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

bobrauschenbergamerica

bobrauschenbergamerica, What hell is that?

bobrauschenbergamerica by Charles L. Mee is a very unique play that we just opened at the College at Brockport.

You can do it for free and you can find it at this link:

http://www.charlesmee.org/bobrauschenbergamerica.shtml

I would like to tell you more about the play, I liked it and enjoyed working on it, but it really is an odd and unique piece.

It has 43 scenes of story telling, singing, dancing and it revolves around the life and work of the artist Robert Rauschenberg, kind of. 

This year I have been very busy with our plays, concerts and taking one of our plays  to the American College Theatre Festival and helping the Dance Department host the American College Dance Festival.

All that mix with some other issues has left me with little time to write my Blog.

I still have plenty stories I want to share with you and hope to get back to regular posts soon.

For more about Robert Rauschenberg go to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rauschenberg

***

Mother Courage and Her Children, April 1989

Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht was the last production designed by Richard Montgomery who did not receive tenure and would be leaving Brockport at the end of the school year. 

The set that Richard designed was functional and typical of his work and offered me few challenges.

The key set piece was Mother Courage’s wagon.

I had to figure how to build a medium sized covered wagon that could be pulled easily by an almost 70 year old woman.

Gisela Fritzsching was, and still is, a tough woman and I am happy to report still going strong at 93 and just came to see our last music concert a few weeks ago.

It goes without saying that Gisela had no trouble pulling the cart.

We had a student lighting designer so I was free to take care of the sound design.

I have no idea what I did for the show.

There was a small band and I do not remember if I had to mic them or just add in a few sound effects.

Sometimes the details of some shows I have worked on are gone and other times I can remember even the smallest details.

On the back of the program is a listed of the projected season for the next year.

We did only one of the plays and changed to the musical version of another.

I do not know why we switched but I think we did a better season because of it.

In the fall of 1989 we would have a new scene design teacher and over the next few years we would see several other staff changes.

Gisela Fritzsching would be forced to retire in the spring of 1990 as she reached her 70^th birthday and it really pissed her off.

The state would repeal the rule the next year.

We would also go through a few costume design teachers as well and details of all the comings and goings will follow.

.

Updated 5/29/2014

Avenue Q, 2013 and the 2014 Tour

I have enjoyed writing about all my past plays but I am still working full time and my current work has kept me very busy as of late.

Our musical this year was Avenue Q, you know the dirty Sesame Street style show complete with Muppets.

It was a big, two levels and lots of detailing.

It looks like Sesame Street, three building fronts and many windows.

 

Most all of the flats and windows had to built special for the show.

I was able to re-use the doors and some masking flats, but all of the flats facing the audience were new.

Luckily I did not have to build the puppets too, the costume designer a two students did most of the work on them.

The scenic designer was from outside Brockport, the same man we used last year on Mauritius.

Bad Idea Bears

 

I designed the lighting, helped set up the sound, projections and some of the set pieces and props.

The students worked very hard to master working their puppets.

Many hours were spent in front of mirrors in addition to the regular rehearsals.

The director had a good deal of experience working with puppets having spent time touring with a well known puppet theatre group.

 

 

Also a workshop was giving to the actors by a real Muppeteer who happened to be a friend of one of the actors.

The play was a hit, played to big audiences and was well reviewed by outside adjudicators.

Just before the last show we found out that we were selected to perform at the regional Kennedy Center, American College Theatre Festival held at  West Chester University in Pennsylvania.

The play was performed at Brockport just before and after Thanksgiving.

 

When we struck the play we saved it knowing that we would use it again.

Before we took off some time for the Christmas break I had my crew make some changes to the set that I knew we had to do before the tour.

The stage in Pennsylvania was about the same  size as ours, but we would not be allowed to nail or screw into the floor.

Because of the limited set-up time at the festival we had to cut out the platforms used for the second level of the set.

Those platforms had been used to support the walls and now I had to find a way to put up the walls and make them free standing.

Setting up at the Festival

 

Also, just to make things more fun the stage we were going to use was raked, not too much but enough to mean that the walls might be leaning a bit.

The solution was simple as I used traditional stage braces that were bolted to 2'-0" x 2'-0" plywood squares and each loaded with over 100 pounds of stage weights.

After a four week break everyone came back to have rehearsals and practice put the set up and down and loading in a truck.

Because one of the actresses could not come on the tour another actor had to take over her part.

He did a fine job as did the rest the actors.

At the KCACTF

 

 

So with the truck loaded everyone took off for the 360 mile drive.

Although we did not have much snow to deal with it was very foggy most the  trip there.

There were a few issues but we all got there fine and the set went up without any trouble.

It turned out that they had sent me the wrong patch for the lighting board and all of the 212 lighting cues I had set back in Brockport did not look right.

After a few moments of panic I spent 20 minutes had patching the lighting board.

When that was done my lighting cues looked better.

I ran through as many as I could fixing levels as I went.

I did not have enough time to review every cue as much as I would like and when we ran the show there were a few cues that did not look right but I fixed them the best that I could on the fly.

Sound was a bit of a problem as the wireless mics that we had rented were not available and we had to others which were different and our sound guy had never used that type before.

But even with some issues we just kept moving toward curtain time.

More than two hours before the show theatre students from other schools attending the Festival starting lining up to see the play.

About 800 people filled the theatre and were eager to enjoy the play.

The festival audiences are always great as many already know they show, I even heard some people singing songs from the show as they came in.

 Well no matter problems we may have had, the show went off great, the cast did a fine job and the audience loved it and gave them a standing ovation at the end.

The next morning we came back to strike the set and we got all down and packed into the truck in  the hour and a half time that they gave us.

It was crazy at times and I was not sure how it would go, but I was so happy and relieved that it went well and the drive back home seemed to take only half as long as the drive there.

This was the forth festival we have gone to in the last ten years and it was by far the biggest cast and set that we ever brought.

 

 

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Some Christmas Thoughts . . . .

Just before Christmas I watched many movies with Christmas themes with my wife.

One of which was my favorite version of A Christmas Carol from 1951 with Alistair Sim.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044008/

 

 

It has been several years since I had watched the whole movie and even though it was the "colorized" version I still enjoyed.

Because of the movie I thought back to the several stage versions of the played that I have worked on.

Three years ago I wrote in my Blog about the first the production of A Christmas Carol that I worked on back in December of 1980.

I have also worked on three productions of it since I came to Brockport and will write more about them as I continue my Blog through the years.

In additions to the three traditional productions we also did a spoof version of A Christmas Carol.

Our department had planned to do the show every other year, any even though the show tends to make a lot of money it put too much of a strain on the technical staff.

The play calls for many costumes and sets.

Our original plan called for reusing the same set each year the same way that our local professional theatre does, but with different directors and new script each time it did not work out.

To really do the play right, special effects such as fog, snow and other visual effects are needed.

It got to be too much for us to do and we stopped producing A Christmas Carol.

I will write about these productions as they are coming up soon when I get back to my chronological review of my career.

Have a Happy New Year.

 

 

 

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