Vaudeville - After dress run

The final dress run is over. There's 2 hours now before the first preview opens to the public. All the actors have gone for dinner.

No major surprises. A couple of minor problems, but nothing that's nothing out of the ordinary and Chris says the dress run is where he thought it would be going into the first preview.

I'd love to be able to talk to the actors right now for you and get their thoughts 2 hours before going in front of the public with the show for the first time.

Right now I'm sitting in the theatre and it's completely quiet, save for Jonathon continuing to work on the set. He's a workaholic and will probably be going right up till opening with touches here and there.

I'll head up to the Green Room and see how they're feeling. I can't promise they'll want to talk. I imagine they'll just be focussing all of the energy for tonight.

Vaudeville Dress rehearsal interval

VAUDEVILLE TWITTER.

"Good. Really good." - Liz

"So much nformation went in over the last 2 days, I'm not sure if all of it stuck" - Richard.

"Ditto." - Jethro.

"It's half time" - Kate.

"I don't if I'l ever get out of here. I mean the world, I've got completely drawn in to this world by the river that never was." - Stephen Armstrong.

Vaudeville - Day of the First Preview.

VAUDEVILLE TWITTER.

Time 1.15pm

I asked some of the creatives to make a quick comment on where they were at before the dress rehearsal-

"It's all going SURPRISINGLY well. I gotta see it as a whole. Very important to get the arc of the lighting design" - Richard.

"There's a lot we haven't tech-ed" - Chris.

"I'm interested in how the tricks go." - Stephen.

"No. Go away!" - Jethro.

"I'm really excited about it, but I had a nightmare we performed it in a big outdoor amphitheatre with grass and the audience started having spontaneous games of soccer, including my brother. I asked them why they didn't like it and they said they did, they were just having a little break." - Lally.

Vaudeville Rehearsal Day 23 - One day before Preview.

It's the last day before the first preview. The morning is for technical 'fix-ups,' with the actors arriving at 1.30pm again today.

The mood is relaxed. Yesterday's technical issues have mostly been worked out to everybody's satisfaction. Tomorrow's dress rehearsal will make it clear whether the solutions are working properly or not.

It has taken the entire afternoon and evening to finish the tech with the actors. Although the actors weren't performing at high energy, there have been a number of really important breakthroughs during the day. The lights, the sound, the set have all done their job in informing the actors how scenes are supposed to work in performance. You can feel pennies dropping all over the place, and connections being made that have previously been understood in an intellectual way, but not 'felt' by the actors.

Though they haven't run the play since last Tuesday, it feels as though it has come a long way during the last couple of days. The 'unknowns' have dimished significantly in the last couple of days in respect of their physical environment, and what they will experience on the stage, and that confidence is already being displayed as they 'run' scenes in the tech.

Chris says he expects tomorrow's dress rehearsal to be a bit rough. The actors will really have to conserve their energy through the dress rehearsal so they can hit the first preview with the energy it needs.

Although there is an audience tonight, previews are previews, and Chris expects the piece to develop significantly through the previews and through the season as well. The difference between previews and the season is that the cast are scheduled for rehearsal until opening night. If moments need fixing there is time to run them and work them. Once you get into performance the director has time to give notes, but no time to do any re-working of moments in a rehearsal context. This is a huge difference. There are times when notes cannot shift or reveal a moment; it can only be done in a rehearsal environment.

Further to that, a director usually wants the actors to 'own' their parts. It's part of the confidence a director wants their actors to have that allows them to grow and soar in their performance. Constant changes can sometimes undermine this confidence, depending on the actor and their relationhsip with the director. The energy the actors have once a show is in performance is for the show; this is a different kind of energy to the energy they use to explore the work in rehearsal. This can also sometimes make it difficult to shift something once a show has opened.

That's not to say that the show won't change. Chris makes the point that the show will inevitably change. The show will 'settle' and the actors will more deeply understand certain things as a product of the repetition. Also, it will change as a product of different audiences coming in to see the show each night. The actors are keenly aware of the things that work or don't work, and the show evolves in microscopic ways to this nightly dialogue. Sometimes a series of microscopic changes in a particular direction eventuate in significant changes to the show. Other times, it's a process of moments moving back and forth as different audiences respond differently, and more importantly, how the actors 'test' a moment in different ways to feel how it works best.

Tomorrow is the first dress rehearsal, and the first preview. The countdown has ticked over the zero days, and is now in the hours, minutes and seconds only. Right now the atmosphere is relaxed and confident, with a hint of expected apprehension. But we'll see whether that changes tomorrow.

Especially for Friday I'll be posting again between the dress run and the first preview, SO COME BACK FOR THAT!

Vaudeville Rehearsal Day 22 - "Heads down..."

The morning is spent continuing yesterday's lighting plot, which is followed by the sound plot. There is still more work to be done on the lighting plot, but it will have to wait until tomorrow morning.

The actors arrive at around 1.30pm and go to get into costume for tech-ing. Chris and Lally are photographed by the newspaper on stage. They stand next to the infamous 'Machine of Unhappy;' (yes, it's as crazy as it sounds, and I imagine you'll get to see it in the paper).

The moment the actors arrive on stage in costume is exciting for everybody. Mark steps out first. What a great moment; everybody feels it. Wow.

Two hours later Chris says he's already numb to it and now he's just focused on the work needed to get the show into shape. The first audience will be in on Friday night.

Tech-ing a show can be really time consuming because every lighting cue, sound cue, action with a new prop, action associated with a new piece of set, every 'trick'; virtually everything that is not 'acting' is tested and worked through to be sure that everybody has it covered.

This tech time has a classic calm before the storm feel about it. The performers are generally the ones with the higher stress levels through the rehearsal period, but in tech time the pressure is transferred to everybody else, and the actors roll through the show at a medium energy while all the technical details are worked out.

As we expected there are some tricky technical challenges, which take considerable time to sort out. As each of these technical moments take shape it fills in some of the detail that Chris has been talking about in rehearsal. He might say, “At this point the something will do this thing we're planning,” but until you actually see it and feel it in the theatre it can be hard to comprehend the full power of it.

There are other things that unfortunately don't quite work in the tech run and need to be put off until a part of it is fixed or adjusted so it can work. There aren't many of those moments in the tech run, but the trouble sometimes is in knowing when to keep trying to get something to work and when to leave it and move on.

This concern is magnified because at this stage in the process, if something is left to later, later might never arrive and the element might end up being cut all together. Providing, of course, that the technical detail doesn't define a moment so important that it can't possibly be cut. But that can actually be worse; it's annoying to cut something because it technically doesn't work, it's a nightmare when that something can't be cut because it's vital, but it somehow doesn't quite work either.

As I said, fortunately, there are only a couple of problems that were put off for the sake of 'fixing.' Probably less than might have been expected for the level of technical detail in the show. Nevertheless, everybody would prefer there were none at all.

The day ends at 10.30pm and they've got about a third of the way into the second act. There's plenty left to do, but everybody agrees that it's been going well. The actors are super keen to get through it. Every minute spent working through technical details is a minute they can't run the scenes in the show, which is what they really want right now.

Tomorrow is the clincher, because after tomorrow, anything that's not working is just not going to have time to get fixed by the first preview. Of course, the Opening isn't until next Wednesday. But the public is still the public.

COMPETITION FOR TICKETS!!

Just a reminder. I've got two tickets to the best comment of today and tomorrow. They are to Sunday afternoon's preview at 5pm. Get on it now!! Click where it says 'Comments' below. (And send it to goodbyevaudeville(at)gmail.com too, so I can email you back.)

Vaudeville Rehearsal Day 21

Vaudeville Rehearsal Day 21. (Tuesday)

Yesterday the actors had the day off. With the performance schedule beginning this week the actors will be working nights, so Monday was a rest day. That doesn't mean that no work is happening on the show. The time away from the rehearsal room gives the rest of the team time to concentrate on the technical elements.

Tuesday begins with a run of the show in the morning and then another run of the second and third acts in the afternoon. Both of these rehearsals take place in the rehearsal room; I was a little premature in calling the end of the rehearsals in the Bagging Room in the most recent post.

There's going to be a lighting plot tonight and tomorrow morning. Chris tells the cast before the afternoon session that it's going to be predominately tech time after this, so they really need to hit their performances today.

As has already been mentioned, there is a lot of technical detail in this show, so we're going to need all of the tech time available to get the technical scenes into shape.

Creating a lighting design is an interesting process for anybody who's never seen it done. The lighting designer in collaboration with the director creates a lighting plan and supervises the rigging and the focussing of the lights. (The 'rig' is where the lights are hung. The 'focus' is where the light is pointed, and the quality of the light as it can be manipulated within the lantern.)

Then there is the 'plot.' In the 'plot' the lighting designer brings up each lighting 'state' that has been designed for each scene and transition. Then the director asks for lights to be higher or lower, or lights to be added or subtracted from the state. 'Walkers' mimic the movement of the actors on stage so everybody can tell what the scene will look like.

A good relationship between the lighting designer and the director is really important through this process. In many ways it's pain-staking, detailed work. A common conversation sounds like this;

Lighting Designer - “Scene 12. Lamp number 20 at 50%, 21 at 60%, 33 at 45%, 40 at 50...”
(He says this to the lighting board operator who drives the board)
Director - “Can we have the downstage area a bit brighter?”
Lighting Designer - “Okay. Let's change 20 to 60% and 21 to 60%.”
Director - “Can we remove that shadow on the edge of that wall”
Lighting - “Yeah, can you bring up 43 to 20 and drop 21 to 35.”

This basic conversation gets repeated in a variety of ways as they massage the states into shape. On large shows cues and states can run into hundreds. (I'm not sure how many cues Richard has plotted for Vaudeville.) And there's not a great deal of time to 'test' anything. If a state feels wrong or doesn't light the area that the actors play the scene in, the time in which to change things is limited. It's not negligible, but it's limited. And with big changes that require extra lamps to be rigged and focused, sometimes a choice has to be made about which changes of this are most important because there might not be time for them all.

Chris has worked with most of the design and technical team numerous times before, and it really shows when they're doing the plot. The communication is clear, the mood is relaxed and the they move through things with a great deal of efficiency. More important than that, the atmosphere and dialogue is more creative than it is functional.

Although there's a clear order of states that the team work through, and a lot of “Lamp 20 at 60, 30 at 40” etc, the work they do in this time is not nearly as linear as it sounds. There are lots of minor changes and tweaks across many elements of the show; the set, the physical patterns, the action of the actors, the props, as well as the lights themselves. This is all happening simultaneously at the same time as they work through each of the lighting states. Ideas come across many different aspects of the show that are 'banked' to keep working on if they have the time.

It's a tremendously exciting time. As lights are brought up for each state in the show, the stage begins to live and everybody gets their first glimpses of what the show is going to look like once it hits the stage. It's absolutely tremendous. The Beckett is looking incredible.

Vaudeville Day 20 - Last day in the Bagging Room

Today is the final day of the 4 week rehearsal period. After this most of the rehearsing will be done in the theatre. Time sure flies. The poll on whether 4 weeks rehearsal is enough time gave the result that 54% thought it was too short. I might re-poll the same question next week to see whether opinions have changed over the course.

As per the pattern established over the last few days of rehearsal, today will be all about detailing important scenes. The post from Day 18 will give you an insight into how this goes if you didn't read that post.

I drop down to Wardrobe again to see how they're going. Amanda and Kate are working extraordinarily hard, and say they're on schedule, which means also working on the weekend. That's the nature of this kind of work; it's gotta be ready when it's gotta be ready.

Kate is dying some of the corsetry that Amanda was sewing up last time I was down there. Amanda tells me that making the underwear for this show has been incredibly time consuming. The amount of sewing is extreme. How extreme? Well, so far she's used 2 and a half kilometres of thread. 2 and a half kilometres of thread! (I know I'm repeating myself, but I'm trying to get my mind around it.) A handful of finished costumes hang around the studio, including Allarkini's robe, which looks pretty amazing.

She also volunteers that the actors seem more comfortable now. This is an interesting comment; of course it's the make-up and costumers who the actors unload all their worries and concerns upon. If things have calmed down for Amanda and Kate on that front, it's a good sign.

There is activity on a lot of different fronts today; everybody understands that the time available to work through issues is contracting with every minute.

Lawrence is here again today. I spend some time in the Shell Room with him, Jonathon, Darren and two of the actors [names withheld for magic security reasons]. The way Lawrence works is brilliant. His is a very technically specific craft, yet the way he chooses to employ the techniques are built purely on his imagination and connection with the show. The scene he is working with the actors on at the moment is based upon one line in the stage directions of the play. It has been Lawrence's job to understand the characters, interpret the timbre and atmosphere of the scene, and then construct how this single line is best to be realised.

The way Lawrence moves is very fluid and he is highly physically controlled. The way he directs the actors is a very carefully balanced combination of choreographic precision, with instruction on how they need to play the scene to convey what is 'real.' He is patient and generous, and as he describes how he has constructed the scene with the limitations of the actors' experience and the world of this particular show in mind, the enormous complexity of his task and the skill with which he's achieved it comes into view.

I also take some time to speak with Mark Jones, the composer and Musical Director of the show. Our conversation is far-reaching and raised some really brilliant insights into the work. I've decided to report on our conversation in two parts, because I can't possibly fit it into a single post. Also, some of what we talked about in relation to how the music works in the piece as a whole might be useful contextualised within the how the piece is shaping up for the first preview on Friday night.

Mark joined the project very early on as a musician and musical director. When he joined the project for the first development period he says there was no plot and no narrative; just a broad concept and some early character sketches.

Mark's character, Bones, the 'black faced' piano playing 'end man' existed very much in the way that he does now. Other characters have come and gone from different drafts, and others have always been in the script in some form, but have had significant evolution. The essence of the Bones character has remained quite constant from the beginning as Mark sees him.

The songs are such an important part of the piece. I ask him about the evolution of their composing. Mark says that in the first development he played existing music, but since that first development he's worked on and off on composing original songs for the show in collaboration with Chris, Lally and Maryanne.

The songs have begun from varying starting points. Some of them began with a melody that Mark created, others started from the idea for a scene in which they're central, others started with written text from Chris and/or Lally. In some ways they are still developing as verses or choruses get added and cut in accordance with how they are working in the show.

I ask Mark whether the songs are 'period' songs, and how he has dealt with that issue. His response echoes that of both the set and lighting designer. Much of the music he has written has a kind of a Rag Time feel, but it is not precisely music of the period and genre. Strictly speaking, the recordings of vaudeville artists of the time reveal simpler music, and quite a lot of talking with the piano underneath.

Mark's says his composition is definitely more musically sophisticated than the recordings of the music of the time that exists today. Like Jonathon and Richard, Mark has gone for a 'sense' of period, but has not been bound by historical 'fact' in what he's provided to the production.

The production must be resonant and interesting for today's audience. This means a 'sense' of period is better than historical accuracy in the case that the historically accurate music style does not serve the production. But the lines of what 'serves' the play and 'works' for an audience is not as clear as this statement suggests. For example, fuzziness in the period of music has been deemed okay, but last week they were researching the exact date the 'Dryzabone' coat was introduced. In the case of the coat the sense of historical accuracy that 'served' the play was understood to be far more literal.

These thresholds for accuracy clearly exist in all artistic works. Some 'facts' are considered sacred, some are considered malleable, and some just aren't considered much at all. How these lines get drawn is not always clear; partly they are decided by individual artists, partly by community 'standard,' partly on an individual basis by every audience member who accepts or rejects how these elements work within the piece.

Why it 'works' that the historical accuracy for some things can be massaged, but the accuracy for something else cannot is an interesting question. But theatre artists will say that their 'sense' that something is or isn't working in relation to its historical accuracy is very clear to them.

Chris phrase of the day; “Does anyone know where the invisible thread is?”