Finishing Touches for SHIPWRECKED!

We've just been through three very intense days of technical rehearsal for Shipwrecked! and I have to say, I am incredibly pleased with the work we've done.

After two and a half weeks of working primarily with the actors, tech week is the time we get to incorporate the work of the rest of the artistic team.

The set was first to arrive. John Devlin has created a wonderfully imaginative and appropriately simple world in which the actors can create all the different locations Louis describes in the play. It's all rough wood and canvas and painted muslin backdrops, giving it the feel of a makeshift stage for a travelling theatre troupe. I love the fact that it looks fairly pedestrian at first, but as the actors start to play on it (and the lights are added) it transforms into a very magical-feeling environment.

A few days later, the costume pieces started to arrive. I haven't done a full count, but I would guess that there are nearly 100 different pieces for the three actors. From myriad hats and coats and shawls to Aboriginal head dresses and Victorian-era bathing garb, Rachel Kurland has provided us with the means to create over two-dozen characters, often going from one to the next in less than five seconds. It's like watching the cast play a highly choreographed game of dress-up.

Various new props and puppets arrived throughout the week as well.  From Heather Nielsen's wonderful octopus (both the miniature and life-size versions) to Sue Wade's period-perfect reproductions of Wide World Magazine, we know have the dozens of detailed physical objects that help bring the play to life.

On Friday, we started adding lights. The addition of lighting is often one of the more transformational elements of making theatre, and that's never been truer than with this show. I asked Kyle Stetson to be as playful as possible with his choices, encouraging him to use saturated colors and unusual angles -and he did. We had a wide and unusual palette to play with and the process as we worked through the show was really very much like painting. I hope you can get a sense from the pictures on our website what a wonderful job Kyle did. 

I know that tech rehearsal can often be a grind, with all the stopping and starting, all the going back and fixing tiny details. And it's been a while since we've done a show at Vermont Stage that has so many technical elements that all have to work in concert with each other, so there was real potential for this to be an especially challenging weekend. But I want to tell you, it was an absolute pleasure working with this creative team. Everyone seemed to get caught up in the spirit of play and creativity that Shipwrecked! celebrates. Ideas, additions and solutions were coming from all quarters throughout the process, with each artist helping every other artist to realize the overarching vision of the piece.

It was exhilarating. The process of creating this piece of theatre perfectly embodied what the play is about and what I believe theatre at its best can be: the transformational power of a good story well told and the collaborative process of bringing that story to life.

And now we await the next great collaboration, for it is the audience who will bring the final and most essential element to this play. I feel like we have made a very lifelike toy, but it will be your attention and your imagination that will bring it truly to life.

We look forward to your vitalizing presence!

March 9th, 2010