Tech Week

The team figuring out a scene change

From Wikipedia: Technical week (also called tech week or production week) refers to the week prior to the opening night of a play, musical or similar production in which all of the technical elements (such as costumes, lights, sound, and makeup) are present during rehearsal for the first time.

Prior to this point, the actors may have been rehearsing in a separate rehearsal hall, or on the stage but without all technical elements present. At this point in the rehearsal process, it is expected that the creative aspects of the production are ready. Actors have their lines memorized; lights, sound, scenery, and costumes have been designed and completely constructed. If the production is a musical, then the orchestra has rehearsed the music completely, and any dancers are prepared with their choreography memorized. During technical week all of the various technical elements are fully implemented, making the rehearsals very similar to the actual performance.

The purpose of tech week is to rehearse the show with all technical elements in place. This allows the actors to become familiar with the set and costumes, the technical production crew to iron out unforeseen problems, and the director to see how everything comes together as an artistic whole. Tech week is when practical problems with the implementation of production elements are discovered. For example, an actor may report that their costume restricts their movement or that a hand prop is overly cumbersome. A set door that performed fine the week before may bang shut too loudly now that there are live microphones on the stage.

Rehearsals during technical week generally start just after lunch and often run until midnight or later. The first few rehearsals are characterized by the frequent stopping and starting of scenes so that the technical crew can practice their necessary duties (such as executing their cues or scene changes correctly). That the director will make major changes to various artistic elements during technical week is the rule, rather than the exception. Everything that goes wrong during a rehearsal is expected to be fixed by the next day.
 
The repetition and the long hours make tech week tiring (and sometimes tedious) for the actors. For the technicians, it is the most hectic part of a show's run, as they are forced to do a massive amount of work getting timings and cues correct, often without having seen the scenes in their entirety. Tech week is a very stressful time for all involved in a production. As the week wears on, sleep deprivation increases and tempers often wear thin.

Once the show is running smoothly, the last one or two rehearsals of technical week are often dress
rehearsals open to the public in which the play is performed completely, sometimes with the audience purchasing discounted tickets.

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This is one of the most exciting stages of creating a piece of theatre: watching everyone's weeks and months of hard work come together over a week of twelve to fifteen hour days to create the three hour musical you see when you come to the theatre!

The crew and stage management team will show up around 8am (if not earlier) to set up all of the props, furniture and set pieces they have already collected from the property designer the night before-- the crew has already been building the set for over three days. Usually they create a stage right and stage left prop table, complete with labels detailing every single prop and it's location. Buuuuuut our Hello Again set is more than simply setting up the already established theatre space! In this production tech week becomes even more complicated because the staging is site-specific (most simply defined as "a performance which exists in a particular place." However, there remains a widespread debate about any more precise a definition. Some argue that any performance which takes place outside a theatre can be labeled site-specific. Other more rigorous practitioners argue that the title can only be applied to a production which has been developed in, developed from, and performed in, a specific place). As a result, there are a watershed of further complications to contend with. 

Around the same time, the Wardrobe department bring in and prepare the costumes, they label and deliver each costume to the designated actor dressing rooms. They prepare to iron, sew and alter and discard as needed throughout the day. Costumes often change drastically throughout the technical process because lights, distance, mood, coloring often affect the visual results one cannot grasp out of context.

The lighting team has set up their lighting board and has begun to assess the set and what lights are available, and they begin work immediately. In this particular production, there was a real challenge with lighting because there is no traditional theatrical lighting per se-- it is entirely lit with ambient lights such as lamps, light bulbs and even lighting from the street itself.

the sound team

The sound team are setting up the sound board, testing and setting up the sound design-- which, again, in this production is extra challenging because it is almost entirely acoustic (meaning: sound devoid of electronic amplification.) We have some amplification, but not much. And while it is not rare for straight theatre to be presented without amplification, it is rare for a musical because the actors have to sing over a band/orchestra.

And speaking of the orchestra, the very first step in a musical tech is the Sitzprobe (meaning: is a German term used in opera and musical theatre to describe a seated rehearsal where the singers sing with the orchestra, focusing attention on integrating the two groups [literally, sitting and probing the music]. It is often the first rehearsal where the orchestra and singers rehearse together. The equivalent Italian term is prova all'italiana.)

The cast then begin to orient themselves with "the space" (as we call it), getting a feel for the grandeur of the room, the sound, the distances that are different from the rehearsal space. After dinner, the cast get in to costume, make up, and hair, and get ready to begin from the top of the show.

We then take the show, moment by moment, detailing every single technical aspect until it is just right, only moving on when we are all happy with it. There is tremendous pressure to do it quickly, because it is always important to remember that the first preview is Friday evening. Yikes! 

And in our case, the living composer, Michael John LaChiusa will be a part of the previewing process, and that of course adds a pressure and excitement of its own!


Jack Cummings III, director, on working with the composer:

Jack Cummings III

"Having any author present for your first run-through in the space is always a bit nerve wracking to say the least.  As a director, you have your own anxiety but then you also start to take on the actors' anxieties as well which can put one's stomach on overload.  But Michael John is very attuned to fellow artists and is ultimately generous and supportive.  The great thing is he always has clear specific notes and so, in the end, multiple anxieties included, I love it when he's in the room. "

There are multiple concerns in a musical: can you move and dance safely on the floor? Is it too slippery? too tacky? uneven? can we hear the orchestra? can they hear us? can we hear ourselves? Can we see in the dark? Can we make that quick change? Can we get to the other side of the stage in time to make our entrance? Will this hairstyle withstand rigorous fake sex? Can I breathe and sing and dance properly in this corset? Where should I exit? Who is the best person to set the props in this scene? Do the costumes look right in this lighting state? How will we handle this quick costume change?

Krista Williams, The Transport Group's in-house Dramaturg on tech week:

"A certain amount of insanity defines the week before any production opens, and site specific  productions bring their own host of challenges, the space is just beginning to reveal all the ways in which it will and will not cooperate with you! And as we hit a seeming endless number of ceilings: budget, hours in a day, space restrictions, total exhaustion as rehearsals continue into the next day... I think what's amazing about this creative team and staff is how fundamentally unshaken they are by the chaos. The cast, the designers, and Jack [Cummings III--director], Chris [Fenwick--musical director] and Scott [Rink-- choreographer] all continue to offer creative and insightful solutions to the myriad of issues that arise continuing to be functional and even inspired hours after the Starbucks on the block closes down for the night. I think everyone is energized by their love of the music and the story and by a cast that is just disgustingly talented. And I think there is a fearless simplicity to [this] approach to staging that comes primarily from a trust of the extraordinary performers and material — no one is ever trying to distract you from bad acting or weak storytelling because there isn't any!  The design is so brave, and the space so alive, and the performers so courageous, that you can't even check the time at 1:30 am at end of a loooooonnngggg rehearsal day because you don't want to look away even for a second."

The theatre is a tremendously complicated thing, but it is a series of delectable and sometimes maddening problems to solve, all in the name of art. It is always fascinating to think about what has gone in to creating the finished product on the stage that you see when you walk in ready to enjoy it. 

And we certainly hope you do! See you in "the space" very soon...

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"The drama is not dead but liveth, and contains the germs of better things."

 --William Archer, About the Theatre

what happens when you tech very very late into the night...

Still-Wife: The Beginnings

“Whenever an actor first reads a play on which he is going to work, he is an audience. He visualizes the play and hears it like an audience. Whatever identification he may have with the play is similar to the identification he may have with the play is similar to the identification an audience might have and should not be confused with the organic identification he must find with the character he is going to play. He laughs at or with the play, he cries at or with the play, and, more than anything else, he cries and laughs at or with the character he is going to play.
“This is the moment where the images he conceives, and the tone and sounds he hears in his imagination on his first contact with the play must soon be discarded and not confused with the real work on the play and the part. The actor still has to go backstage and then evolve on stage.”

—Uta Hagen

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In preparing for The Young Wife in Hello Again I first did two things. I read the play. Then I read it again. And then again. (One could say that I said Hello again and again and again…)

An actor’s ultimate job is to create a character that serves the play. The story (and not their own ego). So obviously in order for an actor to make a meaningful contribution to the piece overall, one has to gather information, make provisions for, and establish as much detail as possible concerning the play itself before beginning to “interpret” or make an outline for their own role within the play/ story/ piece.
To quote Uta Hagen once again, “all tedious research is worth one inspired moment.”


I always try (sometimes without a great deal of success) to throw away as many of my first impressions as possible, because whenever my first impressions have been utilized in the past I have always experienced regret. (It is tremendously difficult getting past them.) My first impressions got in my way like Prince Phillip feebly making his way through the thorny branches in Sleeping Beauty. Only less sexy. And without a sword. Leaping toward a “photograph” of my first impression is almost always a trap— an objective perspective that, in my opinion, doesn’t do me any good. At all.

However, working subjectively through the play from its foundations one avoids ready-made-microwave-dinner-type-character-cliches. (Example: choosing to cry at the moment when you feel sorry for the character you are playing, the actor could be providing the tears that should arguably be in the eyes of the audience. A character truly struggling does not necessarily mean that the character is moved.) Through asking myself/you as the character who “I” am, what “I” want, what “I” do, one ends up with profound, deep-rooted human meaning.


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A great place to start is by asking yourself “What is the playwright trying to communicate?” Then to attempt to define it in an active sentence. (We have done that as a group, as well as on individual levels, but we can’t give it all away now can we?)

Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde served as Michael John LaChiusa’s source material— and Hello Again was the result of this dramatic suggestion. Now do not be confused— Hello Again is in no way a “musical version” of La Ronde (in the way that Hello, Dolly! is the musical version of Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker, or She Loves Me is a musicalized version of The Shop Around the Corner)—instead, it is inspired by, but not a word-for-word musicalization of this 1900 play by Arthur Schnitzler which scrutinizes the sexual morals and classism of the period through a series of encounters (rather than focusing an exploration of relationships—particularly sexual— outright, which is more the focus in Hello Again).

The play was not publicly performed until 1920 when it elicited violent critical and popular reactions against its subject matter, and interestingly, in 1922, Sigmung Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, wrote to Schnitzler saying, "you have learned through intuition—though actually as a result of sensitive introspection—everything that I have had to unearth by laborious work on other persons." (Cool huh? They became very good friends as a result of this correspondence, and Schnitzler must have been relieved, for up until this point his edifice has been wrecked. Edifice Wrecked… Freud. Oedipus? Get it…? Awful? Okay, it is. It’s awful…moving on…)


All this being said, in La Ronde, each of the characters in the play is literally the same person from scene to scene— the circle is literal, The Young Wife who interacts with The Young Gentleman is the same exact person that interacts with The Husband in the following scene. It is entirely possible that the characters in La Ronde are all members of a singular small community.

But in Hello Again the characters are not in any way the exact same person (because of course, first of all, they are set in completely different times/decades and places),  the connection from scene to scene is less literal, more symbolic, and entirely nebulous which allows for a lot of dramatic and interpretive wiggle room— more homework and more discipline required to create believable and meaningful characters.

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One of the things we discussed at the very first read/sing through was how each of these characters may indeed both be Nurses, Soldiers and Wives, and they share qualities, but they are different people. Perhaps echos of the previous selves (The Soldier), or influenced by experiences from a sort of  “past life” shadow (The Nurse), or perhaps they are simply experiencing the same longings within the confines of different circumstances (The Young Wife).

Where to begin? Most crucially, it was essential for me to identify that I was not developing one character, but indeed, two— The Young Wife in Scene 4 set in the 1930s, and The Young Wife in Scene 5 set in the 1950s.
The Young Wives, if you will…
     …and I know you will.

So. I began by giving each woman a proper name.

One of the most beautiful things about this piece are the reoccurring themes—from musical repeats (“hello again” / “his eyes are green,” the “we kiss,” theme, and “i’ve got a little time” / “we have a little time”) a brooch that travels through time, shadows of characters we meet again and again, and, of course, everyone’s names— Marie, Sammy, Emily, Marianne, Leocadia…

The 1950s Young Wife already has a name outright— Emily.

And because I find it difficult to create any kind of real person without a name so I named The 1930s Young Wife Marianne. It was a logical step: Emily refers to her friend “Marianne” who is having an affair with a “college boy.”

Thus Marianne and Emily.
Hello (…Again.)

In order to really be Marianne and Emily, I had better know who I am when each scene begins and how I got to be that way. Time, place, relationships— hair styles, undergarments, current events, weather, social expectations, income, education, personal likes and dislikes. All valid and important and useful if not outright necessary information. What do these women want? Need? Desire? What are they afraid of? Amused by? Repulsed by? Each scene in Hello Again is ostensibly a mini-play within itself, as well as contributing to the “macro” of the whole circle so there is very little to draw from in the text itself, one has to utilize the full force of their imaginative powers.

Sheesh! I’d better get to work.

But in the meantime, I will leave you with this quote, by director Jack Cummings III, from rehearsal:

“I think you actually have to… open his trousers…like with the belt and fly and everything…and just.. you know...really get in there…”

Over and out.

Still-Wife: An Introduction

Hello…again! (I know. I know… but the joke isn’t even remotely wearing thin with all of us yet, so… for the moment it is here to stay. I’m sorry. I am. I just can't make any promises.)

at The Savoy in London (where people aren't so confused about why I'm in the show)

So who the hell am I? (…Right? I know so many people probably looked at the casting announcement for this show and went? Who?! Was Laura Benanti like, not available or something?!) So anyway: hi there. Hello. Again. My name is Alexandra Silber (though you can call me Al if you like, everyone except Marc Kudisch does, but only because he has permission and frankly wouldn't take no for an answer...) and for the last 8 years I have been based in the United Kingdom— at school in Scotland (at The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama) then working in London’s West End. Hello Again will actually mark my New York theatre debut and it is a real honor (—or, as they would type in the Old World— hono(u)r…) So—onward!

*

Often, I am asked what the creative process is like, how actors approach and develop characters, and how they manifest themselves into being. So I thought it might be interesting to chronicle that process for The Young Wife in this production, not only to illuminate things for those of you who may be interested in what happens from audition to full performance, but also to observe it and have an awareness of it in myself. (Fun? Possibly excruciating? ...fun?)

So welcome, to The Transport Group’s 2011 Revival of Hello Again, and a re-formation and discovery of The Young Wife.

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So, is there a "best" way to approach developing a character? The short answer is No. But, I will say that I personally approach character development a lot like a collage.

I have no idea of what it's going to develop into when I begin work on a character. To quote one of my greatest artistic inspirations (visual artist, author, and dear friend) Nick Bantock, “Making art is like having a relationship—you want to bring in some ideas, but if you don't allow it to develop naturally and speak to you as it develops, you end up imposing and projecting upon it.”

Indeed. I want my character to live and breathe— I want the character to be as close to a real person as is (sane and) possible. I know that sounds pedestrian, but the truth is, oftentimes there is a great deal of emphasis on a projected performance rather than on creating the impression of a living, breathing person. It is part methodical, part spontaneous and varies for every creative process.

In general I like to arm myself with this copious research and more academic material before I ever get "on my feet." Once we’re staging, the work becomes primarily instinctive but I feel free to "feel" my way because the instinctive work has been informed by the prior intellectual work. I try to never leave a corner (either technical or instinctive) unexplored.

wreck it!

One consistent certainty is that regardless of the aesthetic of the piece, the rehearsal length or the genre, I always have a book—usually a really simple, ugly book I feel happy to destroy, alter, throw about, wreck, weep on, rip up, and accidentally drop in the bathtub. I hate when a book is so hand-bound-by-ancient-Italian-artisans that you feel hesitant to even write your name in it. Creativity is about getting dirty people! And it starts with feeling comfortable enough to not merely mark, but destroy the pages if need be. So go! Go out and get to CVS and buy that 89¢ spiral-bound! Sew a page, pick up the book with your feet, play golf with it, slept with it under your pillow, cover two pages with office supplies, add that coffee ring! Add bird feathers you find in the park (safely sealed under clear packing tape-- getting dirty doesn't mean being unsanitary, sheesh)! Make that drawing using your own hair! YEAH... [*Al recovers from her own enthusiasm*] It is always fun. Nine times out of ten it's fun.

Moving on: I fill said book with both 1. very technical things (basic acting technique stuff a la Stanislavsky, Meisner, Hagen), and 2. a tremendous amount of what I call “instinctively collected” material.

Specifically:

1. Technically speaking one must collect several pieces of information from the text itself: facts, circumstances and “knowns” about the character, things the character says, and things others say about your character, etc. Comb through the script. Ask yourself 'Why that word, and not another word?' and 'What do you think happened?' Those pieces of seemingly obvious information sometimes reveal a well of literal and sub-textual (yeah, pretty certain I made that word up...) inspiration and information. It may seem trivial but it is as important as establishing that the ground you are building a skyscraper on is solid and not sand.

First, I always attempt to write out a fully fleshed-out back story. I do the same for the gaps between scenes my character appears in, filling in the unspoken or unmentioned details of what happens between the scenes the audience views. I prefer writing these in third person. Example, when I was working on Carousel in London it went a little like this: "Julie Jordan was born in a small fishing village 40 miles south of Portland, Maine. Abandoned in early childhood, she was raised in one of the numerous orphanages in the Northeast and subsequently farmed into the countless factories and industrial mills peppering the area at the boom of the American Industrial Revolution, and ostensibly raised by Cotton Mill owner and prominent town leader William Bascomb…" Boom! There you go: time, place, circumstances. We gather from that brief snippet that Julie is alone in the world, and that the mill is her only source of “home,” which increases the stakes when she gives all of it up for love in scene one. Without that degree of homework and consideration, the scenes the audience does see have less power and punch.

those glasses are fake...but don't I look chic..?

Next, it is important (to me at least!) to engage in a flood of scholarly style ‘homework’ (I’m a not-so-closeted-wannabe-academic) so one feels armed with enough information to make accurate and informed choices once you are on your feet. This is also where a dramaturge is vitally important. (the person who works on the historical and cultural research into the play and its setting, though they are trained to do much much more and often do). Cue The Transport Group's Resident Dramaturge Krista Williams, who always enters stage left with a flood of studious investigatory information! Anything you cannot find she will find make no mistake about it. She went to Yale). I don’t mean to suggest that every single moment needs to be plotted and planned beforehand, I simply suggest that if one is armed with all that historical, circumstantial, and factual information possible; that one’s instincts can then be empowered based on the truth of that particular character’s existence. It is like cooking, one has to have all the ingredients and cooking skills prepared and on hand so that one can create a dish both spontaneously and skillfully.

Finally, I collect any kind of additional inspiration that might help me access the character in another way. This means drawings, newspaper clippings, music, poems, bits of literature, photos, even scents and fabrics I feel may be relevant to the development of the person I am chiseling, revealing, building and layering. Like I said, I treat it all a bit like a collage and it begins here…

So-- to 'the book!' To the research! Time to hassle the dramaturge! To test red lipstick and work on finger curling skills! And time to learn Michael John's complex but stunningly beautiful score that one can only hope they serve well.

Farewell for now. I'm off to Google 'til I'm blind. “I’m sure we’ll be saying, Hello Again…”

...again. ...sorry.