A Day in the Life

As you might imagine, a good portion of my job as an artistic director entails sitting in my office, emailing, calling, and meeting with the dozens of folks who do the real work of making theatre. But every now and then (actually, five times a season), I roll up my sleeves and spend a week doing the nitty-gritty work of physically mounting a production. This is what a typical day during production week looks like.

8 am Pick up lumber.

When we loaded in the set yesterday, I realized that the way I had been blocking the show didn't quite work with the way the set had been designed. It's one thing to see a set on a groundplan, or taped out in a rehearsal room; it's something else to see the real thing in place at FlynnSpace. So when the real thing got there, I realized the main platform where most of the action takes place needed to be about two feet wider. So, on my way to town today, I ran over to Clifford Lumber in Hinesburg to pick up a few more planks, so that we can build an extension.

9 am Meet Joel to get pump organ.

Joel, our sound designer, found this great old-fashioned pump organ to use for sound effects and musical underscoring for the show.  It was still at the rehearsal hall, and since it weighs a ton, I asked Joel to meet me there to help me load it into my truck (next to the lumber) so we could deliver it to FlynnSpace.

9:30 am Joel and I load organ into FlynnSpace and start setting up sound effects area.

About 1/3 of the playing area is given over to Joel's instruments and various other noisemakers, so we had to work on how it would all be configured, so I could then get measurements for a table that we would build to hold all his equipment.

10 am Meet John Devlin at St. Mike's

John, our scenic designer and technical director (the guy who designs, builds and installs the set) and I spend about an hour in his shop working on various small carpentry jobs, including building Joel's table, shaping a set of stilts, planing the lumber I had just bought, and working out a sound effect for a snapping ship's mast.

11:30 Meet Jen at FlynnSpace

Back to FlynnSpace to meet with Jen Moulton, our stage manager, and work with her to figure out prop and costume placement. Unlike most shows where all the props and costumes are hidden until they're used, most everything is left in plain sight for this show. That means things have to be arranged somewhat artfully, (but seem to be random) and also in a way that everything is easily accessible to the actors.

12:30 Grab lunch and check in at the office

Even though we're deep in the middle of getting a show open in a week, there are the myriad administrative tasks I have to keep an eye on as well. A few fundraising letters to sign, following up on some marketing plans for this show, staying on top of plans for the next show (My Ohio). I have about 20 minutes to eat lunch, answer about a dozen emails and get back to the theatre in time to get ready for rehearsal.

1 pm Begin 6 hours of rehearsal

Since this is the actors' first day in FlynnSpace, most of the work is focused around getting them oriented to the theatre. With the actual set in place (rather than a representation of the groundplan taped out on the floor), the spacing that we've been working with for the last two weeks  feels quite a bit different. We have to adjust exits and entrances, timing for certain interactions changes, and some things that we thought would work need to be completely scrapped and re-thought now that we're on the real set.

Acting becomes a secondary focus. There's too much other stuff to deal with. Not only are the actors getting re-oriented, we are constantly stopping to add new production elements, especially costume pieces, as they arrive.  And yet, even amidst the chaos, the actors are finding new bits of business or deepening their connections with each other. And I'm finding moments of staging that are actually simpler and more elegant, mostly out of necessity. It's an intense day.

7 pm Actors are done; start a production meeting with the design and tech team

All departments are now present - lighting (Kyle), costume (Rachel), scenic (John), puppets and special props (Heather), sound (Joel). Jen and I go through a list of questions and problems that have come up in the course of rehearsal. It's a whirlwind problem-solving session. Sometimes it's as easy as:

Me: This lighting instrument is getting in the way of my actors.  Kyle: I can move that.

And sometimes it's more involved, like trying to come up with a way to make a dozen aborigines appear. I won't tell you how we do it, but I can say that everyone on the team contributed to the solution.

8 pm Dinner and drive home

9:30 pm Write this blog

It's about 10:15 right now. I'll finish this up in about 15 minutes and send it to the office so that Corinn can post it first thing in the morning. Then I'll write the newsletter that goes with it, so that Corinn can send that out tomorrow while I'm in rehearsal. The newsletter and the blogs are some of my most important marketing tools. It seems that people actually like reading these and that the more they know about what goes into making a show, the more likely they are to attend. I also like to be as transparent about the whole process as possible. I want people to know how we do what we do. I try to preserve some of the magic so that people will still be surprised, but I also want to give folks a clear idea of the work that goes into making that magic. (By the way, if there are any requests about what to put into future blogs, please let me know.)

More later!

March 3rd, 2010