This week in
Directors Projects:
We’ve now finished
2 weeks of rehearsals. Rehearsals take place from 10am-12pm Wednesday to
Sunday. It’s been a struggle to get up early and be ready/focused for the 2
hour rehearsal session, but I’m slowly getting used to it. It’s weird to think
that I used to get up early every day and get home late every day. Everything
here is so close, and since I started rehearsals in March, everything starts
latter in the day, so I haven’t had to deal with early mornings all season,
unless I wanted to, even activities that took place in the morning, like cricket
practice and dance class started at 10am, which was very manageable (even after
a night at the bar). The thing that makes this different although it`s the same
start time is that my start time is actually 9:30am so that I have time to set
up my room and be ready for when the actors come in at 10am. Fortunately my set
up is very easy, we only have 4 pieces of furniture and there are usually less
than 4 actors in at a time, since the script has a lot of scenes with 2 or 3
characters. I also have to be focused enough to stay on top of everything
that`s happening in the room. I haven`t been using my brain to its full
capacity first thing in the morning all season, so this is the biggest
challenge. Since Light up the Sky usually
runs in the evenings, I`ve had a few days where I work 9:30-12:30 and then have
6 hours off before I go in to run SKY,
and other days where I`ve started at 9:30 and worked until 11pm with a two hour
break for lunch and an hour beak for dinner. I`ve definitely been taking naps
almost every day. There were a few times where I tried not to take a nap, so I
could get used to the ‘early mornings’ but…why fight taking a nap? I gave in.
Naps are too great. The rehearsal room, and our process with the actors so far
has been very positive and focused. We’re moving at a great pace for this
particular script. It has so many layers and subtext to consider so we’re
really taking our time and making sure that we’re giving each page the
attention in needs. We’ve been hitting a bit more of a wall on the tech/design
side. The set/costume designer took a week off to get Married this last week
(congrats to him and his new wife) but it’s left us at a bit of a standstill
with some design questions that have come up due to rehearsals. Our design
consists of a ladder that goes 3’4’’ straight up to a platform. The ladder that
was built for us isn’t exactly what we had originally discussed, and the actors
are having some difficulty using it. The current ladder is a metal ladder, with
a narrow width that can barely fit a person between it (the sides of the ladder
continue pasted the platform without steps to create the illusion that the
ladder continues higher to a second floor) which means that the actor have to pass
through the current width (most of the time they are also carrying props). The
other problem we’re having is that the ladder has metal rungs and our design
was to have flat wooden steps. We have two older actors going up and down the
ladder a few times during the show, and one actor goes up and down in his bare
feet, it’s not a very easy/comfortable ladder to have to use multiple times. We’ve
had discussions with a few different people about it, but won’t have a new
ladder built until the designer is back in town (this upcoming week). Before
the designer left, we hadn’t quite come to an agreement on costumes and
therefor are doing some generalizations in the rehearsal hall. Some decisions
were also rushed because he knew he was leaving for a week and needed to get
certain things done before he left.
Things should go
much smoother once he’s back. I’ve sent out two set of production notes and
asked my boss if she had any feedback for me so far. She said my notes and all
my paperwork were very clear and well done and that she thinks I’m doing a
great job managing my room and my director. YAY! We’ve had a few meetings with
sound and have decided to have some original music composed for our project.
The music intern is our composer but will also be leaving town for 2 weeks starting
this coming Wednesday, so our focus has been on making sure everything can get
down before he leaves so that we have something to play in rehearsals with the
actors. The lighting designer on our team has been out of town for a week and
will be returning at the end of next week. The company forgot to extend his
contract, so he took a job offer in Toronto for a few weeks and will be back
with us in September. It’s been a bit frustrating with people not being in town
at different times and makes for a production meeting very hard to organize. We
should be able to all meet during the second week of September, which is a week
before we move into the space.
I don’t have
anything else to write about, as I’ve been spending most of my time working on
the directors’ projects and taking naps. Life is good.
Elyse
No comments:
Post a Comment