Play Selection, a Science or Crap Shoot

Choosing a season plays for any type of theatre has many requirements and there are numerous factors to be considered in selecting a play to produce.

The number one factor in any type of theatre is of course money.

The more actors needed the higher the salaries will be, but also the costume costs will be higher in larger cast shows.

The number and style of scenery required, props, lighting, sound and even special effects all add to the overall costs of a production

In professional theatres they must select plays that will sell tickets.

In academic theatres selling tickets can be important too but the plays also have to fit the teaching goals of the program.

In my time at Brockport we have selected our seasons in several ways over the years with some ways working better than others.

Currently we put out a call for plays and ask faculty and students to suggest plays to be considered.

A committee reads through all of the plays and pares them down to a smaller number and then all of the faculty read the plays and select a season from the.

In the past there was a department document that outlined all of the many types of plays and how often the department should produce them.

Some years ago I was on the selection committee and we tried to follow the guide but found it not to be possible.

There are many factors that change from year to year.

The number of students available, their skills, the ratio of male/female students are just a few of the things that can effect what is selected.

For many years the directors would pick the shows that they wanted to do and unless there was some objection we would do them.

Time and money is the great limiter.

We try to pick a smaller shows at the beginning of the school year and larger ones later in the year when the student have more time to rehearse and the crew time to build bigger sets.

I recently noted that the season we had chosen for 1989-90 was not the season that we did.

The season listed in the program for Mother Courage and Her Children in April of 1989 was the following:

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Cyrano de Bergerac, Purlie Victorious and the ever popular A Play to be Named Later.

I am sure that The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was selected because of the large number of female roles but in the fall it had been replaced with Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean which also had a large number of female roles.

Cyrano de Bergerac was the only play that we did not change and produced in December of 1989.

Purlie Victorious was replaced with its musical version Purlie and moved to the fourth slot.

The play to be named later was NigHt of tHe pterodActyls which was a children’s theatre piece.

I do not remember why we had all of the changes that season but it was not the only time we have had to change a play.

Sometimes we have chosen a play for which the rights have been pulled back by the publisher because it might be running on Broadway or other professional theatre.

In the past plays have been changed because of staff changes, because another play became available or simply we just wanted to do something else.

I will be writing about the 1989-90 season, its plays and the new scene designer in upcoming Blog posts.

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A Chorus Line, summer 1989

The summer musicals were always fun to work on.

Most everybody loves musicals; big casts, flashy sets and many costumes along with fun songs.

Musicals are also lots of work but A Chorus Line is a different kind of musical that has many special challenges.

The basic cast is made up of 17 plus 12 or more extras needed for the opening number.

After the opening number, I hope I get It, about half of the cast is cut and sent home.

In our production the extra actors would leave the stage, change and go home as they are not need again and did not get a curtain call.

A Chorus Line is different from the traditional musical that we had been doing in that all of the actors needed all had to be triple threats.

They had to be able to sing, dance and act, something not always easy to find in one person let alone the 17 needed for the show.

In traditional musicals there are always a few leads and then a mixture of extra actors who may sing or dance or just take up space on the stage and look good in their costume.

Although some Brockport students were used many in the cast came from the Theatre Rochester Community.

Our department scene designer had left and the new one was not yet on staff so the production manager from the Dance department designed.

A Chorus Line does not require a traditional set but Christian Tucker, a long time theatre designer, did a nice job on the set.

OK, most of the show the set is simply a white tape line along the floor but there was also a big decorative curtain used in the final musical number.

It was made up of various shinny and reflective materials from Rosco.

A line of mirrors along the back of the stage are the signature set pieces for the play.

The mirrors were not hard to make.

We used Rosco shrink mirror on special wooden frames.

The mirror is attached to the frames and then using a heat gun the mirror shrinks and tightens up leaving a glass like result.

The first few frames went fairly quick and we thought that this was going to be easy.

The second roll of the mirror did not shrink as easily as the first and we started to get little burn marks.

When we got to the third roll it would not shrink at all. 

Rosco is a good supply company and I have always had good luck with them but when we called them and tried to get a replacement roll but were told that they were in the middle of a big audit and could not help us.

WHAT!!!!

After another few frantic calls they told us that the California office could help us and they sent us another roll.

Well the new roll came and it shrank a bit better but it seemed to a stain or fog on part of the mirror.

Come to find out the backing used on the mirror was made by another company for some other use and the fact that it would shrink under heat was not important to its intended primary use.

Now this was 25 years ago and they still sell the mirror I can only assume they have worked things out.

The mirrors got done and looked very good and you would have to know where to look to see any of the burn marks.

Yes I still have a few of the mirrors and used one recently during the rehearsals of Avenue Q for to actors to practice working with their puppet.

Most of the mirrors were to be used again the following summer in 42^nd Street.

A mirror panel or two have been used in several other shows over the years and have been lent out to other theatres on occasion.

Although the set for A Chorus Line was not really too challenging for Christian would get a chance to design a fun set for Cabaret a few years later.

For me as the lighting designer there were a few challenges.

One of the iconic images from the show is the line of 17 actors all holding up their photos in little pools of light.

This called for 17 specials all focused very tightly plus 17 other lights used as back light.

It looked good when done.

The other issue was the follow spot.

Because most of the actors are always on stage when the spot was used it would light up the actors behind the one doing their solo.

To fix this I put a small follow spot up in the ceiling cove position which gave me a very steep angle and worked well.

It was very tough on my crew person because it was July and very hot and even though the AC was on in the theatre, we know that heat rises and it was locked in the ceiling.

The show went well and we sold out most performances