On the set for Persuasion

Technical rehearsals begin

As of yesterday, we are rehearsing in the Center House Theater, on Corey and Craig's lovely set. The two pillars of the CHT have been wrapped in painted scenes, and its floor is covered in a cobblestone pattern.

Adapting to the real space

The set's simplicity provides great flexibility, a feature which we greatly appreciate: Although we have been rehearsing in a rehearsal hall whose dimensions were marked out to be identical to those of the set, we now have to deal with the idiosyncracies of the entrances and exits of the Center House Theater. Since we could only roughly estimate the times to travel from one particular exit to another particular entrance, we are now facing the reality of the long and twisted backstage halls. As such, we have been remapping some of the blocking to meet the requirements of travel time. This of course affects the previous or later blocking, so the day sometimes feels like rearranging the pieces of a puzzle whose picture has changed.

The costumes

We are also now working with the stunning regency-era costumes, courtesy of our designer Deane and her assistant Janessa. Deane has scoured the Pacific Northwest's theatre community's stock and come up with some real gems (For example, yours truly doing his best Leslie Howard "Scarlet Pimpernel" impersonation, left). This show is going to look great.

Stand-by lights and sound

A sigh of relief and happiness collectively escaped us all once the opening night party began. The show is officially open and now we are on to a new adventure of performing the show. My job as the stage manager now takes on new tasks. No longer am I recording the blocking, creating the daily call, filling out rehearsal reports, holding meetings with the design team and so on... I am now on to keeping the show and my actors happy, keeping up with all the hard work we have done, keeping the show the way the director left it and intended it to be, giving daily performance reports, running fight calls before every show, calling the lights, sound, and media for the show and so much more.
I encourage everyone to come and see this wonderful, world premier, exciting production of Peter Pan in a new light.

Powers of Imagination

Years ago, I wrote a short one-act play about the power of imagination in adults. I chose this subject because I was noticing a distinct drought of artistic creativity among friends who, I believed, lacked imagination. Or, more specifically, the power to communicate to others their imaginative ideas and thoughts. I took the title of the play from a line in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream - THE LUNATIC, THE LOVER, AND THE POET - because the speech is all about the power of imagination. Now we have an adaptation of JM Barrie's PETER PAN to consider. The story seems to suggest that the power of imagination is necessary for children to become fully developed human beings. That only through imagination's use can children guarantee themselves a thrilling and adventurous upbringing. But the story also suggests there comes a time when imagination's use must be set aside and replaced by the burdens of responsibility. Burdens that coincide with an adult who survives in the workaday world. Those of us who work in the American theatre know all too well the importance of maintaining that childhood power of communicative imagination - for it is the springboard of our creativity. I hope the audience members that join our play will embrace this as well.

Getting ready

Welcome to our blog. I am Devorah Spadone, the production stage manager at Book-it and am currently working thru the last 2 days of rehearsal before we move into the theater for tech week.

Tech week is when the stage manager's job begins to shine. We essentially become the director. Tech week is when we add in the costumes, the lights, the props, the set, and the sound ALL IN ONE! It's a lot of commotion and a lot of fun. Tech week is what I look forward to the most. It's when all of our hard work from rehearsal, our countless hours spent in production meetings with the designers all comes together to create a show. It's where theater magic is created.

It's always amazing to me that we are able to put all these elements together so quickly. It's wonderful. It takes a LOT of hard working people to make it all happen, but some how we do it!

I always wish that more people were aware of all the hard work that goes into making a show. When I try to explain what a stage manager does to people, my words jubble together and my explanation turns into a spoken novel. There are so many details that can't even be explained, that it's just easier to see it, than it is to have it explained to you.

I hope you all enjoy Book-It's production of Peter Pan, and give a quick thought to all the many factors that made it come to life!

Peter Pan

These are random thoughts that I have had today about directing Peter Pan.

Jane Jones keeps reminding me to remember the events of the story. "What are the events, Joy?" And I nod my head, go back to my room and open my script- Directing a play is about slowly hacking away at all the different elements and then continuing to discover. To keep asking yourself, "Is that the most interesting idea? Is that honest to my story? "

J. M Barrie's fantasitical play turned children's story is so different than previous renditions of Peter Pan, that I have been able to experiment with the style of this show. And the experiments are proving to be some of the more interesting aspects of this show.

Risk and lack of ego are essential to a good director.

Directing Peter Pan is turning out to be my first taste of desiring graduate school in the future. Every day of rehearsal feels like new terrain. The only ground I trust is my taste.
My taste of wanting this show to appeal to both the 75 year old man, and a 7 year old boy. And i am starting to feel moments of this working on the audience.

Joy

Welcome to Snow Falling on Cedars

I had a theatre professor one time who told our class that being a director requires "the courage and conviction of your own bad taste." It was Bill Becvar, who co-founded the Tacoma Actors Guild. And Bill was talking about an ORDINARY directing project, where you might be staging the umteen-thousandth production of The Rainmaker or something, and you might have to go out on a limb and decide that the guy playing the Rainmaker Dude, whatever his name is, should wear a blue cowboy shirt. That's a rather cynical example, and not to diminish the theatre director's task, but Bill probably wasn't thinking as far ahead as a Book-It project, where the concept of making decisions really presents itself. Instead of figuring out how to make actors move convincingly around a single barnyard set, a Book-It artist has to make the audience believe that Sancho and Don Quixote are tilting at windmills, when there's nothing resembling a windmill or a donkey anywhere near the stage. You can't fly in the windmill drop, or wheel on the windmill wagon. It's up to you to create those illusions for the audience, and the creativity of those choices might determine the success of the production. Will the audience buy the conceit? Is it the best possible solution to the challenge, given the circumstances?

I guess that's why I like working at Book-It so much. There are choices to make constantly, for EVERYTHING, and you have only yourself to blame for making them. Most people seemed to like the other project I directed for Book-It, Anne Tyler's Breathing Lessons back in 2003, but some people most decidedly did NOT, friends included. I don't recall anybody saying to me "It was okay." And I took that as the best unspoken compliment. Better to win a few and lose a few, perhaps in a big way, but don't go boring people to death. So like it or not, Snow Falling on Cedars will not be boring. And given the challeges that we face in creating fishing boats and fog-shrouded inlets for the audience, it will not be conventional, either.

People who asked me what I was doing a few months ago got an answer like " I'm working on a stage adaptation of Snow Falling on Cedars." Then they would look at me in a conciliatory way and say "That's a great book." Which was actually a polite way of saying "Don't screw it up." And I knew what they meant. There would have been a lot less pressure staging some book nobody's heard of - but such a popular novel, an award-winner, big-movie book - going to attract some attention. Not going to meet everyone's expectations, but then again, it may exceed some as well.

Anyway, got a great group of actors. Got a great design team who solved a lot of my staging questions before I even began. About three weeks left before our first audience and we seem to be in fairly good shape - running the show in sequence now, going back and working stuff. I adapted it on the short side, so we're not having to cut volumes of material, we actually had the luxury of fleshing out some parts by adding material back in to the adaptation. Conventional two-act format, each act should come in right around an hour each. So we'll keep our fingers crossed and try to deliver the goods. I just keep telling myself and the actors to tell the story, as clearly as we can. Guterson did it very eloquently in his novel, now it's up to us to do it on stage.