.

                At this particular meeting, Perry opened the hour with discussion about costumes and make-up. Our make-up designer (Mary Elizabeth, a fellow Hope student) said that she still needed headshots of some of the cast members. I typed that up – easy note! Our faculty costume shop manager, Darlene, mentioned that she was still missing some fittings from actors – easy note! Curt and our orchestra director brought up that the members of orchestra needed to be costumed (the pit is going to be onstage with the cast!), and Darlene responded by saying that she, therefore, needed the musicians’ measurements – two easy notes!  When the costume designers didn’t have anything else to add, Perry moved the meeting along.

We touched on lighting, sound, and fog effects – and all the while, I was able to keep up with notes fine, casually sipping my coffee. But then we reached the primary topic of the day’s discussion: scenic. Paul, our faculty technical director, had just begun building the larger units of the set and needed to talk to the scenic designer about some safety and mechanical concerns before continuing construction. It was a pretty typical subject for production meetings. The only hitch was that our scenic designer – one of our many guests – was not able to attend this week’s meeting, due to a busy schedule. That’s where stage management stepped in. I prepared myself to take extra-diligent notes so that they would be perfectly clear for our designer to read later. What I wasn’t prepared for was the vast amount of questions that Paul actually had.

He had questions for the scenic designer about whether it was necessary to construct a stair unit with metal, or if wood could be used instead. He had questions about adding a railing to said staircase for safety purposes. He had questions about the visibility and masking of another set piece that represented an insane asylum. He had questions about painting the large platform of Judge Turpin’s home before assembling it onstage. He had questions about the size and weight of the oven door with regards to safety (after all, an actor had to be thrown inside the oven!). And the list goes on…

So Paul fired away, one question after another. It took all my concentration (my coffee untouched) to clack away at my keyboard, trying to keep up while making logical transcriptions from the discussion I was hearing to the Word page on my computer. Our props master (Andrea, another fellow Hope student) was sitting next to me and she kept poking fun at me, whispering, “Type faster!!” as I tried to type out notes that were understandable in the English language. When Paul finally flipped through his notebook and had nothing left to add, I scanned my own document, correcting the many grammatical mistakes I had made as my fingers frantically flew across the keyboard (I don’t type as gracefully as Joseph Byrd plays the piano, that’s for sure!).

As I corrected a word that didn’t contain any vowels, Perry looked up at me and asked, “Did you get all that?”

I laughed half-heartedly and said, “I think so.”

I asked Paul to clarify a couple of things I was confused about to be sure my notes were correct, and by then the hour was coming to a close. Perry ended the meeting by finalizing the schedule for the next few meetings and rehearsals (as is usual at production meetings). I triple-checked that my notes were clear. Then I emailed the document to Perry to quadruple-check before sending it out to the rest of the production team.

Despite the frantic Speed Racer-paced transcription, this production meeting was exciting. Ever since I attended my first production meeting, I’ve always liked them. In these meetings, I really get to see collaboration at work: a representative from each facet of the production coming together in one room to bounce their brilliant ideas off of each other. It’s another reason why I love stage managing so much. I get to be a part of it all. I get to listen and observe these masters at their craft. It’s true that I may not always be working on shows that are rehearsal-heavy productions (if I want to stage manage Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, that certainly won’t be the case), and production meetings may become scarce. But I’ll enjoy them while I have them because they taught to appreciate every single facet of theatre. Through these meetings, I am coming to understand more about the theatre world as a whole – just how much of a unit, a team, the theatre has to be.

Sweeney Todd - “Don’t be Tentative”

During these first few weeks of rehearsal, the cast had been working on movement. The focus was to connect personally to your own body, and connect your body with other people’s. One night, Curt had the cast exploring stage pictures. He started the exercise off by having everyone sit in a circle on the stage and asking people to come to the center individually. Each individual was to walk through the space and lead with the part of their bodies that they were most uncomfortable with. They were to embody their physical insecurities and put their vulnerabilities on display. Of course, this terrified everybody. And despite the fact that Curt had them each show off their favorite attribute after parading their least favorite, there was still an awkward pause each time Curt said, “Good. Next?” After everyone had gone, Curt opened up the floor for discussion: what did you discover? There was a universal answer: it was uncomfortable. One girl, who was new to the theatre department, said that she was so nervous to share her biggest insecurity with these near-strangers that she couldn’t make herself get off the floor.

                Curt countered their doubts. He stressed the importance of the ability to tap into vulnerability and the willingness to put it on display. You need to believe in who you are what you have to offer. That is where genuine onstage emotion comes from, and that is most captivating. “Don’t be tentative,” he said. He then continued the rehearsal by shifting gears to the ensemble. He had one person enter the circle and create a pose. Each member of the cast was to add to that pose with their own, one at a time, to build a tableau with an overall theme. After a few minutes of tableau building, Curt embellished the exercise by switching from still tableaus to silent scenes; the first person in the center had to present an action and the rest had to build on it, adding their own actions while developing a believable scene.  The goal was to create a picture, tell a story, and make connections with your partners. When the exercise was finished, Curt observed that he could see people second-guessing their actions as more people entered the scene; they became less of a unit and more of a hesitating group. Again, “don’t be tentative.”    

                How does this have anything to do with a stage manager, you may ask? SMs aren’t up on stage with the cast doing movement exercises, this doesn’t relate. But it does. “Don’t be tentative,” Curt said. Don’t be tentative. The same lesson Curt was teaching the cast was given to me recently during one of my meetings with my academic adviser. We were going over my curriculum contract: a contract that each theatre student presents to the department proposing the classes they will take and their involvement in productions based on their emphasis (i.e. stage management). The form asks to state your future career goals and I filled this space with phrases like “I hope to make stage managing my career,” and even “I do not know.” My adviser immediately took a pencil to my form, scratching out all my wishy-washy words. “This is what you want to do,” she told me, “this is your passion.” This is not a hope, it is a plan. She scribbled in words like employment, plan, and possible, until my opening statement read: “I plan to make stage management my career whether I am employed with a repertory theatre company, a touring company, or working on a long-running production in New York City or any other major city.”

That set me on fire! It gave me prospect! My adviser said that we are often taught to be passive as we are growing up, but at this moment in life we need to learn to be aggressive (or progressive to be more precise). It’s all about confidence. Employers expect it. Confidence in an interview ensures that you are able, the work you do once you are hired confirms it. As a stage manager I have to stand behind my work, believe in my skills, and present myself with integrity (there’s that word again). I need to be confident in my abilities; otherwise, nobody would take me seriously.

                Now is the time to be confident in my abilities. And I’m not just saying that metaphorically – literally, now! We start Sweeney rehearsals up again tonight and Perry will not be there this week to run rehearsals because he will be in tech as a designer for another production. The ASMs are officially in charge this week. It’s a tall order for a show like Sweeney, but I can take the challenge. That’s why I’m here, after all – to take the challenge. And stage management is not a new thing to me. So this will be exciting. It will be a time to confirm my abilities and even broaden them. All I have to do is stand by what I have to offer. I won’t be tentative.

Sweeney Todd - Journey with Integrity

Saturday, September 8^th kicked off rehearsals for Hope’s production of Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Why am I just posting now? Well, these past few weeks have definitely been busy ones. But we are currently taking a short break from rehearsal and I am using this hiatus to crank out all my thoughts on this process so far. This is a time to rest, recharge. But it also is a time to begin, and prepare myself for new challenges. Auditions filled with nerves, callbacks sparked with excitement, and a casting process that seemed to last for an eternity have all passed and the date is set. We open on November 9^th.

But this is still a ways off. Now is the time to rehearse.

On the first morning of rehearsal, I arrived at the choral room early (as every good assistant stage manager should) with a fellow ASM, my dear friend Emily Svendson, and our stage manager – a Hope theatre professor – Perry Landes. I shook hands with the choral directors working on the show: Dr. Brad Richmond, our vocal director and a professor here at Hope who was wearing an eye patch and a Grateful Dead T-shirt; and Joseph Byrd, our guest accompanist and vocal coach, a very smiley bald man in an outfit looked like tribal garb.  Did you have to reread that last sentence? I kid you not, I did not imagine these two men – they are real people. They are also really brilliant people.

We got down to business right away. Brad launched right into the “Ballad of Sweeney Todd.” Because solos had not been assigned at that point, he began the song himself in a deep baritone voice: “Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd…” Then the ensemble joined in at the chorus, singing, “Swing your razor wide, Sweeney, hold it to the skies!” and the room rang with my peers’ voices. Their blend was incredible. No wonder it took so long to select the cast; they seemed to have picked each member knowing that they would complement each other’s voice. Listening from my spot in the back of the room, I could also tell Joseph’s fingers were flying across the piano keys as the song picked up speed and intensity; each note ran so fluidly into the next.

For the next couple hours, they ran through “Pirelli’s Miracle Elixir” and “God, That’s Good,” along with “The Ballad…” Of course, since it was the first time the cast had come together, there were trip-ups and stumbles, but Brad and Joseph took it in stride. They would stop, make corrections, answer questions, repeat sections of music, and give demonstrations of difficult sequences (Brad would even attempt reach up into his falsetto to “sing in the stratosphere,” as he would say to the lovely ladies who sometimes have to reach all the way up to a high D). These two men were so refreshing to watch. They worked together perfectly, taking each other’s cues and bouncing off each other’s ideas. And they had amazing energy.

I was so impressed with the whole process. This was SWEENEY TODD we were working with – arguably Stephen Sondheim’s most difficult piece. But these musicians attacked these first songs with so much gusto that Emily and I couldn’t help bouncing up and down in our seats and smiling from ear to ear. We knew then: this show was going to be fantastic! We couldn’t wait to hear what the ensemble would sound like in a month and a half.

                Our director Curt Tofteland joined us towards the end of the music rehearsal. Curt is a guest at Hope this semester and has very impressive credentials: he has been in the professional theatre world for over 30 years and is a Shakespeare master and aficionado. He is the founder of Shakespeare Behind Bars, a fascinating program that has been running for 17 years with a mission statement proclaiming, “theatrical encounters with personal and social issues to the incarcerated, allowing them to develop life skills that will ensure their successful reintegration into society,” (read more about Curt and SBB at www.shakespearebehindbars.org). With an occupation like that, it was quite clear that Curt was a master when it came to the unpredictable and bizarre. Therefore, we were all incredibly excited to work with him on a project like Sweeney Todd! 

After Brad and Joseph had completed their rehearsal, Curt introduced the entire cast to the production we were about to begin. There was no cutting corners or sugar-coating with Curt; he got straight to the point. He opened his speech by saying that we had been selected because he wanted the elite in his production. In a slightly intimidating, yet fascinating “Godfather-esque” gesture, he said that we had officially been invited into his circle of trust. He continued by affirming that, yes, Sweeney Todd was one of the most challenging pieces ever written in musical theatre, but we were there because he believed we could take on that challenge; we were expected to take on that challenge. There was a lot to discover as we continued on this journey, but the only way we could discover the full potential of this production was to have integrity. As individuals, we needed to be accountable for ourselves and reliable in our actions. As an ensemble, we needed to be honest and genuine, supporting one another and not dragging each other down. This was how we were to uphold the trust Curt called us to establish. We then spent the next twenty minutes deciding the core values we needed to hold true to in order to make this the best experience it could be. Together, we came up with values such as discipline, communication, respect, and (Curt’s favorite) wonder. After confirming our unity as an ensemble, Curt closed his speech by saying, “when one learns, we all learn.”

This is what Sweeney Todd is to be. It is to be a time of wonder, a time of discovery, a time for togetherness. For we are colleagues, we are classmates, we are friends, we are family, we are an ensemble. We are here to learn. And as learners, we must venture forward on this journey with integrity.