Backstage Goings-On

Our cast has said in a number of interviews that we may not be the funny Frankenstein, but we're funnier backstage. On this show I have been introduced to a Halloween tradition that I had never experienced before: the Boo.

It started maybe two weeks ago. One day we came to the theatre before rehearsal and found that Becky Barta's dressing table had been hit by an explosion of Halloween cheer: fake cobwebs, plastic spiders, pumpkin decorations, and even a bobble-head Frankenstein. Taped to the mirror was a note: "You've been Boo'd! Pass it on!" Apparently everyone in the cast drew dates for which they are supposed to boo another cast member. Nobody knows who has boo'd them, and people can choose at random who they boo, as long as that person has not yet been boo'd before the date they have drawn. Today we had a big surprise when the entire backstage hallway and both dressing rooms were boo'd, with signs proclaiming that we've all been boo'd by the original boo-er.

Some of them have been really inventive. One was in the form of a scavenger hunt, in which the boo-ee had to follow the clues to talk to various people backstage during the show, who would then present them with the next clue. I was incredibly honored to be one of the stops on the scavenger hunt. The clues were on white paper with a seal drawn on in pencil to evoke the clues used as props in the show (until they were cut a couple days ago), which were distinctive red letters with wax seals. The boo-er made some comment to me about trying to make them look like the clues, so I dug into my stack of used paper props and found the ones in best condition. The clues were rewritten on the actual show props before the boo was carried out. I was very happy to be able to participate in the boo, and later assisted in setting up another one.

Finally, today we came in to find that stage management has finally been boo'd. Josh's spot in the booth got a little cobweb treatment, and a gummy bloody handprint stuck to the outside of the window. My desk stage left was completely covered in candy, a rubber severed hand, cobwebs all over the desk and the nearby video racks, as well as the entire handrail of the escape stairs behind me. The final touch was the rubber snake on my chair. Pic:

The camera flash is way more light than stage left has ever seen. This picture is the only time I've ever seen what it actually looks like. We use a real flower in the show, and quickly learned we can't store them at the prop table because they die overnight. We have to keep them in the kitchen area downstairs where they get some florescent light.

Week 3 of Previews

First of all, a new video about Frankenstein that I just found today, from Broadway Beat.

The most major changes have gone into the show. Some pretty big rewrites, and completely new orchestrations (which will continue to be added to and tweaked). The plan is for the show to be frozen tomorrow (Friday). The things we're working on now are some tweaks in the more tech-heavy sequences, putting music into the curtain call, that kind of thing. After today's rehearsal we have only one more 4-hr slot tomorrow afternoon to finish whatever is going to be done before the show is frozen.

We had another day off a couple days ago, and for the third time in a row, I did absolutely nothing. My body has been hurting in various places since tech, and I have been trying to get enough rest so as not to make it worse with each additional day's work.

Once we get to the point where we don't have rehearsals every day I think I may be able to rest and also accomplish something. Freezing the show and opening isn't exactly the end of all that, as we go full-force into understudy rehearsals right away because we have some planned absences coming up in the week after opening. But someday, eventually I think I may set foot someplace besides my apartment, 37 Arts, the Starbucks on 39th/8th, and the bar at the Zipper.

Week 2 of Previews

Yesterday was our day off. Like our last one, October 3, I did absolutely nothing. Well I did get to make some progress setting up my new phone, which is a whole other category of blogging I need to catch up on. From this point on, I will get a day off every Tuesday, so hopefully once I get used to the concept I can make it more productive.

I'm realizing now why it is that sometimes shows don't seem to change very much during previews, or at least not as fast as an observer would think. While 18 hours of rehearsal in a week of 8 performances seems like a lot, it really isn't very luxurious. You really have to think in small chunks. "Today we work on this." There's not time to change everything that needs work in a 4-hour span, especially considering that when you change staging you also need to allow time to re-tech the scene. And then hope that you don't put it on stage that night and say, "Well that didn't work!"

Rehearsal is short-to-nonexistent on two-show days (either 2 hrs on one day, or one hour for each), so today we have no rehearsal, and it will be the same show we did on Monday night. We still have two weeks, but only a little over a week before the show should be frozen, so there's time, but not as much as it seems at first glance.

I'm not worried, I just find it interesting how even with a fairly long preview period, you have to be very careful about budgeting time to make sure the most needed work gets done.

First Preview and Some Links

We had our first preview tonight. The whirlwind that has been this production is coming together and several hundred people happened to be watching it tonight. The performance was our second complete run of the show in real time, which is better than some shows get, and considering we only started rehearsal 22 days ago, it could
have been much worse.

Bill (our director) gave a funny little curtain speech before the show basically saying "welcome to our first preview, please bear with us if there are any train wrecks." He actually used the word train wrecks. Maybe more than once. Thankfully we had none.

I don't think we were really at a point where there was a big chance of a trainwreck, unless the huge sliding doors that are involved in a large percentage of the show had stopped working completely. They go through moods hourly where they are happy or unhappy, and we knew they were unhappy when we opened the house. I wasn't counting but I'd say they got stuck maybe five times in Act I, two of which required me to apply an inelegant amount of direct force to get them to close all the way. We've been dealing with the bothersome stage right slider since the beginning, so it's become routine for us, and aside from not closing or opening as smoothly as they're supposed to, it was nothing that really affected the show. In many cases it probably couldn't be noticed because we almost always had someone posted on the stage right side physically holding the slider as it moved, ready to apply extra force at the first sign of trouble. Unbeknownst to me, some adjustments were made at intermission, which explains why they were behaving during Act II, and more work with be done tomorrow morning.

Overall it was a very good show considering how little time we've had to get comfortable with it, and things will continue to be added and improved as we rehearse during previews. Afterwards, just about everybody involved with the production headed over to an informal gathering at the bar adjoining the Zipper Theatre to relax and celebrate.

Meanwhile, some press is showing up as the result of our open rehearsal from last week. We had a ton of press there, for an Off-Broadway show at least, and here are some of the links we've found:


Interviews:

NEW:Broadway.com - First Person with Hunter


NEW: TheatreMania video.
Christiane just tipped me off to this one, which we just watched during rehearsal. My computer at my desk stage left has become the nerve center for the cast and crew to check up on what the buzz is on the internet (and for the inexplicable number of Red Sox fans to check the playoff scores as they pass by during the show).

Photos:
Playbill
Broadway.com
Broadway World
...more Broadway World! (more set photos and stuff)

Video:

Stage Notes blog
Broadway.com

I have to share my personal favorite, though:
Being in charge of props, I was kind of mortified to see this picture featuring Struan Erlenborn, Mandy Bruno, Steve Blanchard, and Hunter Foster playing background while the photographer decides to take a nice juicy close-up of the bar code painted onto the ball. And yes, it's painted on -- there's no way to get it off. Of course that's not the actual ball used in the show. You should have seen the infamous Scooby Doo ball we used before we found a red one. Anyway, would ten seconds of Photoshop work have killed them?

Well I have to get to bed. We're all thrilled that we don't have rehearsal until 3:00. It's almost like a day off. Next Tuesday will be our first day off in 13 days, and it will be very welcome!

Glimpses of a Tech

A few thoughts as we continue tech (scroll down for the latest updates):

"Watch your eyes, folks!"
Most common phrase of tech. There is a lot of light. Insane amounts of light. There's one place in the show where my track takes me down a set of escape stairs just as a bunch of giant strobes on the boom at the foot of the stairs go off in my face. That one always catches me by surprise. I also like our signage in the lobby which warns of "Theatrical Haze and Intense Strobe Effects." Not just your garden variety strobe effects. Epileptics in Jersey should be covering their eyes. I'm told it looks even brighter in the house.

10/08/2007 2:38PM
The word of the day.
We've developed a little thing among those of us on the deck channel on headset. Every day there's a word of the day, which we discover as events progress. Yesterday's word cannot be printed in a family-friendly blog. Today's word is "cut." Over the last couple days we've been weeding out props and scenic elements, and today it continues. Letters from school officials? Cut. Noose? Cut. While some of us have gotten very attached to certain props, notably the "implements of death," I much prefer a show that cuts props at the last minute rather than adding them.

10/09/2007 11:00AM
Just arrived at the theatre and plugged in my computer. I just realized how stupid it is that I've been bringing my power cord home with me every night. This week I have spent about 15 of my waking hours at the theatre, 2 hours on the train, and about 2-3 at home. My computer has a battery life of over 4 hours. Well I will be smarter tonight, and that will be the only chance I get to use it, as we start previews tomorrow. I don't like the sound of "tomorrow." We have 15 actor-hours to work before we have a paying audience. In some ways it's a lot of time, and in some ways it's really scary!

Frankenstein Photos and Press

Probably half the e-mails I've received in the last two weeks have been from our publicist, notifying us of the various press commitments that our actors have. This is the first one that I've actually seen the results of: Playbill's The Leading Men column. The show should be getting a lot of coverage in the next three to four weeks. There was a great full-page ad in New York magazine this week.

The website also has put up some pictures from the photo call we did a few days ago. Here's one:
These are just the photos for early publicity, no sets, no wigs, and not necessarily finished costumes, but I think they won't look too out of place when compared with the finished product. The rest of them can be seen on this page.

Trusses! The Musical

If you had walked into Theatre A at 37 Arts today, that's what you would have seen. We have trusses. Lots and lots of trusses. Some of which are not hung yet, and some of which are out of the frame of this horrible phone-camera photo (I'm putting my real camera in my bag right now). No sign yet of the 90 Par Cans in a 12-foot square. Later in the day tomorrow the set starts loading in, which should also be very exciting. Our crew is working 8AM-midnight every day this week to get everything in in time for tech on Monday. Suffice it to say there's a lot going on.

Meanwhile, in Theatre B, we didn't quite stage Act II today, but we should be done sometime tomorrow morning.

A Run of Act I

OK, I swear I'm going to post, and I have some pictures. As you might imagine, things have been busy since we started rehearsals on Frankenstein. We started on Tuesday, and finished our first week today. Towards the end of the day, we were able to run Act I. Well, OK, it was sort of a stumble-through, but definitely more running than stumbling. Considering we just started staging yesterday, it was pretty incredible to see so much of the show take shape.

The rehearsal period is very short, and there is a ton of music in the show. This made the first few rehearsals kind of scary because the cast had to learn the music before we could even do an effective read-through, so at first it was hard to see the bigger picture. Three days of running three simultaneous rehearsals (two rooms of music and one of table work) got us to the point where we could do a read-through (we had already done the meet & greet and design presentations in the preceeding days). Then we did more cleaning up of music before starting staging yesterday. From that point things took off rapidly. Yesterday we staged the first half of Act I and ran it, and today we staged the rest and ran chunks, and then the whole act. It's amazing how quickly it went from something that happens in chairs around a piano, to a real show with props and some people at least partially off-book. Being on the deck, I see the whole thing backwards, so I don't really have the same sense of how it plays out front, but I think it moves really well.

Being on the stage has been really helpful for me, as a deck stage manager I like to run things as early as possible like a performance, so I can start visualizing what my track will be like.

Here's our finished floor:
The basic color scheme I went with is:
yellow = platforms
pink = walls
green = doors or traps
blue = stairs

The pink walls make it very clear how much offstage space there is going to be, which is very helpful for all of us to think about backstage traffic. One thing I'm being a stickler about is getting everyone to use their props, or any kind of substitute. Miming props is bad. It's way too easy to forget the fact that you're carrying something when it's not convenient, or to imagine the item will be smaller or easier to carry. And most invisible props are assumed to have been taken offstage by the Prop Fairy when they are no longer needed -- the reality of how something finds its way off gracefully is often something much different, and the sooner those questions can be answered, the better. I can make pretty much anything out of paper and gaff tape if I have to, just to have something that requires the actor to interact with it with specificity similar to the actual object. I also think it helps to get them used to picking up their props as early as possible, so it's a regular part of their routine in the show, and not an afterthought that can easily be forgotten.

We have been lucky to be rehearsing on our actual stage, but not for long, as load-in begins tomorrow and we move to the smaller theatre upstairs, where I had to concoct a way-too-complicated method of scaling the important parts of our set into the space, varying the scale from 1/2 to 5/6 depending on the importance of the area, and considering vertical and horizontal scale separately. If someone asked "so what size is this relative to the real thing?" the answer would make their head spin, but the overall result looks surprisingly like our set. I'll try to get a picture of it next week.

And in other news, our company is off to a great start fundraising for Broadway Cares. Today was the annual Broadway Flea Market, which is one of my favorite events, and unfortunately we were in rehearsal all day, so for the first time in about 10 years, I was not able to take my place at the Phantom table, except to help them set up from 8:30AM to 8:45. Things being so busy, there wasn't much we as the Frankenstein company could do, having only been in rehearsal for a few days. But one thing we did have was a handful of posters that had been given to us by the producers, and some names in our cast whose autographs alone would have value, even though our show has not had a chance to establish a fan base. So yesterday afternoon I went out and bought some silver pens and got one of the posters signed by the cast and director Bill Fennelly.
While we would only have one item to sell, I saw that as an advantage -- our angle was that this is the very first autographed Frankenstein poster, and currently the only one in existence. It was numbered "#1" with the date in the corner, and bore a sign advertising it as such. In the capable hands of the Phantom table, the poster sold within a couple hours for two hundred dollars!! I dropped by the table on our lunch break to see how things were going, and was told the good news. On top of that, the money was turned in to the BC/EFA powers that be on behalf of our company, not lumped in with Phantom's money. Word had obviously traveled quickly around the market, because by the time I got back to the theatre, Josh and Hunter had both heard from separate sources about the sale. The result was announced to the company on the first break after lunch, and of course everyone was very impressed with how much we've raised before even completing a week of rehearsal.

When I announced that we were doing a signed poster, I also mentioned that interested parties should start long-term thinking about a Gypsy of the Year skit. We have a long way to go before December 3-4, and thankfully about a month after we open for planning and rehearsals, but I just wanted to get people open-minded to it so that when a good idea arises it's recognized for what it is. I was thrilled to discover that within our small cast of 13 we have many people showing great enthusiasm for participating. To my surprise, within a few hours we had a solid outline for the premise. That could all change as things develop and new jokes can be made, but right now we have a solid idea to work on.