Late night/early morning bitch session

November 21, 2005 at 6:54 PM

I apologise in advance for anyone that I may offend.

During the past week, I have been involved in rehearsals for a musical that will open on wednesday. This is a new, original show, and the writing for it is really good. The plot is well constructed, the music is memorable, and it puts a terrific new spin on the Christmas Story.

Last week, after not being able to make rehearsals for a couple of weeks before, I saw the show go from a really rough run through to a fairly snappy run from Monday through to friday. However, after tonights rehearsal (which was to be our last before opening), I feel the need to "vent my spleen" so to say and speak what's on my mind. Now I really respect the author/composer of this musical, not only for spending so much time on this script and music, but also for having the up and go to get out there and get it performed. However I feel I need to make some comments for young players.

1) Rehearsal time. One nights rehearsal in the concert venue is not enough for a performance as complex as this. You need to get sound levels right, lighting cues right, curtain cues right, and the cast need to get used to the stage. Ideally all your rehearsals should be in the performance venue, but that is not always possible. Still, I feel that at least a week of rehearsals is neccessary in the performance venue, with at least 2 or three runs with lights, sound, props, costumes etc to make the perforers comfortable.
Now, in professional situations, that is not always neccessary. The actors would have done a large number of shows in a large number of venues and know how to adapt to particular venues. But this is not a professional situation. Even if you have great actors and such, they're still amatuers in the sense that none of them have done any formal musical theatre training.
For a production like this, at least a week is neccessary in the performance venue. Now, the venue was booked out the week before, so my suggestion would be to change the performance dates so that it would be possible to spend a week in rehearsal at the venue.

2) Sound. Now, I'm not having a go at the girl doing the sound, because I know it's a tough job, especially on a limited buget. But if you know you have to mic violins, you should have a fair idea of what can clip onto a violin. A big alligator clip won't do, no matter how much we try. But she had a back-up plan which was shotgun mics. This is fine, except there's only two - one for viola, and one for violin 1 and 2. Now, we can't place it closer to violin one, cause violin two won't be heard, and visa versa. But also, placing in the middle leaves a lot to chance.
Also, due to the setup of the stage, the musicians are at the back of the stage, in a single straight line. This is unfortunate, as we lose sightlines with the band leader. Now I can cue people in as much as possible, but I don't know the script well so I'm not much help. And it doesn't help that there's only two foldbacks - one for the drums, and one for the guitars/keyboards, which means the strings can't hear what the rest of the band is playing.

3)Micing. Only the leads are being mic'ed for the performance, which makes sense in larger ensembles with chorus etc, but in this performance, everyone is a soloist, or a member of a smaller ensemble that needs to be mic'ed so that a)they can be heard over the band, and b) that the band can hear the cues.

4)A production team (Director, producers, etc) that have never put together a production before is not a recipe for success. Yes, everyone needs their debut, but that usually comes after a period of learning the trade, such as by being in productions, or being in another part of the team and seeing how other people do the job.

Now it seems like I have only bad things to say, but really the musical itself is really good, and there are lots of good things about it. It's just sometimes you need to let spill all the bad things to make you feel better.

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Late night/early morning bitch session

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