Tag Archives: Rehearsal

10 of 12 rehearsal for Private Lives

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If you are in the theater, you know what a “10 of 12” is. For those who are fans of theater, but not practitioners, it is one very long day allowed by Actors Equity and the other trades, when all the designers, cast, crew, and director try to work through adding the technical aspects of the show. We work ten hours of a twelve hour span.

This Sunday we started at 10 am with a ‘paper tech’, where the stage manager (Julie Pare), lighting designer (Eric Marsh), sound designer (Yezzmine Zepeda) and sometimes the set designer (Dylan Marks) collaborate on the cues for light, sound, and special effects. Both designers had previously built their individual plots in their respective computers, so it was a melding of the two into the stage manager’s call sheet. The company manager, tech director, and senior tech joined us. I always choose to be there, but the director is really extraneous at this point if communication has been good throughout the process. Because Private Lives is not a particularly tech heavy show, (aside from props) we were able to finish in a little over an hour.

Actors arrived at 11:00 am for what should have been a costume dress parade, where I get to see the costumes under light and work with the costumer to make notes on what needs to be adjusted, completed, or added. Our costumer was not quite ready and begged an extension, so I spent an hour giving actor notes from the last two rehearsals. Crew members and interns were also called for 11, and the stage manager worked with our newly assembled stage crew to walk through the major set turnover between Acts I and II and the prop changes between Acts II and III.

I assigned my iPad to my directing intern Isabelle Rogers, who played photographer during the whole long day.

By 12 noon, we were able to take a quick break and begin tech rehearsal. Often this is when we use the actors as props and just move from cue to cue rather than actually playing the whole scene. It’s beneficial to the technical staff  but doesn’t help the actors very much. But because the lighting cues are generally long and slow progressions of light and the sound cues are very specific in timing, we were able to work through a run of the entire play, including set turnovers by 4:00 pm, when our dinner break was scheduled.

Some of the crew chose to have a pot luck/take out picnic in the green room. A number of us walked over to a little French crepe restaurant in the Village and spent our break together, then wandered back to the theater at our leisure.  At 6:00 pm, we started all over again from the top of the show. During the second run, we stopped only occasionally to work out a rigging problem that we had discussed, to work business with a break-away prop, or to adjust the actors positions to be better lit, etc. During the act breaks I consulted with the prop master about a punch list of final props that are still outstanding and fabrics for reupholstering the furniture.

We finished a little after 9 pm. Light and sound designers were able to leave, knowing my technical notes would come to them from my stage manager. The set designer and shop crew worked to resolve a few issues and the running crew began to organize the back stage storage of furniture and props while I gave actor notes. When I finished shortly after 10 pm, we had almost an hour in our scheduled 10 of 12 rehearsal to work or rework some scenes, but I chose to let everyone go home a little early, knowing the set designer was waiting to continue painting the floor and we would be sharper and more creative in our solutions after some rest.

All in all it was a very successful tech. But it does bring home how close we are to opening the show.  Our first preview audience will join in the fun next Sunday, July 14 at 3:00. Hope you will consider joining us.

For more information and to buy tickets call 713-524-6706 or go online to www.mainstreettheater.com

 

From “Private Lives” rehearsal

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With a jewel of a play like Noël Coward’s Private Lives, rehearsal is a bit like faceting a diamond.  The gem is there in the rough, each crystal trying to gleam from under layers of physical choices, extraneous movements, vocal generalities, and the mysteries of a time gone by. But with a talented professional cast such as mine, it is a labor of love.

As actors, we may be limited by our understanding of the time and setting of the play. That is why, I encouraged my cast to watch several films from the late 1920s and early 1930s. Bringing Up Baby and The Thin Man are both American films, but they capture the bright brittle repartee and some of the playfulness of this style of comedy. I also encouraged my cast to watch Downton Abbey, which is currently (and conveniently) being reprised on public television.

For a better understanding of the British upper class tradition of the ‘house party’ and the ‘grand tour’ there are a variety of novels and short stories by contemporary authors such as E.M. Forster. Personally, I recommend checking out Rhys Bowen’s upscale period cozy mystery series “Her Royal Spyness.” The books are set in the 1930s, featuring am impoverished, aristocratic young lady moving in the circles of royalty and the wealthy in England and on the continent. They are delightfully funny, easy to read, and very well researched.

My cast is working hard on their Standard British dialects and looking at portraits to better understand the fashion, demeanor, and mannerisms of the upper classes, and trying to cram what they’ve learned into their vocal and physical representation of Coward’s brilliant words. But, in the midst of rehearsal I like to pause to ask a question or pose a scenario, so we don’t become all style and no content.

“How curious would you be about your new spouse’s previous marriage? Is it idle curiosity or self-preservation?”

“What would it feel like to suddenly meet the love of your life again, years after a vicious and vindictive divorce? What kind of courage or Narcissism would it take to flee from a new relationship with your acknowledged soul mate?”

“How would you react to discovering that your new spouse has absconded with an old flame at the beginning of your honeymoon? How vulnerable would you feel, abandoned in a foreign country? While tracking down your missing mates, would the ordeal bring you close to the other person’s spouse? Or would you blame them for not controlling their partner?”

Watching a cast of extremely talented actors explore such questions and incorporate the new knowledge physically and emotionally into the life of the characters they are building is exciting. I find it enormously satisfying to be able to facilitate that kind of discovery and be a small part of deepening the characterization and the life of the play.

I hope you will join us when we bring this wonderful script to life in its latest incarnation at Main Street Theater, 2540 Times Boulevard, Houston, TX.

For show times and ticket information, please check out Main Street Theater’s website www://mainstreettheater.com or call the box office at 713-524-6706.

Miss Bennet Rehearsals – Week 3

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Over the weekend, we had our ’10 of 12′ rehearsal.  It was exhausting, but productive, and we survived it–as we always do.

Actor’s Equity union rules allow us to have one rehearsal during Tech Week, where we work actors and crew ten out of twelve consecutive hours.  This is usually done in two five-hour work sessions with a two-hour dinner break. Ours fell on Sunday.

Tech rehearsals are a long and tedious, but necessary process where the director, stage manager and designers try to work together to pull a show out of the proverbial hat.  We ask the actors to move through the show from one cue line to another, stopping to build a sequence of light and music transitions.  We track the props through their appearances on stage and off. We make critical decisions on costume pieces and quick changes. The actual furniture is added to the set, final details are completed or painted on the set, and adjustments are made in blocking to accommodate all these elements.

I take second chair to my fabulous stage manager, Lauren Evans. The actors are temporarily relegated to animated mannequins that must walk the same pattern and say the same phrase over and over until all the computerized elements are in sync and as they need to be for the final product. There is a lot of sitting or standing around, while being completely upstaged by the technical elements. It can be very boring and certainly taxing to patience and good humor. The cast and crew of Miss Bennet managed to weather the process with minimal storms and tempests, in good part thanks to Lauren. The product is starting to become visible.

Sunday we made it through Act 1 and part of Act 2.  Monday, we finished teching the show and were able to actually rehearse some scenes with full technical support. This week, we add the costumes and put all  the elements together with the wonderful characterizations that the cast has been developing.  The final push will be to meld all these moving parts and impose a story arc that brings the audience into the world and on the adventure.

The audience is, of course, the final element; the ‘chemical’ reaction that adds the magic, which turns a play into a piece of theatre–and hopefully a work of art.

 

Check out the Houston Press interview with me about Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley, at –

http://www.houstonpress.com/arts/preview-miss-bennett-christmas-at-pemberley-at-main-street-theater-9885242