Willy Wonka Jr. reflection

Working on Willy Wonka Jr. has been a great experience, and one I hadn't counted on having at the beginning of 2013.  What began as signing up for Jim's lighting class (partly after the recommendation of a friend who had taken the class in the past) became my first full experience as a designer for a show.

My primary focus in ISU Theatre has been (and in large part still remains) as an actor.  Being asked to try my hand at lighting design wasn't something I was expecting, even with my taking the lighting class.  And at first, I felt daunted by the prospect.  Am I confident enough in myself to handle this?  Learning that it was at Jim's suggestion that I was asked told me something important, though:  regardless of my confidence, someone else DOES have confidence in me.

Even then, this was something I had never really tried before.  Sitting in on the production meetings really helped me get excited for the project.  Everyone kept bringing such wonderful ideas to the table, it was really fantastic.  Having that source of energy and having Jim as someone I could ask questions to really helped me along.

My board tech, Kaine, showed himself to be quite capable of running the board.  While it's true that virtually all the cues were set to run at the press of a button, he kept focus well and felt comfortable leaving the second weekend of performances in his hands.

Now that it's finished, I'm really pleased with what I accomplished.  I've done something that I hadn't expected to do six months ago, and did it well.  And while I still want to focus on acting, I think I'd like to continue to learn and do more with lighting.

The Drowsy Chaperone Part III

We are off book, we have costumes set (mostly), we have lighting cues, and we have a much relieved bearded man.  The musical is leagues ahead of where it was last week.  Once we started running full Acts it really came together.  Of course there were some stumbles on props as well as entrances and exits, but those are to be expected when running it for the first time.

We still have sound effects and more lighting cues to get down but once that is set and the few un-memorized lines and dance steps (still might be a bit on the dancing) are committed to memory; we’ll have ourselves a show!  ….And then I remembered the orchestra.  Oh dear god, the orchestra.  I have no idea how well this is going to seamlessly slip into what we are doing (as I’ve never been involved in a musical before), but my first instinct is Not Well.

I am confident it will all be worked out before our first show, but with such a huge piece yet to be integrated, I have my reservations. 

Door Shakespeare

Door Shakespeare

June 2nd:

I arrived up in Door County at around ten p.m and met Drew and Mark, they showed me the place where we would be staying for the night and was given a brief layout of the town and our plan of action for the next couple of days. I also brought up prop pieces for Door Shakespeare to use in shows, mostly pieces for Loves Labour's Lost.

June 3rd:

My first official day was spent working with Drew, Mark and Jason; the director of Macbeth, unloading the prop barn and finding pieces that were useful and rearranging the rest of the barn to make  it easier to navigate Through. After that was sorted through, Drew and I began to mulch the space and voms while Michael and Mark worked on leveling the risers for the audience. We then spent our night in the dressing room,

June 4th:

We all took the discarded wood over to a pit area to make a bonfire, and that took a majority of the day while we also were moving trash over to a dump area near the lodge. Jason met back up with us later after a meeting with Amy to inform us that we didn't have the right amount of seats for audience members and we made our way over to space to figure a way to include more seats, after we decided, Michael and Mark worked on risers while Drew and I went around collecting stumps for the space and the rest of the area.

June 5th:

Our last day on the job we were doing touch ups on anything that we missed. Drew and I worked on finding branches for pathways and mulching whatever areas needed extra work. We also finished taking apart the spaces old stage and transported the wood back to the barn and covered the area with extra mulch. We finished up around 2:30.

Working up at Door Shakespeare for these few days was helpful because we got to see things that were used for old shows that didn't even make sense and were disregarded probably after only one use and also the types of places where you could possibly put on shows. It was also eye opening to see how many people in the community knew about Door Shakespeare and how passionate they were about the people who work to bring them this type of theater. Dan, Amy and Jason were a pleasure to work and very easy to get along with and they gave us a lot of feedback about the work we were doing and the type of work they hope to be doing in years to come. This was definitely an experience that has gotten me excited to start doing more work outside of Iowa State and perhaps even starting up projects of my own.

Actor's Gym - Circus Day 2

Yesterday was the second week of Circus class.  We had the same basic set up: warm-up, floor work, one major floor art and one major aerial art.  The Sylvia's (instructor) warm-ups and floor work has been really good for my body.  It's been a while since I've worked my body like this, and I'm happy to get going again.  Especially with gymnastics.  I've always wanted to learn how to do handstands, cartwheels, and rolls properly, but with everything that is "wrong" with my body (scoliosis, odd bone structure in my feet, terrible flexibility) I have never really had the chance to.  Sylvia and Nate are really good at explaining exactly what you're doing wrong, and they are so matter-of-fact about it.  I was able to work a lot more with Sylvia yesterday and she can be scary, but she will fix you.  One of my goals for the end of the class is to be able to do a handstand.  It sounds simple, but my spine is shaped like an "S" rather than being relatively straight and also has a small rotation, kind of like if someone had one hand gripping my spine and twisted it in one direction a little bit.  Without a straight spine my back and my core are weaker that the average person's, and it makes it incredibly difficult to balance, especially while standing on your hands.  Sylvia said handstands will be really good for my back and has been helping me straighten myself up during handstands.  I'm really excited to be close to doing them by myself.

The floor art we worked on yesterday is called the Rolling Globe.

This is a Rolling Globe routine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nB6ZGzH_Sk

Rolling Globe is kind of scary, but I feel like I was getting the hang of it pretty well for my first time.  We got on top of it, walked in a circle on top of it, and then practiced walking the ball forward and backward.  It's kind of exhilarating.  I was more scared watching other people do it than I was doing it myself.  That section was a lot of fun.

We worked on Spanish Web in this class as well.

Here is a Spanish Web routine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INXhaNwTIiE

In Aerial two days ago we did two different routines, a basic hand routine and an 8-loop routine.  The hand routine is just where you hang by one hand and use the other hand to hold the rope to one side of you.  An 8-loop is a loop you make around your foot (shown in the beginning of the video above) so you have a foot and a wrist strapped in.  In Circus yesterday we just did the same hand routine we did in Aerial, except at the end of class we worked on a simple invert where you hold the rope with both hand near your chest and you kick up your legs over your head.  Like this:

This is very hard for people like me with no upper body strength and little core strength.  We ended the day with these.  Chris was able to do 3 and 1/2 in a row.  I was able to do 1/2 in a row.

Until next week.

Actor's Gym Day 4

Hey y'all. I'm going to tell you about my fourth day here at the Actor's Gym. Once again, believe it or not, it was really hard. And I am also super sore again. These classes have given me one of the best workouts I have ever had though. They are so fun though. My big challenge is going to be how to figure out how to keep this kind of workout going again in Ames. These are awesome skills to have learned and I want to continue them.

Today was the 2nd day of the Circus class.I still fully believe that the warm-ups are the hardest thing about these classes. After having stretched and everything. We worked on our floor techniques. That includes handstands, cartwheels, rollouts, etc... We worked on proper cartwheel technique last time. Yes there is a proper technique. From there we expanded into doing a running cartwheel. Sylvia our teacher was pretty impressed with how well we picked it up, so we started doing a drill to move onto doing an aerial. Or a no handed cartwheel. That is something I have wanted to learn for a while just because they look so cool.

After all of that nonsense we moved on and split into 2 separate groups. We all did the same stuff, just at different times. My group started off with a floor skill. This was called the rolling ball, or the globe. The globe is essential a giant, hard ball that you stand on and balance. I however am not too good at it. We got to do it about three times. By the third time I got the hang of it. We had to walk the ball forward and backward and turn around while on top of it.

After that we went on to Spanish Web. We basically did all of the same things I talked about yesterday. with a couple of added inverts. That being where you go upside down. I am exhausted after doing all of that today. With that being said I am going to call it a night.

-Chris

The Drowsy Chaperone Part II

The first rehearsal of the week started with the director telling everyone that they needed to be off-book a week from today (shits yeah, a deadline for progress, I love it!).  We then moved on to the first scene of the musical.  I personally had never seen this scene performed, so I was looking forward to seeing how well we were going to grab the audience’s attention.  The answer is, incredibly well.  This is one thing I’ve noticed throughout my time here, one scene could be a mess and all over the place and another be so close to finished it boggles the mind.

I think we need someone as a full time, “Tell those kids to be quiet” manager.  I swear, if there is one break from running lines for the director, AD, or myself to give notes, those kids just start talking and doing whatever they feel like (also keep in mind when I say kids, I mean mostly those in high school and middle school).

The first hour was at least productive, we ran through two scenes, the first and the last.  The ending scene was miles ahead of where it was last Thursday.  I was shocked and very pleased that something resembling progress had somehow found its way on stage.  And then came the second hour of rehearsal.  This is when I wish we weren’t at a school because I really want a cigarette and some whiskey.  The dances are going to be the last part finished of this musical (understandably so, I can’t dance for shit).  We still have to far to go and with everything left to work on, I get stressed out until I see a scene that we have rarely worked on look so good.

I am trying to stay optimistic and I am positive the show will be presentable when the time comes, but there are so many things that could be handled better and as these begin to pile up, I am forced to wonder how much better this play could be if we used our time more appropriately.

DAI Day 2

We started the day with Daily Practice led by Joe Krienke who is the Associate School Director and some graduate students. This takes place in the Watershed which is a room kinda devoted to acrobatics. There is thick red mat setting on springs and also regular floor mats that we stretched and ran around on before Practice started. Then the graduate students made an entrance with some kind of aerobic dance routine and got us all up on our feet skipping and jumping around the room. It was crazy and awesome and fun! We went from walking to running to skipping to a polar bear crawl to "crawling the wall" (where you are crawling and stretch your legs out as far as you can while keeping your pelvis low) to crawling back up to running again. We did several cycles of that. We also walked around the space while "seeing seeing." Then we did floor work, stretching and learning about our skeletons. This work was incredibly engaging and energizing. I look forward to the rest of our Daily Practices. By the way, we did all this in under an hour!

Day two's classes were led by Joan Schirle, the Founding Artistic Director. She has been at Dell'Arte since the 70's. She taught us about the 3 circles in the morning class. The first is disengaged, how people normally are-- their natural slouching selves. The second is where all Shakespeare's characters live. It is engaged, listening, and ready. It is a survival position. The third circle the second circle ramped up a notch. It is aggressive and forward and can be overbearing and exhausting. We will work to be in second circle ALL THE TIME. I quickly learned that it takes a great deal of effort to be in second circle continuously. It's really quite exhausting. In the afternoon class we worked some more with the three circles and started talking about and playing with archetypes. We drew archetypes from a deck of cards and embodied them while walking around the room. Our assignment for tomorrow is to discover what our archetype(s) is/are.

In the evening, we met again at 7:30 to watch a film. It was Rivers and Tides, a film about the work of Andy Goldsworthy, an artist whose works are destroyed or consumed or gifted to nature. His work, like the work of the theatre, is transient. He usually works in nature with nature as his medium. The first work of the film was a flowing line made of icicles that he made in Nova Scotia. While making this sculpture, he said, "Good art keeps you warm."All the work he did in the film is really quite incredible, and we had some good discussion on working with time, learning from failure, contextualization, and living in the world afterwards. He is definitely worth a Google. (I think he has some pieces at the Des Moines Art Center in the sculpture garden as well.)

After the film I went home and collapsed. This work is as exhausting as it is exhilarating, and I can't wait to see what we do next.

All the best,

B. Brockshus

Actor's Gym - Aerial Day 2

Today was the second week of the Aerial Arts class.  The apparatus of the day: the Spanish Web.  Out of the two aerial arts I have learned so far, Spanish Web is my favorite, by a long run.  Oh my goodness.  I had so much fun today.

The Spanish Web is basically just a rope.  This rope is strung from the ceiling and is loose at the floor.  There is a loop about 3/4 of the way up the rope that can be used by your wrist or your ankle (and in some extreme cases, your neck, but not for me!) to strap yourself into the apparatus.  The rope can either be freestanding for climbing, and then can be moved by someone one the ground in a circular motion to make you spin (see video below).  Trapeze was so hard for me because it is all abdominal strength and arm strength.  Spanish Web was so much easier because you need more leg strength than arm strength to pull yourself up, and you are strapped in for most of the time, so you can hang and not have to worry about slipping off of something and falling to your death.  Trapeze scares the crap out of me.  I didn't really make that clear in last weeks entries, but it does.  I felt much safer with the Spanish Web.

Here is a video of a Spanish Web routine.  The first five moves you see, we did in class today, along with some other stuff.  Very neat stuff.  You feel like you're flying.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INXhaNwTIiE

I know we'll be working more with Spanish Web tomorrow in Circus, and I'm really excited for that.

I also have my own juggling balls to practice with now.  Watch out.  I'm going to be a master juggler.

Until next time.

Actor's Gym Day 3

Hello all. Do you wanna hear what I did on day 3 of the actor's gym? I got rope-burn like it was my job. It was a pretty intense day again today. This was my third class, but only my second day of Aerial arts. Once again I am going to be sore for the next few days.

Today in Aerial we started working on spanish web. Essential spanish web is a big rope attached to the ceiling with a small loop near the top. We started off the class doing some serious stretching again. Much to my surprise it hasn't gotten any easier. I am not very flexible. Well not enough for some of these stretches. We then went on to learn how to actually climb the rope. Yes there is a proper way to do it. It does make things quite a bit easier.

After we learned all of the climbing essentials we went up and started doing a hand routine as they called it. For the hand routine you have to put your hand into the loop near the top of the rope. This was actually kind of hard because we were only holding on with our legs. Once that was safely secured the instructor starts spinning the rope and you begin your routine. This was ridiculously fun, and dizzying. The routine had splits, double stags, and what the call the angel. that's where you have to flip your legs through your hands, pull one leg through and basically do the splits. I had the strength to get to the position, but it didn't look to great. Probably due to the lack of flexibility.

After all that we learned what the 8-loop was. That is a way of securing your foot on the rope. There is another routine that we put onto the beginning of the one we just learned. Once up in the hand strap you put your foot in this 8-loop position and the began spinning again. This was also crazy fun because you are doing all these tricks, while spinning, and while holding onto this rope with one hand and one foot. Then from there we went right back into the hand routine. Boy does it make you dizzy.

Unlike last week which required a lot of ab strength this one was all upper body. It was quite the workout. I know that I'm not going to want to get out of bed tomorrow, but I have to because we have our 2nd Circus arts class. Yippee Skippee.

-Chris

Wonka closing

Willy wonka has closed. It was a very interesting process and I enjoyed working on it. It was cool to see something that I designed on stage and working the way that I wanted it to. I think that if we had a larger shop crew I would could have done even more with it. Hopefully I'll be able to work with STC again in the future.

DAI Day 1

I'm attending the Dell'Arte Intensive this summer, and it's super exciting! Annie Feenstra is also attending, and we drove out here together in 2 days. We left Ames Friday around 2:30 pm, stopped in Cheyenne that night, and drove the rest of the way to Blue Lake, CA Saturday. We arrived around 2 am Sunday morning and found the only hotel in Blue Lake sold out because of a wedding, so we drove to Arcata and found a hotel there. We bought some groceries and checked in to our housing early Sunday. I met Mark, another student at the intensive, at the Logger Bar, Blue Lake's bar, and invited him back to my place for goulash and some card games with my roommate, Winton from Hong Kong, and me.

Orientation started this morning at 9:30, so Annie and I headed over to the main building early and who should we meet but Nicholette and Matt! We also signed up to usher at a few of the shows at the Blue Lake Arts Festival which is running concurrently with the Intensive. We met the rest of our classmates, got a tour of the Dell'Arte buildings, and started class at the River Campus building
Today's classes were led by Ronlin Foreman, the school director. This week is all about waking up, so he talked about space, masks, existing, metaphysics, metaphors, and existentialism. You know, basic first day theatre stuff. In the morning, we worked on walking about the space and finding the horizon with our eyes and the spaces between people where we can walk. We then worked on falling forward in such a way that we caught ourselves at the last possible moment then ran forward to "rise again." After lunch at Stardough's, the town's only café with some other students, we returned to the River Campus for more class. We did floor work similar to what we do in Actor's Voice then moved around the space like mice, rabbits, octopi, and flecks of down. We then worked on falling some more and then jumping across the room from a very disengaged position to an intensely present one. We were assigned our first week's group project to create a 2:30 minute soundscape of an event using our voices. I met with my group at the Logger Bar to listen to a game of pool. We plan to meet later in the week to discuss other options and rehearse.

That's all for now. Please comment with any and all thoughts and questions. I' sorry if the format is strange-- I' typing this on my phone since we don't have WiFi at the Rousseau where I'm staying. Also check Facebook for pictures!

All the best,
B. Brockshus

Annie-Act 2

    The past few nights we've been working out Act 2. The girls have been improving significantly on their dancing. Unfortunately, they still think they need their scripts. I keep stressing how important it is to be offbook by July. I've even used the incentive of treats if they can have all their lines, songs, and dances down by then. They loved that. Yesterday, I brought them to a separate room while the adults were practicing onstage so they could practice their lines. I had all of us get in a circle so I could talk to them about the idea of not anticipating their lines. Tristan, a petite little girl that plays Molly, is just the sweetest thing and she's having trouble pulling out her inner-Hannigan so I've been working with her one-on-on, as well. I think the girls are all finally warming up to me. We all joke around with each other all the time which makes the experience much less stressful for them and I.

The Wizard of Oz

   I am currently interning with Fox Valley Repertory Theatre on their production of The Wizard of OZ as a Stage Management intern.  So far we have had eight rehearsals and I have learned a ton about how to be a better stage manager.  I am working with a man named Tim Sadler (he is the official stage manager and I am his intern).  He is great.  He has taught me a lot about how to be a good stage manager.  He has shown me little ways to keep on top of things in rehearsal, tricks on writing rehearsal reports (mainly, how to not forget anything!) and most importantly how to effectively take down blocking.  Tim lets me do everything, from taking down blocking to setting up each rehearsal.  I got to run the first part of our third rehearsal because our directors train was late.  We have rehearsals on Sunday, Monday and Wednesdays.  By the end of tonights rehearsal we should have the whole show blocked.  This is a youth production so learning how to workl of theatre with children has also been a learning experience.  So far I have learned that patience is key, and making sure I have the right blocking down is crucial because the kids will forget where they are supposed to go.  This show is also largely puppeted.  I got to help teach the kids how to work with puppets, which was really fun. 

Wonka close

Today was the final performance of Willy Wonka Jr., followed by strike.  Strike went rather quickly, actually.  Jim wasn't there, so we were unable to return the lights we rented back to Fisher.  Instead, he asked that I place everything he provided in Pearson 2140, which I did.

Now the only thing left is our talk back, which is scheduled for this Thursday.

Pippin - Opening Weekend

It finally arrived! After two months of rehearsals, struggles, and some stressful moments, we finally opened the show! Both nights were good audiences - they got the jokes, loved the songs, and enjoyed the dancing.  As for us backstage, we used this first weekend as a strong opportunity to really work hard, keep focused, and review everything. I know some of us were very nervous for opening night, but as the first two shows went quite well (a few mistakes happened here and there, but thats to be expected), we are feeling MUCH more confident in ourselves and the production. Weekend #2 should be even better!

CLE Internship part 3

so the last thing I did was tearing out the old fly system at Dowling high school. this week was the install for the new one. we put in 5 new line sets. Day 1 was mostly a lot of finishing what didn't get done at the first part of the install. ( I wasn't there for that part but they put in 3 electrics on a wench system and installed most of the head blocks and loft blocks) what we still had to do was cut, and run, all of the wire rope through all of those head blocks and loft blocks. we got most of the lines run on the first day, and we got the first two arbors up and tied off.

day two we put up some mule blocks. this is what they look like for the most part and we have some in fisher.  they are for when the baton can't line up with the arbor so you send the lines from the arbor to  the mule block then around to the baton. the way the rigging engineer designed it was so that the lines ran from the arbor to a mule block, all the way across the stage through some idlers (pulleys designed just to keep the lines from sagging so much) back around two more mule blocks to make a 90 degree turn and  set them about five feet behind where they run the first time. then we ran those to their loft blocks. after that we were finished running the lines so we then went up and put up some wire rope guide wires for the arbors. (we only had the two arbors up at this point because we discovered that it would be easier to run the guide wires before we took them up to the grid) so the head blocks we have are a little different then the ones in this picture.the ones we use actually have a special bolt with a sleeve over it to attach the guide lines to. but there are so many pins holding the loft block together we actually had to pry the sleeve out of the blocks to get the guide wire eyes on to them.

day three we had all the cable strung, blocks in place, and everything else was about where it needed to be. we finished placing the arbors, and got the rope wire lines attached to the arbors, and we crimped collars onto the wire ropes to make an eye so we could attach a chain to hold the baton. when we actually got batons up we had to go along with a laser distance finder to make sure that the pipe was about the same distance from the floor at every point it was attached to a wire rope. as we were going along we discovered that the person crimping the collars had actually missed 3 of them. we discovered this when one of the wire ropes in the middle of a baton slipped out of the crimp when we were trying to level out the pipe. because of his little screw up we got held up. but not really complaining because i got 2 extra hours out of it. after that we just had to weight the arbors and put the drops back up. 26 hours from this gig.

Actor's Gym - Circus Day 1

Last night, we had our first day of Circus 1.  In this class, you cover a wide spectrum of circus arts, including aerial arts, tumbling and contortion, and other work like stilts, unicycle, and juggling.  The class is set up differently due to the number of things being taught along with a larger number of students.  The set up goes like this: warm-up, floor work, split off into two groups where one group works on an aerial apparatus and the other on a floor skill.  Sylvia is the instructor for this class.  She is intense, and she is going to kick our butts, but it's a good contrast compared to the Aerial instructor, Nate, who is extremely laid back, but just as good at teaching.  Nate will tell you what's wrong and tell you how to fix it and Sylvia will just grab a hold of you and fix it for you.  The fact that the instructors are so keen on fixing you right away is fantastic.  I've had plenty of dance instructors who will let you do something incorrectly for the longest time, and by the time the get around to explaining you were doing something wrong, it's already embedded in your muscle memory and it's hard to relearn it.  In this environment there is a lot of fast, healthy learning.

For one of the floor exercises yesterday, we worked on handstands, which was something I was really nervous about.  I have scoliosis, so there is a natural twist and sway in my lower back, and it is very difficult to self-correct when doing handstands.  You cannot do a handstand with a swayed back, and I don't have enough core muscle to pull my stomach in enough to correct it.  Thankfully, Nate, who was the assistant instructor for this class was able to help me hold myself up so I could learn more about how the core helps keep you up in the handstand.  I was even able to roll out of the handstand, which was something I didn't think I was going to be able to do.

The two main skills we worked on were trapeze and juggling.  Juggling is very hard, I feel like I'm catching on quickly.  I got one full "juggle" with three balls and that was good enough for me.  I think I want to go out and purchase some balls to practice with because it is so much fun.  I can't wait to be able to juggle.  The aerial was a little harder today, perhaps because my upper body is so worn out from aerial yesterday.  I have a really difficult time with slippery hands, I can't seem to keep my grip.  Hopefully the blisters on my hands will turn into calluses and will help me be able to hold on better.  I also really need to work on my core strength.  It's really difficult to have control over your body when you aren't strong enough to hold yourself up.  I'm going to work on my core and my arms this week and throughout the rest of the summer, so hopefully these tricks will become easier.

Until next week.

Actor's Gym Day 2

Hello all.

Today was day 2 of my classes at the Actors Gymnasium. today however was the first day of the Circus class. Yesterday was just aerial, but day was on the broader spectrum of Circus. There were a couple familiar faces there. The instructor of the Aerial class, Nate, was the assistant of this class. So far one of my favorite things about this place is that it is a nice community. A lot of other employees with the Actor's Gym take classes there.

Another really great thing is that they are so helpful here. It is tough work, and they are genuinely concerned on you learning here. The time is relatively short for these classes, but I feel that you learn so much within that time. For example I fixed my form for my handstand today. I didn't know it was wrong, but after it was improved it was so much easier. Like I said yesterday it is something that is picked up so easily.

Besides the really intense warm-ups which seem to be the most difficult thing for me. I'm not very flexible. We started to work on juggling today. I never thought I would be able to. I still need practice, but I was proud of what I learned today. We all made great progress, and I feel pretty accomplished. I may need to go out and buy some juggling balls to practice on my own. We also worked on trapeze again today. Sylvia is the main instructor, and she knows her stuff. She is a little intimidating, but she is very fun. It was interesting to apply what I learned yesterday to today, and also to see the teaching from a different perspective.

Annie-The Process

     The past two rehearsals have been so great. The director asked me to take over both nights and I found myself taking charge to be quite easy. I got the chance to set out some of the blocking for one of the orphanage scenes. The director came and talked to me tonight and told me she was very pleased with some of the points I made during practice. I've found myself teaching the girls a lot of the same techniques I've learned in classes such as understanding the given circumstances of their character and the idea of not anticipating lines. I gave all the orphans the assignment of giving themselves a background story. How did they become orphans? What was their life like pre-Miss Hannigan? I've also taken the liberty to help the littlest girl in the show break out her mean side. That's been quite the experience!
     Also! I actually got myself a small role in the show tonight. I get to be "Jeanie Johnson, the masked announcer." I'm actually thrilled to get to be helping put the show together AND getting the opportunity to be onstage no matter what the part. We have exactly 4 weeks until showtime. The girls have a deadline of memorization by July 1st. Here's to hoping we don't regret that date!

Actor's Gym - Aerial Day 1

Chris and I got into Chicago on Sunday and have been using the past couple of days to settle in and explore.  We have both been to the city before, but it is a little different being on our own.  Chris got lucky with the location of his apartment; he is just down the street from the Actor's Gymnasium.  I am living two "L" trains away, so that has been a lot of fun learning how the transportation system works.

Chris and I met up before our first class today and stretched a little.  Once the instructor came, we all shuffled inside and sat in a circle for introductions.  The space is incredible.  There are only about fifteen students and the space is rather small, but this allows for a lot of individual instruction (which I was relieved to discover).  After introductions, we did a group stretch to get our bodies engaged, then the instructor, Nate, and his assistant brought down four trapezes.  We learned the basics: hang from the trapeze, swing your legs up and through, hang by just your knees, swing legs up and sit on top.  I thought that for the first day we would just stick to these basic moves.  NOPE.  This was the first of three combinations that we were to learn for the day.  As the class went on, the moves became increasingly challenging and increasingly exciting.  It is a major workout for your arms, shoulders, and core, but I have never had so much fun while enduring so much pain.  I definitely made the right choice for my summer.

I can't wait for tomorrow, the first day of Circus Arts I.  Supposedly, I have a lot of conditioning in that class to look forward to, which is great to hear.  I feel like a lot of the basic technique required for these tasks is already in my body from my 15 years of dance experience, but what is missing is the upper body strength required for doing these "dance" moves while suspended in the air.  The conditioning in class, along with my workouts outside of class, will hopefully make it easier to hold up my body weight in order to do these tricks with ease.  That is my main goal for the summer - get strong.  As actors/dancers/performers, we know how important it is to keep our instrument in tip-top working condition.  I spent a lot of time on my voice last year, and now it's time to work the rest of my body into my training.

I cannot wait for tomorrow.

The Actor's Gym Day 1

Now I have only been here a few days, but it has been an interesting few days so far. I luckily got a place off Craigslist in Evanston less than a block away form The Actor's Gymnasium. I have been sort of getting a hang of the city too. But luckily I dont have to go far to get to these classes. For my first class it was pretty intense. I did not expect to be doing so much on this first day. Dear lord. 

As a class we got acquainted with everyone and the basic rules of everything. Then after some serious stretching, which was hard enough, we literally got thrown into the trapeze. Not easy stuff either. Well I picked it up fast, but it was very confusing at first. We learned some pretty intense tricks and moves. It was almost like we were supposed to know the basics already. Which I did not, but I got the hang of it.

I am already sore, and exhausted. It's only day one, but thank god this bed is comfortable.

The Drowsy Chaperone Part I

The Drowsy Chaperone, a play within a play.  The fourth wall is broken on a consistent basis; there are spit-takes, songs and dances, simple misunderstandings blown out of proportion, and even an anal sex joke.  What more could one ask for?

My first full week as stage manager was met with uncertainty as the responsibilities I was prepared to undertake were being tossed on other people’s shoulders.  After a quick meeting with the staff, I was given more clarity but overall am still vague on the total of my duties.

Rehearsals

I have to keep telling the kids to be quiet.

My directing style is quite different from this director.  We only have two hours to rehearse each Mon.- Thur.  We have set things to do each rehearsal, but it seems very half-assed.  If there was more discipline we could do more each rehearsal or the little we do actually get through could be much more polished.

One problem is a main actress is the choreographer and the director’s daughter.  He defers to her opinion every time she is in a scene, so here I am in disbelief of how little directing he actually does.

I find the need to continually remind myself that this is a community theatre. This is not these people’s jobs; they do not have the resources many other theatres have.  This is a good experience to see how others produce theatre.  As my first work experience, I could do a lot worse than a community theatre filled with people who love and care about this art.

Wonka Jr. Opening weekend thus far

We are now two performances into the run.  I've been sitting with Kaine for both shows, and he's picked up on the board very well.  Tomorrow, I will actually be filling in for Andre on the fly system, as he needs to be elsewhere tomorrow.  He has shown me what needs flying and when; hopefully I don't make any mistakes.  Meanwhile, I'm confident that Kaine can handle the board on his own.  Everyone in the cast and crew are doing fantastically, I cannot praise them enough.

Pippin: Final Rehearsals

          Wednesday we did another run-thru, giving us all another good chance to fix the trouble spots in the show. The dancing is coming together well, everyone is doing a really good job staying focused with lines and cues, and our interaction with the orchestra is getting a little better. I think we are finding that our weakest spots involve costume changes, some of the props used, and keeping a strong flow of communication. The latter one came from the fact that much of the orchestra had to leave around 10, and we had just gotten to intermission; because of this, we were unable to run most of Act II - we just skipped straight to the Finale, much to the chagrin of the director (as well as us). But we dealt with it. As for the other issues, we are having some trouble working with the costumes, particularly having enough time to change into some of them so rapidly, as we don't have any offstage hands to help. I personally feel it would be better if we could just lose some specific costumes - they don't really add much to the scenes we use them in, and they have only been a problem since we got them. But again, that's not for me to decide. Also, there have been problems with the props in terms of quantity and spacing; we have so many props, there is little space to put them once done with them (particularly for the ones used quickly onstage, with no time to take them off). We will just have to do our best.

           Thursday, however, was entirely different. As this was our final dress rehearsal, we finally had an audience - it was opened up to friends and family. Because of that, the atmosphere of the cast became electric - our high energy was back in anticipation of an audience. All of our prep time for costumes and makeup, we were all excited. I also noticed how great it was all looking - the set was finished, we had all of our props here, our costumes were finally finished (the tattooed guy looked AMAZING), and the orchestra was prepared - the cards were set for a great run.

         And what a great run it was - we all had fun that night! The musical numbers went well, the dances felt great - the sex scenes, in particular, were excellent (I couldn't hold a straight face during my sex duet). My mother was in the audience, and i was worried about her reaction to the show, as some of it was a little more adult than I expected. But she loved it! I was given lots of praise on my choreography by audience members, as well as the cast. I am so happy that after so much time (and admittedly some conflict), the show as come together quite well; now, on to Opening Night!

Tech Week: Sun and Mon

          This week began tech week for Pippin. Sunday kicked us off with a full run-through, adding costumes and the orchestra. With all of the new additions, however, the run was accompanied with a number of problems, mostly things we had to work on now, with the additions of costumes and all of the props. We used that rehearsal to start to get a sense of how much time we have for costume changes, as well as prepping the props for each scene. Though it took a while (and because of that, we never got to finish the show), the major problem areas began to be addressed. In addition, we ran into some issues with the music; mostly just trying to work through it with a newly-assembled live orchestra. As it was fairly new material for them, they are exempt. The problem, I feel, comes from the fact that we cannot see the music director while on stage, so we cannot gauge how to find the tempo for a number of songs (especially some of the difficult ones). But this is a problem we have to accept, because the layout of the theatre does not allow us to see her as well as let her be seen by the orchestra.

          Monday was a day for working. Though it was very late in the process to do work like this, it needed to be done. We started off rehearsal taking some publicity photos for the local paper (adding costumes as well). Afterwards, we had a sitzprobe (for those who don't know, its a rehearsal where the cast sits and runs the show through, dialogue and music, with the orchestra - no staging necessary). This gave us one final chance to find our weak spots in the music, and fix them alongside the orchestra. It also helped us get a better sense of the tempo settings for each song, as we could see the music director conduct the band. I must say, after Monday's rehearsal, I am feeling much more confident in myself and in the show. I think all of the cast is now feeling more excited about the show than we have as of late. Opening night should go great!

Annie-The Beginning

     Hey guys, so it's taken me quite awhile to figure this site out, but I think I finally got the hang of it! To start out, I'll give you a bit of a description of my internship this summer. I'm currently working in Carroll, Iowa with the Carroll Community Theatre. I was asked to Assistant Direct the show "Annie" that the CCT is putting on for the summer. Ages range from 7-60 years old. We have little orphan girls, to teenagers, and even several older adults for the adult leads. Having only seen the movie, I was nervous to hear how big of a difference the musical was compared to the film.
     Back in mid-May, we had a production meeting where I got the chance to meet all the fellow adults I'd be working with including the choreographer, music director, stage manager, and a few others that were helping out. It was great to see that these people were volunteering their time to help put this show on for the public. During our meeting, we discussed different set designs and how we would incorporate the era, as well as the location into the backdrops. It was so great to be able to put in my ideas. We also talked about the future rehearsals and auditions.
     Auditions were held the last week of May. On the first day of auditions, young girls and boys came in to audition for the role of orphans and kids in Hooverville. Much to my surprise, over 60 kids came. The audition consisted of learning a dance which they then performed in a group of 10, and then they learned a song from the show that went along with the dance which they each individually had to sing. The talent from the kids was phenomenal. We, as the staff, had a hard time of picking 20 orphans. We also had to pick two different options for Annie because there is so much in that show to put on one little girl's shoulders that we thought it would be a good idea to have two. By the end of auditions, we had five options for Annie which made choosing just that much more difficult. It mainly came down to their conflict schedule. The second day of auditions was for the adults. They came in and also learned a dance, sang a song, and then read lines. Some were obvious choices for roles, while others we had a tough time placing. After we had the cast list up, several people, unfortunately were not happy with their roles and dropped out. This caused the production staff to have another meeting in which we discussed what would be our best options when it came to finding replacements. We ended up calling several adults around Carroll that had been in past productions. Much to our happiness, we filled all roles, and just in time.
     Fast forward to now, we have had about 6 rehearsals where I work with just the orphans and their choreographer helping them to learn the dances and run their lines. We've gotten up to scene 4 and the girls are doing wonderfully. They got their first song down in two days, and we are now working on "Hard Knocked Life." Each Sunday we get together with the adults and run lines/work in the songs to see how it meshes. I've been very pleased with all the progress in such a short amount of time. I even got to read lines for Miss Hannigan, which I must say, I got quite a thrill out of. I look forward every day to being able to see how excited the girls get when they learn something new, or even just help each other, and being able to give my own direction is pretty great. Our next rehearsal is tomorrow, so I will keep you posted! :)

Wonka tech

Saturday's work turned out to be fairly minimal, as the majority of the light hang happened on Friday.  As it was, we got a basic focus down for the one electric that still needed it.  I realized that one of the Source Fours Jim provided needed a different lens tube on it, and I asked Jim if he could bring one to swap out.

Sunday was dry tech with just the crew.  Before we began, I started creating basic cues, but only got a few cues into the second act.  I met again with my board operator and went over how I hoped his job would work out as just having to press the Go button, as well as what he should do each day as he comes in.  As tech went along, I began tweaking individual cues to better fit what is happening on stage.

Today was the first tech rehearsal with the cast.  As everyone else worked on getting ready, I continued to tweak the cues I already had and made new cues for the remainder of the show.  As rehearsal went along, I needed to create "point" cues between established cues so I didn't have to rework cue numbers.  I also informed Kaine (my operator) and Kivan that I would provide each of them with a cue sheet to help guide them both.  Just before I began typing this entry, I typed up and printed their copies and have them in my binder for tomorrow.

A spur of the moment decision helped take care of a moment in the show that was vexing me after I saw last Friday's run.  During Charlie and Grandpa Joe's flying song, they're supposed to get dangerously close to a fan, but no physical fan exists for the show.  The plans I saw weeks ago led me to think they were going to be upstage center, but in truth they are on either end of the apron.  As they ran through the number, it suddenly occurred to me to play with the Master slider.  Problem solved!

There is still some work on light levels on a number of cues in the first act, but I think it's coming along very well.  I also want to make sure Kaine is totally ready to work the show.  He's been on the cue button so far, but I've still been cuing him myself, when he should be following Kivan.  With the cue sheet, I hope that he can run things without much help from me (I will still be there if he has questions or issues).

Pippin 6/5 & 6/6

   Wednesday was a much needed choreography rehearsal, and as I worked on many of the numbers in the show, I had a lot of things to focus on. One of the hardest things I have found with my role as a choreographer and a performer in the same show is the challenge in having to remove myself from the scene. It is hard to play two specific roles such as these, because as a choreographer, I need to see how the dance looks from the audience, but as a performer, I need to be in the dance to work with spacing and such; its a hard role to balance (which is now why I see the wisdom in Brad's advice of never being in the show you are working on - it’s difficult to balance).

Overall, we made a lot of progress with the choreography - I finally got to finish my last two dances, both of which look really great - but I am worried for the next few rehearsals, because as this is new material, the cast may not remember all of this new material - we need more rehearsal time! Problem is, tech week is next week...

     As for Thursday, we had a run-thru of the now-completed show. We actually made decent time with it, as the cast was actively listening and watching for their cues for set changes (one of the weakest spots in the show).

The other area we need help with is with music – it feels like everyone has forgotten all the hard work we put into rehearsing the music, so making mistakes in the music with where we are now is a problem; I think it would really help if we had another music rehearsal, but everyone has to put in some work on their own. As some of the numbers still sound a little raw, I get nervous to think how they will sound this week (especially after we add the orchestra, using props, and starting with costumes as well). I hope everyone does their part over the weekend.

Wonka tech

So we have officially entered tech week for the show. All of my set pieces are in the space and I finally get to se how everything looks together. So far I'm pretty pleased with what I see and I think that this show is going to be really fun for the kids. I need to hang my last piece of scenery and I'll be totally done. 

I spent a lot of today doing rigging with Jim, who helped me out so much. I need to run to the stir and pick up a few more things and we should be golden.

It's kind of insane to think about how much work I put into this show and how it's turning out. I'm really kind of proud of myself for getting it all done even when it seemed like it was totally impossible.

I think we're going to have a pretty good tech week (or good for a tech week anyway)

Door Shakespeare

For most of last week, Mark, Nick, and myself were working up in Door County, Wisconsin helping them get everything ready for their Shakespeare Season.


Day 1:

We made the eight hour drive up to Sister's Bay, Wisconsin. Once we arrived, we met Michael Brandt and he helped us get acquainted with everyone else. We had a meeting and went over schedules. Amy showed us the plans for the space and let us know what she was trying to do with Door Shakespeare in her first season.We then took all of the posters and stamped them with a stamp made with the names of their sponsors.

Day 2:

This was the day intended for switching the seating around. For years, they were using this gate as their upstage, but this year they decided on a tree that was on the exact opposite side of the space. They have seaing for 190 people which includes a Queen's Box for reserved seating. So, all of the risers needed to be turned around and moved into a thrust. This took some of our math skills to figure out he geometry of the whole situation. As the risers got moved, we realized that we had kind of a mix and match of heights and lengths, so we started cutting legs off, or adding legs to them depending on what was needed. As that space started to take form, Michael Brandt and I took the gator to the mulch pile and started mulching the space. Michale had to leave a little early for something, and I continued doing that until five o'clock.

Day 3:

Was the day to go through the garage. We had to go through every last thing and separate them into piles: trash, keep, and take apart for wood. We also took an hour or two to build these prop totes. It probably wouldn't take everyone that long to do it, but Nick and I had our troubles. After we got those taken care of, we moved them out to the space and started working on the space some more. Mark and Mike worked on the risers while Nick and I made it look nice with mulch and clearing leaves and other things. We continued working until five o'clock.

Day 4:

The morning of day four was spent taking things apart so they could go into the trash or storage. We took flats apart and put a lot of wood into a pile to be burned. Nick and I loaded up my truck with trash and took it into town to drop off at the office dumpster. When we got back we brought costumes and props from the office and found space for them. Then we loaded up my truc with wood, and we took it down to the beach and started a fire. When all of the trash wood was burnt, I started loading stumps up and taking them to the space. The director of MacBeth had wanted some tree stumps to be part of his set. There were also pathways going throughout the woods, and since the performances were at night, I started going through the woods and gathering dead birch logs, which are white, to line the path so the actors could see. This continued until five o'clock.

Day 5:

This was the last day. We made sure the risers were all good to go. Nick and I made sure that the path was fully lined and ready for traffic. We then proceeded to take apart the old stage that they had been using by the gate. Some of the wood was good and some of it was bad to we separaed them into piles. This went until about two o'clock then we headed to the office said goodbye and took off for home.


I really enjoyed this opportunity. We met a lot of people and had a really good time getting to know them and helping them transform their space. They were incredibly grateful for our help, and we are incredibly grateful to say that we were a part of it. We are already planning a trip to go back and see the shows in the space that we helped create.

Willy Wonka Jr.

Today was crew view.  Jim had already brought lights and gels from Fisher and he arrived during rehearsal to go ahead and place balcony lights.  Following rehearsal, he manned the flies while I placed lights.  Once we had them all up and gelled, we made sure they all worked (one had a lamp out, but there were replacements available), and got all but one electric batten where I believe they should be focused.  Tomorrow, we will go back to that remaining electric and get those focused.  Assuming I don't need to adjust the lights any more, I should then be ready for tech.

The Drowsy Chaperone (Prologue)

This first blog entry will be a recap of yesterday’s events.  In the future I hope to bring more of feeling of my time, rather than a retelling of it.  I have never written a blog, but I assume it is meant to not only inform, but also entertain.  Think of this entry as a prologue with chapters to follow.  Enjoy.

 

I recently was invited to Indianola to see a rehearsal of “The Drowsy Chaperone”, a musical that is being produced by the Carousel Theatre.  I arrived on Thursday night and was amazed by how many children would be in this production.  The main parts were being performed by adults, but I found it shocking to walk into a room with thirty or so 10-18 year old kids running around.

Once the rehearsal started I was a bit surprised at how early into the process they are considering the first show is in a month.  I sat and listened to the songs and watched some of the dancing and cringed every now and then.

The rehearsal ended without any significant steps towards a finished product, but remembering the fact that I have never read the script, I didn’t have much input.  I asked the director for a script and while giving me one, he asked if I would be the stage manager.  Having never been a stage manager, my first thought was, (what the hell does a stage manager actually do?) so my response was, “sure?”.

Driving home I began to think of all the work I needed to do to get ready for Monday (our next rehearsal).  First and foremost, I need to read the script.  I figure I will go at this from the perspective of the director and make notes based on how I analyze the script.  Second, I need to be prepared to write in blocking, sound, and lighting cues.  I have a good idea as to what I could be doing, but at this point I’m not sure as to what they WANT me to do.

The first day was interesting, and I’m ready and willing to see where this journey takes me.

Door Shakespeare

For the past handful of days I, along with Nick Neal and Drew McCubbin, worked with Door Shakespeare in Door County, Wisconsin.  I would have blogged each evening, but I had no internet access, so this will cover all of my time in Door County.

June 1:

Drew picked me up from my home and we made our way to Sister Bay.  There, we met with Michael Brandt and our three contacts with Door Shakespeare: Amy Ludwigsen, Danny Junod, and Jason Economus.  Nick Neal would arrive the next day.  After settling in, we sat around the kitchen table and went over the planned schedule for our time there.

June 2:

Our first day in the space at Bjorklunden in Baileys Harbor.  In previous years, Door Shakespeare had their seating risers in a straight line, facing their previous staging area.  This made for difficult viewing for folks at the extreme left and right ends of the house.  For this year, they decided to use the space behind the risers instead, with a nice big tree as a back center point, and perform in a thrust.  So we needed to re-position many of the risers.  Some of them were not utilized at this time.  When they were where we wanted them, we needed to build new legs for some of the platforms so that they would sit level.  While I helped with this task, Drew started laying wood chips to create the play space.  We began work at roughly 10 am and ended somewhere between 4:30 and 5, with a short break for lunch.  Nick arrived at around 11 pm.

June 3:

For the first half of the day, Nick, Drew, Michael, and myself worked with Jason in going through their prop barn/workshop, pulling virtually everything out to be evaluated.  Things were separated into three piles: things to keep, wood to dispose of, and other trash.  Once everything was sorted, Jason and I moved everything being kept back into the barn, making sure to leave enough space to maneuver.  We also put together their big sign to place out near the highway, for cars to see as they pass.  After breaking for another short lunch we returned to the space, with Michael and I working on leveling the risers and Nick and Drew continuing to mulch the space, voms, and placing some wood stumps.  Amy and Danny set us up in the dressing room/green room for the rest of our time there.

June 4:

For the first half, the four of us were tasked with burning the wood we were getting rid of, so we had a great bonfire in a pit over near the shore of Lake Michigan.  Jason returned later to inform us that with the risers in place, they were well short of what they wanted for seats.  So we went back to the space to determine what could be done with the risers remaining.  It was decided that an additional row of seats would be added to the left and right sides, adding 20 seats.  Michael and I began work on this while Nick and Drew handled other tasks.

June 5:

This became our last day.  Michael and I finished work on the risers, and the four of us dismantled the old stage from what was now behind the seats.  Once that was dismantled, the lumber was taken to the workshop, and Nick and Drew covered the space over with wood chips.  We finished up just after 2 and made our way to the Door Shakespeare office, gave our goodbyes to everyone, and began the long drive back to Ames.

If I left anything important out, hopefully Drew or Nick will fill it in, but I believe I got it pretty well.  Working on this was fantastic.  Amy, Danny, and Jason were wonderful people, very welcoming and open.  The amount of work we did in such a short span of time still amazes me, and I was there doing it.  I truly hope that I'm able to make it up there again to see the shows.

Wonka update

So we move into the space in two days and I'm slightly worried about getting everything don. I think we can do it but we need to stay focused and just attack what we have left of this. It is coming together though and there are a few things, like the bucket shack and the gears, that I'm pretty proud of. 

Pippin 6/1 & 6/2

          The last two days have actually made a good amount of progress. Sunday, I came in with choreography for 3 different songs, and got most of it taught within the extra hour we had. Once we started, we moved to the last part of the show - this took a long time to do, but it finally started to come together, actually looking like a finale. I just hope we all remember what to do once we run the show.

     As for today, we began our first run through. However, before we did, I called some of the cast early so I could rework the choreography for an entire song; not only did I get everything taught in 15 minutes, but we used the song as our warm-up for the night, allotting us extra rehearsals for the song, which helped us review the new choreography many times.

          As for the run-through, because it was the first one, it became the “crash-and-burn” rehearsal; what I mean by that is this is the rehearsal where we find out the weak spots in the show (when moments fail), giving us a strong opportunity to notate the places that need the most work. Sadly, we found a lot of weak spots, so many that we had to re-do a number of scene changes and scenes, which took up additional time. Because of that, we never got to the finale, which I was hoping we would – we really needed to review it, as we just learned it recently and didn’t get much of a chance to review it.

     I set a lot of new movement on the cast very recently, so the fact that they are doing their best with it makes me happy – it would be very beneficial to have more time to focus specifically on choreography, just like we did with music, but we are running out of rehearsals, which puts me in a jam.

     I have really learned a lot in the process of this show, though some of the things I have learned I feel I shouldn’t have had to learn. But we make mistakes (not that I’m saying being in this show was a mistake), and it is through those mistakes we learn and grow. 

*I think one area that would help ALL of us be ready to go is if we all had our scripts on hand, ready to write down blocking, notes, and any changes that come up.

Pippin 5/26-5/30

          This week started to get me very worried, for a lot of reasons. First, as we have a number of high school students in the cast, they had to be absent (due to school activities and finals), causing them to miss a few important rehearsals. Another issue comes from one I mentioned last week – the director and choreographer work through the show one little part at a time; the problem with this week is that we went back over things we did last week, to change things that didn’t work. While this does help with cementing the scenes, the pace of working has really begun to drag a lot of us down; for the reasons I mentioned in my last post, we have to be engaged in the work, but when we aren’t being used, we have to sit on the sidelines – it would be better for all of us if we could use that time to review the music and dances.

          Another worry comes from the fact that since we spend a lot of time working the blocking, we don’t have time to review the music. This show has some of the hardest music I have ever seen, and in order to do the best we can, it would be very beneficial to have more music rehearsal time. I think it could help to not only let us review the music, but get our energy back.

     The silver lining throughout this week was when I came in with the rest of my choreography for one of the dances. Though I had only one day to work on it, I not only finished it in good time, but got it taught in less than hour (including rehearsing it over and over). That really surprised me – it made me feel a little more confident in my teaching capabilities.

     We only have two weeks until we open, and we have a lot of work still to do – this is the time we all need to hunker down and work doubly hard to make sure each rehearsal is really productive.