Tech Tock

This week we've been concentrating on technical matters.  The off-site rehearsals last weekend showed that the actors have mastered the material and now only need to gain confidence of working on the stage, with props and costume, under lights to bring the play up to the highest level.

Last Sunday we erected the staging and rostra for the seats; worked out a final seating plan (hooray, we do have room for all the tickets we sold!); and put the lighting bars up.

During the week, I worked out a way of hanging wallpaper in the room, despite not being allowed to hang things on the walls, and carpeted the stage and worked with Martin, our super lighting designer, to hang the lamps which will create the right atmosphere.

I've also been working with Clare, who's running sound, to come up with a plot to enhance the action.

Last night we had a first tech rehearsal (see picture) at which we had the majority of the props and took time to stop at crucial points to work out any glitches in the action.

These rehearsals are always a little frustrating as it means five days without a proper "performance", because the work we need to do fragments the action.  But it also gives the actors and crew the confidence to know exeactly what they are doing when it comes to running the play, allowing the actors to do their job of portraying ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances without having to worry about where they will be putting their tea-cups!

There are now only 4 days to go until we put the show in front of a real, live, breathing, paying audience of human beings.  Then we find out if it's any good!

The Home Stretch

We're into the home stretch.  11 days to the first performance in front of our society's members.  12 days until the first public performance.  A set to build and decorate.  Props to source and find homes for (when not needed on stage).  Lighting to rig and plot.  Sound to plot (I've already done the hard work and chosen the pieces I want).

Luckily I've got a great team helping out with all this.

The actors put their books down three weeks ago, and since then there have been good times and bad times.  Overall, rehearsals have all been positive, with something new learned and confidence built (I think.  I hope) by the end of each session.

That's not to say there haven't been crises of confidence at times in between.  Both actors have a huge amount of lines to remember and (happily for me) are both determined to get them 100% right.  But that also means that they do tend to get flustered and rush at things on the occasions that they can't remember a line properly.  And rushing and flustering are not good states of mind for remembering lines.  So we've concentrated on taking things slow and steady in places when these dips in confidence happen.  As well as concentrating on rehearsing uncertain sections more often.

The flipside to this is that, looking back, one sees a huge improvement, week-on-week.  With just over a week to go before we throw the show to the public, I'm confident we're going to be in great shape.  In fact, we rehearsed half-a-dozen of the more tricky scenes this week, and the improvement since the previous rehearsal was tangible.

We've got two rehearsals away from the performance space this week at which we will concentrate on running each act.  Then next week, on the actual stage, with the actual furniture, we'll start running the whole play.  With luck and a following wind, we'll have 4 or 5 run-throughs before the dress rehearsal.

If we're not ready now, we will be by next weekend!

In my last post, I posed myself some questions.  Am I closer to answering them...?

• Where the hell am I going to get a butterfly collection from? 
  
  The Rector of Braishfield (just north of Romsey), the Rev Canon Steve Pittis, is a butterfly collector and has kindly lent us a couple of cases of butterflies.  Perfect!
• Where will I get the bed, bedside table and other furniture from?
  
  All sourced by cast, or in the RAODS furniture store.  Apart from the bed, which I found in a Freecycle ad.
• Will the furniture all fit in the performance space?
  
  Just about.  I think.  As long as the space is as large as I have been assuming it is!
• Will the props all fit in the performance space?
  
  Yes.  Now that we've cut down on some of the props!
• Will there be any room left for actors and audience?
  
  Actors - Yes.  Audience - Yes.  Crew... Hmmm... Not sure.  Which might be a challenge for lighting and sound!
• Will one person be able to operate sound and projections?
  
  Yes!  Hooray!
• Will my idea for projecting pictures, captions and video actually work?
  
  It's now only 1 projector (not two) and we''ll be using 3 pieces of video.  So I need to find a way to project that reliably and without the audience seeing the PC controls...  I'm investigating ScreenMonkey.  We'll see if it works with my laptop this weekend.

I've also remembered that I promised the RAODS youth group that they'd be able to come and watch a rehearsal when we were close to being finished.  We've got to try and choose a piece that's appropriate to an audience of under-16s...  Tricky to do with this play.