Wednesday, September 09, 2009
LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS Tech TIme
Today - and now tonight - is first day of technical rehearsals for our production of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS that I'm directing,...it has its first preview on this coming Friday night, September 11th. For those of you who are "civilians" and know not what tech rehearsals are, let me explain:
When rehearsing a show,most rehearsal time is spent in a relatively empty hall, with tape on the floor to represent all the various scenes and doorways and settings,etc. Most actors become used to acting a three dimensional world of a play in a two dimensional rehearsal hall...it's part of our technique as we gain more and more experience, although I must admit , I still have trouble imagining what a set will really look like, dimensionally, when I spend weeks and weeks in a bare hall.
Anyway, shortly before a show opens to the public, it moves to the actual theatre where it will perform and it's time for tech rehearsals!!! "Tech" refers to any and all things that make a show happen that are NOT the actors, the words, the music or the staging. "Tech" is the lights, the sound, the set, the properties handled by the actors, the costumes, the make-up....all that stuff....and it takes time to put all that together....most people who are not in theatre don't realize that. It takes a lot of time.
So here we are putting it all together for LITTLE SHOP...and with 4 incarnations of the Audrey II plant alone, to work with, manipulate, make into an "actor" and a "singer " and a "dancer", and with all the music being done not to live musicians working but to tracks being played over a sound system that needs balancing with all the mics being worn by the actors,etc, and with all the difficult spacing issues in this particular small theatre, today could have gone much worse than it has...and with much more difficulty.....but, we have a seasoned and talented crew of folks here...so it will all get done.
When I stop to consider how many years of my life I've spent inside a theatre, it boggles my mind...how much of my life I've spent in dressing rooms, surrounded in the dark by other fellow actors , all waiting to go into the light and bring worlds alive for the watching audiences...i have been a true person of the theatre...and i have given most of my life to it. And here I am again. This time as a director, not as an actor, waiting for rehearsals to begin.
When rehearsing a show,most rehearsal time is spent in a relatively empty hall, with tape on the floor to represent all the various scenes and doorways and settings,etc. Most actors become used to acting a three dimensional world of a play in a two dimensional rehearsal hall...it's part of our technique as we gain more and more experience, although I must admit , I still have trouble imagining what a set will really look like, dimensionally, when I spend weeks and weeks in a bare hall.
Anyway, shortly before a show opens to the public, it moves to the actual theatre where it will perform and it's time for tech rehearsals!!! "Tech" refers to any and all things that make a show happen that are NOT the actors, the words, the music or the staging. "Tech" is the lights, the sound, the set, the properties handled by the actors, the costumes, the make-up....all that stuff....and it takes time to put all that together....most people who are not in theatre don't realize that. It takes a lot of time.
So here we are putting it all together for LITTLE SHOP...and with 4 incarnations of the Audrey II plant alone, to work with, manipulate, make into an "actor" and a "singer " and a "dancer", and with all the music being done not to live musicians working but to tracks being played over a sound system that needs balancing with all the mics being worn by the actors,etc, and with all the difficult spacing issues in this particular small theatre, today could have gone much worse than it has...and with much more difficulty.....but, we have a seasoned and talented crew of folks here...so it will all get done.
When I stop to consider how many years of my life I've spent inside a theatre, it boggles my mind...how much of my life I've spent in dressing rooms, surrounded in the dark by other fellow actors , all waiting to go into the light and bring worlds alive for the watching audiences...i have been a true person of the theatre...and i have given most of my life to it. And here I am again. This time as a director, not as an actor, waiting for rehearsals to begin.
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