The Vulcan narrator for A Klingon Christmas Carol 2012 is named Brendan, and one night Kevin accidentally called him Brandi. Then we started singing ("I say Brendan, you're a Vulcan, what a good wife you would be..."), and I felt compelled to come home and write the whole song. It was a fine way to spend an afternoon. Feel free to use the video link to sing along, especially if you want to appreciate to its fullest how hard I worked to make the songs match: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-tRXewCAmU
Note: the lyrics are a leetle different from what was originally posted on Facebook, but I'm allowed to do that if I want to 'cause I wrote this, so suck it.
There’s a stage, where we set our play
And we serve a hundred folks a day
A little story, 'bout the Klingon way
To spend their ram nI’ bam
And there’s a man in this little town
And he speaks, layin’ the story down
We say “Brendan, let’s start another round”
He knows the best way to start.
The Klingons say “Brendan, you’re a Vulcan” (you’re a Vulcan)
“What a warrior you would be” (such a Vulcan)
“Yeah your eyes, they’re breakin’ the fourth wall stoically”
Brendan wears a purple robe
With a centerpiece made of flashy gold
Those symbols say his heart is cold
But we know what Brendan loves
He auditioned on a summer’s day
Bringing comic skills from his Improv ways
But he made it clear he couldn’t fray
‘Cause fighting’s not his style
EVT he said “Brendan, you’re a Vulcan” (you’re a Vulcan)
“What a Klingon you would be” (such a Vulcan)
“But your life was made to tell stories passively”
Yeah, Brendan always soaps his eyes
When he tells our Long Night Story
He can feel the blood wine in our cries
As we fight each other for glory
But he’ll never hold a bat’leth, truth, Lord he has an empty hand
And Brendan does his best to understand
At night, when SQuja’ knows the score
Brendan stands by the exit door
He wants to march to Sto’Vo’Kor
But he knows what Chris would say.
He hears him say “Brendan, you’re a Vulcan” (you’re a Vulcan)
“What a SuvwI' you would be” (such a Vulcan)
“But your life was made to tell stories passively”
He hears him say “Brendan, you’re a Vulcan” (you’re a Vulcan)
“What a warrior you would be” (such a Vulcan)
“But your life was made to tell stories passively”
Monday, December 31, 2012
Monday, December 24, 2012
Senior Year
Originally posted on www.cbtheatre.org
We can see the end without a telescope.
This show has a longer run than any I’ve done. We’ve just finished number fourteen out of eighteen performances over a four week period, which is at least twice the length to which I am accustomed. All this and we still have another week left, four more shows to do. Four more houses to fill. Four more times to don the costumes and the ridges, to excite and enlighten and entertain our audiences. Four more post-show photo opportunities. Four more chances to enjoy the company of my castmates and crew.
I don’t want it to end.
The attitude of everyone involved in this production is heartening. Frequently by the end of a run a group of people is just tired by all of this. We’re ready to be done with it already and move on to the next phase of our lives, the next show, the next gig, or taking a couple of weeks off to recuperate, but I’m sensing none of that with this cast. We’re still enjoying the process, from the moment of arrival at the theatre to the last person to leave the building as our stage manager locks up.
The dressing room is still alive with energy both before and after the show. We still talk and joke and take pleasure in one another’s company. We still play and try to make each other laugh backstage. We still seek (and find) chances to spend time together outside of our responsibilities.
And it is a testament to the talent and dedication of this cast and crew that we’re still striving to improve the show. As we run through fight call, our Fight Captain continues to watch and give us notes. He’ll tweak a bit of choreography here and there to ensure that we play it safe, appear to be dangerous, and keep it exciting. I can also spot minor variations in other of the cast performances, such as different lines being ad-libbed. This last bit is particularly impressive as none of us speaks the language. It means that the actors are trying to keep things fresh and interesting for themselves (and thus the audience) by researching different things to say, practicing the pronunciation, and making it come off naturally.
Theatre is a living, breathing, holistic entity. It is comprised of multiple interactions both overt and subtle. If one actor changes his words or actions, however slightly, like ripples in a pond the rest of the cast is affected, and thus so is the audience. The audience provides the greatest variable, because they don’t go through the same dance as the rest of us each night, thus they have the greatest potential to change what happens on stage.
We affect you so that you’ll affect us. It’s a cumulative reverberation that enlivens everyone under the roof. This week I have been, once again, both proud of and honored by my fellow cast and crewmates who show up each week to breathe on this hot coal to produce a flame that consumes us all.
This show isn’t a chore. It is an honor, and it is a pleasure. If you saw us early the run, you’ll catch a slightly different one now. You’ll see a show with tighter choreography, a cast with less anxiety and a greater sense of play. Come on closing night, and you’ll even see Il Troubadore perform with us again.
But more important; this week is the last time you’ll be able to see the show in its current incarnation. This is the seventh year of performance, the third in Chicago, yet it’s not the same from one year to the next. The cast varies, some years more than others. The director changes, the stage differs, the fights are restructured, and the costumes are modified. This show, like any other, is a symbiotic construction involving the talents and capabilities of everyone involved, and we all work very hard to ensure it’s a worthwhile endeavor no matter what side of the stage you’re on.
There are four lights. Make the most of them.
We can see the end without a telescope.
This show has a longer run than any I’ve done. We’ve just finished number fourteen out of eighteen performances over a four week period, which is at least twice the length to which I am accustomed. All this and we still have another week left, four more shows to do. Four more houses to fill. Four more times to don the costumes and the ridges, to excite and enlighten and entertain our audiences. Four more post-show photo opportunities. Four more chances to enjoy the company of my castmates and crew.
I don’t want it to end.
The attitude of everyone involved in this production is heartening. Frequently by the end of a run a group of people is just tired by all of this. We’re ready to be done with it already and move on to the next phase of our lives, the next show, the next gig, or taking a couple of weeks off to recuperate, but I’m sensing none of that with this cast. We’re still enjoying the process, from the moment of arrival at the theatre to the last person to leave the building as our stage manager locks up.
The dressing room is still alive with energy both before and after the show. We still talk and joke and take pleasure in one another’s company. We still play and try to make each other laugh backstage. We still seek (and find) chances to spend time together outside of our responsibilities.
And it is a testament to the talent and dedication of this cast and crew that we’re still striving to improve the show. As we run through fight call, our Fight Captain continues to watch and give us notes. He’ll tweak a bit of choreography here and there to ensure that we play it safe, appear to be dangerous, and keep it exciting. I can also spot minor variations in other of the cast performances, such as different lines being ad-libbed. This last bit is particularly impressive as none of us speaks the language. It means that the actors are trying to keep things fresh and interesting for themselves (and thus the audience) by researching different things to say, practicing the pronunciation, and making it come off naturally.
Theatre is a living, breathing, holistic entity. It is comprised of multiple interactions both overt and subtle. If one actor changes his words or actions, however slightly, like ripples in a pond the rest of the cast is affected, and thus so is the audience. The audience provides the greatest variable, because they don’t go through the same dance as the rest of us each night, thus they have the greatest potential to change what happens on stage.
We affect you so that you’ll affect us. It’s a cumulative reverberation that enlivens everyone under the roof. This week I have been, once again, both proud of and honored by my fellow cast and crewmates who show up each week to breathe on this hot coal to produce a flame that consumes us all.
This show isn’t a chore. It is an honor, and it is a pleasure. If you saw us early the run, you’ll catch a slightly different one now. You’ll see a show with tighter choreography, a cast with less anxiety and a greater sense of play. Come on closing night, and you’ll even see Il Troubadore perform with us again.
But more important; this week is the last time you’ll be able to see the show in its current incarnation. This is the seventh year of performance, the third in Chicago, yet it’s not the same from one year to the next. The cast varies, some years more than others. The director changes, the stage differs, the fights are restructured, and the costumes are modified. This show, like any other, is a symbiotic construction involving the talents and capabilities of everyone involved, and we all work very hard to ensure it’s a worthwhile endeavor no matter what side of the stage you’re on.
There are four lights. Make the most of them.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Red Letter Weekend
Originally posted on www.cbtheatre.org
Of all the reasons I have to love being involved with this show, this week provided me with far more than I could have anticipated.
Friday’s performance included our first Special Guest Star in the person of Brian Babylon who is, among other things, a comic, a radio host, and a regular panelist on Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me. The guest star’s role is to say the line that kicks off the giant brawl in the first act (a line I would say otherwise). This amended our entire fight call rehearsal as we worked Brian into the scene and made sure he could stand on stage and not get punched.
Live theatre is affected by the energy provided by its audience, so of course it was altered in a different way to have another actor join us on stage. My first concern was that I would forget to not say my line, but that turned out not to be a problem. Brian was constantly in my line of sight up to that point, and the training I’ve had as an actor is to notice and be affected by everything that comes into my senses. I was actually a little embarrassed to have been concerned; everything came off without a hitch, and it was wonderful to have our performance fed by another performer.
He even altered (though slightly) a later scene he wasn’t in. In the second act a fight scene takes place between VreD and his wife, and a moment comes with no clear winner. At some point last week I started saying the words (meaning not yet, not yet) during that moment. It became a decent joke partly because it reflects the fact that none of the observers have a clear idea who won the fight, but also because the word (pronounced “wedge”) sounds a bit like “wait”. It’s a moment that brings the audience a step closer to the performance because they don’t need a written translation to understand the word’s meaning. Because of Brian’s association with Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me, our stage manager suggested I then add the word (don’t speak). Since no one in the audience that night was fluent in Klingon it was a joke just for us, but totally worth it.
The joke would have been caught the following night, however.
Saturday’s performance was attended by a few fluent Klingon speakers, who are local and non-local members of the Klingon Language Institute. For this reason the cast was particularly on our toes about pronunciation; they don’t need to read the supertitles for the translation, after all. As if that wasn’t enough of a reason to put on our best performance, Dr. Marc Okrand – inventor of the Klingon language – was in attendance as well.
After the show (which was a matinee) we went to dinner at a spectacular Ethiopian restaurant with Dr. Okrand and the fluent speakers, which was the first time I got to spend significant social time with any of them since we’d met at the annual KLI meeting back in August. It was such a delight to be in their company again, and later that evening the whole crew saw a whole other side of me. My burlesque troupe performed a late night Christmas show with Dr. Okrand and the KLI in attendance.
As if it weren’t nerdy enough performing a play in Klingon in front of the man who invented Klingon and fluent speakers of Klingon, the following morning we all went to see The Hobbit together. There was a trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness, and we all cheered and applauded. After the movie it was off to a Pan-Asian restaurant for lunch, and Dr. Okrand delighted us with the story of how he became involved in creating the language. I can only hope the remainder of my career will allow me to speak of it with as much joy and enthusiasm as he obviously takes in his own work.
All of these experiences alone would have been enough to make this weekend memorable for a lifetime, but there was one other person whose presence made it truly special – my oldest friend.
We’ve known one another for eighteen years now. When I found him I found not only a friend, but someone to walk with me as a fan of Star Trek. We watched TNG and DS9 and Voyager together, and have compared it with other sci-fi and fantasy franchises we’ve come to experience. We’ve discussed and debated the points of plot and character and idealism that made the Star Trek canon what it is. Being a part of A Klingon Christmas Carol is special to me for so many reasons, and this weekend I was visited by the one man who has always understood just how much it means to be involved. His understanding reflects and deepens my joy and passion for the project in a way nothing else really could. And, of course, he got all the Trek in-jokes.
It’s been a great week.
Of all the reasons I have to love being involved with this show, this week provided me with far more than I could have anticipated.
Friday’s performance included our first Special Guest Star in the person of Brian Babylon who is, among other things, a comic, a radio host, and a regular panelist on Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me. The guest star’s role is to say the line that kicks off the giant brawl in the first act (a line I would say otherwise). This amended our entire fight call rehearsal as we worked Brian into the scene and made sure he could stand on stage and not get punched.
Live theatre is affected by the energy provided by its audience, so of course it was altered in a different way to have another actor join us on stage. My first concern was that I would forget to not say my line, but that turned out not to be a problem. Brian was constantly in my line of sight up to that point, and the training I’ve had as an actor is to notice and be affected by everything that comes into my senses. I was actually a little embarrassed to have been concerned; everything came off without a hitch, and it was wonderful to have our performance fed by another performer.
He even altered (though slightly) a later scene he wasn’t in. In the second act a fight scene takes place between VreD and his wife, and a moment comes with no clear winner. At some point last week I started saying the words
The joke would have been caught the following night, however.
Saturday’s performance was attended by a few fluent Klingon speakers, who are local and non-local members of the Klingon Language Institute. For this reason the cast was particularly on our toes about pronunciation; they don’t need to read the supertitles for the translation, after all. As if that wasn’t enough of a reason to put on our best performance, Dr. Marc Okrand – inventor of the Klingon language – was in attendance as well.
After the show (which was a matinee) we went to dinner at a spectacular Ethiopian restaurant with Dr. Okrand and the fluent speakers, which was the first time I got to spend significant social time with any of them since we’d met at the annual KLI meeting back in August. It was such a delight to be in their company again, and later that evening the whole crew saw a whole other side of me. My burlesque troupe performed a late night Christmas show with Dr. Okrand and the KLI in attendance.
As if it weren’t nerdy enough performing a play in Klingon in front of the man who invented Klingon and fluent speakers of Klingon, the following morning we all went to see The Hobbit together. There was a trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness, and we all cheered and applauded. After the movie it was off to a Pan-Asian restaurant for lunch, and Dr. Okrand delighted us with the story of how he became involved in creating the language. I can only hope the remainder of my career will allow me to speak of it with as much joy and enthusiasm as he obviously takes in his own work.
All of these experiences alone would have been enough to make this weekend memorable for a lifetime, but there was one other person whose presence made it truly special – my oldest friend.
We’ve known one another for eighteen years now. When I found him I found not only a friend, but someone to walk with me as a fan of Star Trek. We watched TNG and DS9 and Voyager together, and have compared it with other sci-fi and fantasy franchises we’ve come to experience. We’ve discussed and debated the points of plot and character and idealism that made the Star Trek canon what it is. Being a part of A Klingon Christmas Carol is special to me for so many reasons, and this weekend I was visited by the one man who has always understood just how much it means to be involved. His understanding reflects and deepens my joy and passion for the project in a way nothing else really could. And, of course, he got all the Trek in-jokes.
It’s been a great week.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Constant Hearts and Minds
Originally posted on www.cbtheatre.org
I once heard Penn Jilette say something striking about performance: “Being great is easy. Being good is hard.” In this he was discussing two different modes of performance – that which can be done well once, and that which can be done well consistently over a long period of time.
If ever I do something well, I’m grateful. This goes for cooking a dinner that impresses my date, or setting a new personal record for how quickly I can ride my bike down Chicago’s Lake Front Trail, or writing a joke that captivates an audience. Happy as I ever may be about a thing which goes well, I’m intimidated by the prospect of having to do it again. Not to mention having to do it again and again.
I have always credited the difference between something I have done and something I can do. Knocking it out just once could be a fluke against the established order. Getting it right twice merits attention. Being successful every time? No one can be expected to do that.
Yet that’s what is expected of us on stage.
Tickets to our show are the same cost regardless of which week of performance you attend. Every audience who fills the house of A Klingon Christmas Carol pays the same price as any other, and thus they deserve the same quality performance as any other. Be it opening weekend, closing weekend, the night my parents come to see the show, or the night a celebrity is a special guest star joining us on stage, we have an obligation to tell our story well regardless of the circumstance.
We came into Thursday’s show after a three day absence. For some of us, that’s the longest time spent away from this material since rehearsals began in early October. We’re comfortable with the lines, we’re comfortable with the blocking, we’re comfortable with the fight choreography. We’ve been well attended and well-reviewed. The pressure and excitement of finally opening our doors to the public has come and gone, and we’ve now established patterns.
During tech/opening week we established patterns of not merely what goes on stage, but off. Every night begins (for most of us) 90 minutes before curtain as we arrive at the theatre. The projection screen for the supertitles is hung. The actors arrive and get partway into costume before Fight Call, during which our Fight Captain ensures we’re not compromising our safety or integrity. We check the location of our props and furniture, we get into makeup, we help tie one another into our armor and bracers. Our stage manager gives us regular updates as to how many minutes are left in the countdown to the show’s beginning.
Finally, the call comes for Places.
From that moment the production becomes a dance both on-stage and backstage. The actors stand in various areas around the theatre waiting for our entrances and set changes. Wordlessly we assist one another through difficult costume changes. Our offstage path through the theatre is just as clinically rigid as our blocking and lines are in front of the audience.
This dance is both talismanic and dangerous. To fool around with an established order is frightening as it could cause a distraction from the timing of the show. One could miss an entrance or a line. We could get too comfortable in the backstage life and forget the vigilance that causes us to recall the responsibilities which keep the show flowing smoothly from one scene to the next. We could begin to operate with the misconception that the show will be carried off well regardless of our attention to detail both in front of the curtain and behind it. If we fail in our duties, we fail our audience.
As we wrap week two of performance I’m proud to be a part of this show for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is the group of about twenty people who ensure a quality performance each and every time. We do this regardless of the number of times we’ve repeated ourselves onstage and off. We do this regardless of how many people bought a ticket that particular day. We do this to affect the lives of each and every person who comes to see the show . . . no matter how many times they’ve come to see it.
I’m pleased and honored to be a part of this cast and crew who consistently deliver a quality product. I’m proud to say that no matter what day of the week, no matter what time of day, no matter how early or late in the run, we will give you the laughs, the triumphs, the conflict – the art – you came to see.
You, our audience, deserve the best we have to offer every time. We’re delighted to deliver.
I once heard Penn Jilette say something striking about performance: “Being great is easy. Being good is hard.” In this he was discussing two different modes of performance – that which can be done well once, and that which can be done well consistently over a long period of time.
If ever I do something well, I’m grateful. This goes for cooking a dinner that impresses my date, or setting a new personal record for how quickly I can ride my bike down Chicago’s Lake Front Trail, or writing a joke that captivates an audience. Happy as I ever may be about a thing which goes well, I’m intimidated by the prospect of having to do it again. Not to mention having to do it again and again.
I have always credited the difference between something I have done and something I can do. Knocking it out just once could be a fluke against the established order. Getting it right twice merits attention. Being successful every time? No one can be expected to do that.
Yet that’s what is expected of us on stage.
Tickets to our show are the same cost regardless of which week of performance you attend. Every audience who fills the house of A Klingon Christmas Carol pays the same price as any other, and thus they deserve the same quality performance as any other. Be it opening weekend, closing weekend, the night my parents come to see the show, or the night a celebrity is a special guest star joining us on stage, we have an obligation to tell our story well regardless of the circumstance.
We came into Thursday’s show after a three day absence. For some of us, that’s the longest time spent away from this material since rehearsals began in early October. We’re comfortable with the lines, we’re comfortable with the blocking, we’re comfortable with the fight choreography. We’ve been well attended and well-reviewed. The pressure and excitement of finally opening our doors to the public has come and gone, and we’ve now established patterns.
During tech/opening week we established patterns of not merely what goes on stage, but off. Every night begins (for most of us) 90 minutes before curtain as we arrive at the theatre. The projection screen for the supertitles is hung. The actors arrive and get partway into costume before Fight Call, during which our Fight Captain ensures we’re not compromising our safety or integrity. We check the location of our props and furniture, we get into makeup, we help tie one another into our armor and bracers. Our stage manager gives us regular updates as to how many minutes are left in the countdown to the show’s beginning.
Finally, the call comes for Places.
From that moment the production becomes a dance both on-stage and backstage. The actors stand in various areas around the theatre waiting for our entrances and set changes. Wordlessly we assist one another through difficult costume changes. Our offstage path through the theatre is just as clinically rigid as our blocking and lines are in front of the audience.
This dance is both talismanic and dangerous. To fool around with an established order is frightening as it could cause a distraction from the timing of the show. One could miss an entrance or a line. We could get too comfortable in the backstage life and forget the vigilance that causes us to recall the responsibilities which keep the show flowing smoothly from one scene to the next. We could begin to operate with the misconception that the show will be carried off well regardless of our attention to detail both in front of the curtain and behind it. If we fail in our duties, we fail our audience.
As we wrap week two of performance I’m proud to be a part of this show for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is the group of about twenty people who ensure a quality performance each and every time. We do this regardless of the number of times we’ve repeated ourselves onstage and off. We do this regardless of how many people bought a ticket that particular day. We do this to affect the lives of each and every person who comes to see the show . . . no matter how many times they’ve come to see it.
I’m pleased and honored to be a part of this cast and crew who consistently deliver a quality product. I’m proud to say that no matter what day of the week, no matter what time of day, no matter how early or late in the run, we will give you the laughs, the triumphs, the conflict – the art – you came to see.
You, our audience, deserve the best we have to offer every time. We’re delighted to deliver.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Ready for Prime Time
Originally posted on www.cbtheatre.org
Stiff. Sore. Bruised, exhausted, elated, and wholly artistically satisfied. This is what it’s like going from Tech Week into Opening Weekend.
Sunday after Thanksgiving was our first day back after a five day break. Director ‘e’riH HoD sent us repeated friendly-reminder text messages to review our script during the holiday, and Fight Director Zach Livingston gave us video of the fights to review so we wouldn’t backstep during a tryptophan high.
Sunday’s rehearsal was business as usual, but Monday we loaded props, furniture, and other related equipment into the Raven Theatre. Load-in is a whole new level of this is really happening. The show takes one more step out of the theoretical and into the physical world around us. It’s one thing to know the shape of the stage as it was taped out by our stage manager in the rehearsal space; it’s quite another to hear how my bootheels are going to thrum on the performance stage itself. A newfound sense of awe and responsibility and wonder washes over us. Uncontrolled smiles thrive amongst the cast.
At the same time, tech week brings the highest levels of anxiety of any rehearsal process, especially with the challenges unique to this show. Stage lights and costumes are a common one; how to keep wigs and latex prosthetic appendages upon our foreheads is new to most of us. The hours of tech rehearsals are longer, lasting later into the night than regular rehearsals. We’ve done our fighting and furniture moving, but now we’re practicing it wearing three extra layers made of burlap and leather, producing an amount of sweat comparable to your average Olympic basketball team.
Tech week for most any show turns into the dark before the dawn. It’s a point of no return – tickets are being sold, buzz for the show is humming with a steady crescendo, and loving family members are making travel plans. At the same time, the Show Going On is not a foregone conclusion. Some practical details are being faced for the first time, new problems/issues are being discovered, and we have the shortest possible time period to hammer out these details and make them work before the first live audience appears expecting to be entertained.
If it sounds stress inducing, it is. And yet it is the precise sort of stress many artists live for. We wouldn’t want to create our art without such a circumstance. The risk of failure is ever-present, even after the show opens. Nothing goes quite as planned, and this keeps us engaged and interested and alive.
Rehearsing in the performance space teaches us things we didn’t realize, like how much we’d been relying on visual cues for entrances as opposed to moving in on a sound cue, or a line of dialogue. This is particularly poignant when we’re entering blind from the upstage curtain; one actor and I were late for an entrance and nearly had our faces taken off by a bat’leth. Fortunately we both know when to duck.
Another adjustment was the wigs; suddenly everyone has an additional two feet of hair to deal with. Not only does this hair get caught in unexpected places (like fists, for example) it creates blind spots as we flail during the fights. Obscuring my fight partner’s face makes it harder to punch at him and not actually hit him. The same goes for my own wig blocking my vision, and now I need to throw the fist into the gut of my partner without doing any real damage. We trust in one another’s knowledge of the choreography to rescue us, and it works. There are nuances of fight technique that keep things safe while appearing dangerous, and we’re fortunate to have an experienced cast capable of employing them.
The first live audience always changes a show. As with physics, there is an observer effect. You cannot put a thermometer into a pot of soup without changing the temperature of the soup; likewise, you cannot watch a performance without affecting the performers. No matter how many times we rehearse the play, no matter how we hone and perfect every line and every action, we are transformed by your presence. Everyone has a different response to this. Some people get more anxious, some more excited. Laughter crops up in places we didn’t expect, or had forgotten was a joke.
Preview night was a blast. The everyone in the audience was a boisterous Star Trek fan. Their response to every inside joke was immense. We even allowed people (for this performance only) to post to Twitter during the show, sharing their thoughts and pictures as they happened. Half the actors scrambled to our phones every time we went backstage to see what they were posting.
Opening night was a whole other kind of party. The music of Il Troubadore greeted the guests, people bid for items at a silent auction, and cake and champagne was passed around afterwards. People arrived in costumes of Starfleet officers and Klingon warriors alike.
And, of course, many drinks were had at the bar afterwards, occasionally punctuated with nearly two dozen people simultaneously shouting (We are Klingons!)
We built this show with our minds, bodies, spirits, talents, and willpower. By the end of the weekend we concluded that yes, we’ve Done This. We’ve put together a fantastic product, and there’s not a single member of the cast nor crew who isn’t elated that we have a whole month to share what we’ve constructed.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a show. Get your tickets now.
Stiff. Sore. Bruised, exhausted, elated, and wholly artistically satisfied. This is what it’s like going from Tech Week into Opening Weekend.
Sunday after Thanksgiving was our first day back after a five day break. Director ‘e’riH HoD sent us repeated friendly-reminder text messages to review our script during the holiday, and Fight Director Zach Livingston gave us video of the fights to review so we wouldn’t backstep during a tryptophan high.
Sunday’s rehearsal was business as usual, but Monday we loaded props, furniture, and other related equipment into the Raven Theatre. Load-in is a whole new level of this is really happening. The show takes one more step out of the theoretical and into the physical world around us. It’s one thing to know the shape of the stage as it was taped out by our stage manager in the rehearsal space; it’s quite another to hear how my bootheels are going to thrum on the performance stage itself. A newfound sense of awe and responsibility and wonder washes over us. Uncontrolled smiles thrive amongst the cast.
At the same time, tech week brings the highest levels of anxiety of any rehearsal process, especially with the challenges unique to this show. Stage lights and costumes are a common one; how to keep wigs and latex prosthetic appendages upon our foreheads is new to most of us. The hours of tech rehearsals are longer, lasting later into the night than regular rehearsals. We’ve done our fighting and furniture moving, but now we’re practicing it wearing three extra layers made of burlap and leather, producing an amount of sweat comparable to your average Olympic basketball team.
Tech week for most any show turns into the dark before the dawn. It’s a point of no return – tickets are being sold, buzz for the show is humming with a steady crescendo, and loving family members are making travel plans. At the same time, the Show Going On is not a foregone conclusion. Some practical details are being faced for the first time, new problems/issues are being discovered, and we have the shortest possible time period to hammer out these details and make them work before the first live audience appears expecting to be entertained.
If it sounds stress inducing, it is. And yet it is the precise sort of stress many artists live for. We wouldn’t want to create our art without such a circumstance. The risk of failure is ever-present, even after the show opens. Nothing goes quite as planned, and this keeps us engaged and interested and alive.
Rehearsing in the performance space teaches us things we didn’t realize, like how much we’d been relying on visual cues for entrances as opposed to moving in on a sound cue, or a line of dialogue. This is particularly poignant when we’re entering blind from the upstage curtain; one actor and I were late for an entrance and nearly had our faces taken off by a bat’leth. Fortunately we both know when to duck.
Another adjustment was the wigs; suddenly everyone has an additional two feet of hair to deal with. Not only does this hair get caught in unexpected places (like fists, for example) it creates blind spots as we flail during the fights. Obscuring my fight partner’s face makes it harder to punch at him and not actually hit him. The same goes for my own wig blocking my vision, and now I need to throw the fist into the gut of my partner without doing any real damage. We trust in one another’s knowledge of the choreography to rescue us, and it works. There are nuances of fight technique that keep things safe while appearing dangerous, and we’re fortunate to have an experienced cast capable of employing them.
The first live audience always changes a show. As with physics, there is an observer effect. You cannot put a thermometer into a pot of soup without changing the temperature of the soup; likewise, you cannot watch a performance without affecting the performers. No matter how many times we rehearse the play, no matter how we hone and perfect every line and every action, we are transformed by your presence. Everyone has a different response to this. Some people get more anxious, some more excited. Laughter crops up in places we didn’t expect, or had forgotten was a joke.
Preview night was a blast. The everyone in the audience was a boisterous Star Trek fan. Their response to every inside joke was immense. We even allowed people (for this performance only) to post to Twitter during the show, sharing their thoughts and pictures as they happened. Half the actors scrambled to our phones every time we went backstage to see what they were posting.
Opening night was a whole other kind of party. The music of Il Troubadore greeted the guests, people bid for items at a silent auction, and cake and champagne was passed around afterwards. People arrived in costumes of Starfleet officers and Klingon warriors alike.
And, of course, many drinks were had at the bar afterwards, occasionally punctuated with nearly two dozen people simultaneously shouting
We built this show with our minds, bodies, spirits, talents, and willpower. By the end of the weekend we concluded that yes, we’ve Done This. We’ve put together a fantastic product, and there’s not a single member of the cast nor crew who isn’t elated that we have a whole month to share what we’ve constructed.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a show. Get your tickets now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)