Sunday, April 10, 2011

Getting to Real: Rehearsal Check and Put-In

I just completed the first day of a load-in for Machinal, which opens in about 10 days. For a designer, the load-in or put-in is nerve-wracking. It's very demanding and the kick-off of the pressure period. On a given day and time, people start placing scenery on the stage. Your choices become commitments at that point, and reality begins to cut in. That really is what it is going to look like.

It can be very gratifying, but it's quite hard work and a long day. Whether you personally do any heavy lifting, it is busy with planning, consulting, organizing, directing. Protecting. You are indebted to an efficient and capable technical director and stage manager, but many choices are made in the spaces between the drawings and reality. Three inches more here. Reinforce there. Mask into this mark.

The designer usually sees at least a couple of rehearsals of a few parts of the play. The rehearsals one gets to watch only approximate the eventual performance. So what's the point? I always learn important things I didn't know were happening. I get a clearer perspective on the important moments and how they must play.

Rehearsals usually are in a different space where the setting only can be suggested. The dimensions are taped out if possible, but it's all two-dimensional. The actors wander through the space, crossing wall lines and levels, working with miss-sized furniture placed willy-nilly, often only vaguely related to the ground plan. Watching a rehearsal challenges your powers of visualization, but it's important to do if you can. I find that the play in my head is quite different from the play with the actors, no matter how much conversation I've had with the director.


It's also good politics. The director has a chance to point out problems. The director and performers ask questions and point out things they can't make work well. I usually find they aren't using things they didn't know they had, and I discover needs I didn't provide for. It's in a rehearsal that I can understand the implications of the director's casting. And it's in the rehearsal that those ideas we spoke of in design conferences take on a reality full of implications.

The actors also are aware of an observer. It's a bit of an intrusion on their private party, so they tend to game up a little. It's good for them, too.

But the put-in is the reality check, especially when much must be built in place. Sure, I worked with a model and a sketch, but is this what I really expected? My goodness, that platform is high up there. Damn, that area is going to be cramped. Will that castered platform really work the way I imagined? Is that color really going to work? Is that pattern too big for the space and audience distance? Is the amount of that color going to overwhelm everything else? Does this have the richness and finish that I want my work to have? Is it interesting? When the audience sees this will they feel like something exciting is going to happen? Will this set them up properly to receive the play? Will the quality of the design and level of finish tell them that they can relax because they won't have to forgive anything?

Finally, the put-in also is an exciting exercise, because it all comes together at once in a short period of time. It is wonderfully validating. The drawing becomes real and tangible. You dreamed it, thought it, planned it, drew it, and . . . here it is! You created a world.

Scenemaker
April 10, 2011

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