Week Four: Getting Technical

I will never cease to marvel at the way in which British actors & production teams pull together to put shows on in about a third of the time of most other countries. We're not short of time as such here in Keswick at TBTL, it's just that we're putting three plays on one after the other in super-quick succession to make the most of the huge summer audiences that turn up here every year. Am I repeating myself? I blame this crazy schedule!
To explain more fully: the more 'usual' schedule on a theatre job ( in my illustrious career anyway) is four weeks' rehearsing just the  one play, one week spent doing three days' technical rehearsal on that play, then a couple of previews  before  opening to the press & paying public. That can feel arduous enough if the play is very long or the writing is new & challenging,  or the show is hugely technical. For example, I played Wendy in a production of Peter Pan at Birmingham Rep that involved good old-fashioned flying operated by big beefy guys working ropes in the wings, as well as lots of stage kit that moved up and down and back & forth to transform from London to Never-Never Land. So the technical rehearsal- which is not just for the actors to get the hang of special props, trap doors, being flown in a harness, lighting & sound cues etc, but also for all the specialist crew who are operating all of the above and especially for the stage manager on the book. This person oversees & runs the show every night using a big folder which holds the script all annotated with cues for all changes. So, a pretty important slot in the diary of a show... In our Peter Pan, there were loads of special effects operated by the clever folk dressed in black backstage as well as enormous trucks on stage- one holding Hook's pirate ship- wheeled by the assembled actors all in costume & in character. I'm talking about things the size & weight of a small bus. In the dark. Toward the audience. Quite important to know when to stop that sort of thing & how to operate the brakes.. Anyway, the tech rehearsal made it as far as the beginning of the first flying sequence ( ie the first 20 minutes of the entire show), when the nursery falls away & Peter, Wendy, John & their baby brother fly up over the skyline of London and on to Peter's world. We had the  alloted three days  and those three days were spent moving at a snail's pace to get as far as this first massive scene change. So we opened to a full house of paying customers having not actually 'done 'most of the show.  This happens more than you'd think in a business that is always trying to innovate. Needless to say, there were a few brown-trouser moments but no-one got (seriously) hurt and amazingly the show flowed seemlessly from beginning to end.
And thus we have the reputation across the world of being able to put brilliant shows on in a frighteningly short space of time. We still have a 'luxurious' couple of weeks before we enter our tech world..
This week after three excellent days work on Bedroom Farce, where we all got the opportunity to look more closely at what our characters get up to and to find lots of new colour & depth to scenes ( sorry if this language is all a bit 'luvvie', but I can't think of better ways to describe this process), I  sat in on the next day's rehearsal for Act 1 of Dry Rot. Apart from feeling slightly odd, having been allocated a day off, I was knocked out  by the amount of work people had done clearly on their own and if possible with one another to take the play on to another level, despite all working on other plays the rest of the time. Somehow, lines were coming more easily & relationships growing between characters that start to show the glimmer of a fantastic finished story, somewhere off in the distance! I am not getting paid to rave about all this btw, for those too cynical to believe in this magic of live theatre and this theatre in Keswick in particular. I keep reminding myself that all these people were strangers to me a month ago. I'd gladly swear on anything important to you dear reader as to the caliber of this motley crew and the things that can be achieved when that crew is carefully chosen by people who know what they're doing. Audiences enjoy seeing the same actors play wildly different parts from play to play and here they know that they have people who come from across the UK and Keswick to see three or more shows while they spend a few days enjoying the Lakes. This is why rep works. Oh, and we're cheaper than those there off-the-telly celebrities..