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 9th, 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!
