Tech ... Day Off ... Phew

Things are grinding down towards opening for all the plays. The first four plays of the Festival Season, The Philanderer, By the Waters of Babylon, Room Service, and Richard III all open on the same weekend at the end of February. So this means that they've all been rehearsing at the same time and last week and this coming week, they're all teching and dressing at the same time. The Philanderer, Babylon, and Room Service all share the same theater. There's a really nice guy here who introduced himself to me as the Producing Director (or Production Director) of the theater. A couple of weeks later, I got the courage to ask him what a Production Director does. In essense, he coordinates the schedules. Too right! Four shows at one time, all needing rehearsal spaces, all needing theater time, all sharing one resident movement specialist and one resident composer, two sharing the same dramaturgs and voice & text specialists, nobody working more than eight hours a day ... coordinating that and more is a job. I saw him sitting in the back of the house for one of our rehearsals. He was working on next season's schedule. Damn.

This past week, The Philanderer has been doing its tech rehearsals. For those who don't know, the tech rehearsal is the first time the director actually sees the lighting cues. So a lot of it can be the director and the lighting designer going back and forth, refining each cue. It's the time for that. It's also the time to rehearse the actual running of the cues. You do the same thing for sound cues and any special effects you have and scene changes and any other stage business. It's the time for the stage manager to practice running the entire show. It's a set of rehearsals for all the "technical" aspects of doing the play. It's a lot of starting and stopping and restarting, a lot of identifying what isn't done yet, a lot of finding out what looked like it was done but actually isn't yet, a lot of finding out what was done but breaks, a lot of finding out what looked good on paper but doesn't really work in actuality. It can be harrowing. We came through okay. These people know what they are doing and the show's in good shape technically. This week we start Babylon's tech and dresses.


We also had our first dress rehearsal and the costumes look gorgeous. I mean, you already have one strike against you when you put really gorgeous people on stage, like our leading man, who is a 6 foot plus African American man with rich features; broad, broad shoulders; and a deep, resonant voice. Put him in a long, gorgeous dressing gown (I don't even know how to describe the color ... more black than purple, but not black), and who's going to be listening to the text? Last night, we had a runthrough back in the rehearsal hall. The actors were tired, but they threw themselves into it and it was just great. I mean it was really good. Almost makes you want to work in the theater.

So, now I have my first Monday off when I don't have anything scheduled, and unscheduled relaxation time is what really invigorates me. I've been thinking all week about things to get done today, and then last night I just said, "Fuck it." I'm tired. I have been tired. I'm just going to sit on my ass and watch DVDs today ... maybe I'll write a little bit.