The Man in the Newspaper Hat

Big Leap!

I guess I went AWOL with my blogging as tech week approached, but now not only this has passed. We have actually opened The Man in the Newspaper Hat, lived thru the first weekend of shows, and have garnered a first review. How’s that for acceleration?!

Tech week drama
No matter how many productions I’ve helmed or been otherwise involved in, there always comes that inevitable moment when you think “It’s NEVER gonna work!!!”

Of course, after enough years, I do know that this moment will come, and I think I’m ready for it. I think I know kinda when it’s gonna occur. It could be the very first run-thru, the first stumble-thru at tech, the cue-to-cue, the first dress or even as late as the last dress, but it will be one of those. My estimate is based on the most recent experience, and I treat it like Thanksgiving or Xmas. It’s a fixed thing, I can prepare, I am ready.

But no, that’s NOT how it works. It’s not like Xmas at all, but – to stay in that skewed metaphor, rather like Easter. It’s a very movable feast. And unlike Easter, which you theoretically could calculate and not just rely on this year’s calendar to tell you, the meltdown rehearsal will ALWAYS trip you up. When it happens, I’m never ready.

This time it was actually a middle-of-the-road run with tech, but on the lighter side, no real new deals, when suddenly large chunks of line knowledge went completely kahooey. Aside from other technical, pragmatic issues of course. But from a state of affairs of being 85% there, the percentage dropped into the 60s. The beauty of this particular issue is, that as director you can do f… all about it. Except of course give the note “Learn your lines!” Really? Like the actors hadn’t noticed? And weren’t just as cross as you are?

Let me just say, I wasn’t exactly graceful, but to my excuse I have to add that my sound designer’s computer had just had its own meltdown and threatened to lose our complete soundscape just 48hrs. before opening. Well, it was recouped, but Nat had to pull two all-nighters to retrieve the files and to finish the work. No laughing matter.

Opening.
Our dress rehearsal, one evening later, left me much relieved. I decided to keep it as an invited dress, as the cast had asked for audience reactions, and mine weren’t exactly reliable data as per how an uninitiated viewer might respond. Things were back on the up-and-up, Nat managed to bring in 80% of a soundscape, the lines made a reappearance, and a lot of things worked. Thank God not everything, that would have freaked me out all over again.

Then Thursday night, we open. Good show, the audience likes it. Of course everyone is still thinking way too hard about the next thing, it’s very studied, but I do know that only repeated performances will settle that. I remember the second cast’s lead in Wicked stating famously that for the first month of her run she wouldn’t be too harsh on herself, as she still needed to get the flow of things. Alas, we don’t have nearly that much time. We only have 14 performances, yet on the other hand, The Man is not a musical.

Hm, there’s a thought…

After the first weekend
Ok, we have our first review, and it’s positive. That’s good, and honestly, I don’t care that the lady never mentions my name. She calls the director “expert” and “intelligent”, likes the actors and our green set. Misha Berson from the Seattle Times gives us wonderful placement in an article about theater to see that’s not holiday-themed.

Now the struggle for audiences begin. Always hard, we continue to be out there with our cards, posters, and offer discounts. On the other side there’s rest. Yes, a bit of rest, a bit of relief from the pressure, waiting for Turkeyday to descend upon us with a big Triptophane cloud. Then on Friday we meet for a run-thru and gear up for a shortened weekend schedule of The Man.

“What thou lovest well remains,

The rest is dross.

What thou lovest well shall not be reft from thee

What thou lovest well is thy true heritage.”

E.Pound

PS: The review: http://capitolhilltimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=59&SubSectionID=360&ArticleID=29287&TM=82408.92

Week 3 – first hilltop view
Somehow there’s comfort to be found in the fact if you’ve gotten thru your play once on its feet. Still pretty hobbly, and lots of stuff to be sorted, but it’s like the first time you’ve cut thru the jungle with your machete. I try not to do it too quickly, lest you make a wrong path, but there’s still a moment of relief once it’s done.

With “wrong” I mean a solution that “works”, but hasn’t fermented at all, is too easy, comfortable all around. Sometimes it’s a good thing, when something doesn’t fit right away, as it means that new paths are being created. We all have our comfort zones, directors and actors alike. And it’s a challenge for us all to recognize them and then move past that. It’s not pleasant, rather what a friend called AFGO – another fucking growth opportunity. But it’s what makes things worthwhile.

Publicity shoot
We also had our publicity shooting this week. Karen, our costumer, did her best to get a first take on our costumes ready for that night, and we ran two scenes for Randy’s friend Jim, the photographer. Since one producer told me I should absolutely make sure that there were pictures also of the actors with me the “in charge” director and producer, to build my brand, I put my self into a green top, popped in my contacts and added some lipstick. Then I told the photographer that I’d need something like that too. “Ah, the director shot!” Randy guffawed. Like I didn’t feel stupid enough already…

Anyhoo, I put on my stiff upper lip, and said yes, kinda, and Jim was nice enough to indulge me. Now here’s the rub. I’m not terribly photogenic at the best of times, and it takes about a zillion shots of me, and a lot of “feel good” time to get me to a picture that is worth something. That evening wasn’t it. However, while I was standing next to David and Lisa, awkwardly clutching my notepad, deciding where to focus, David started talking to me. “I know this is really difficult, but let me ask you this…” and talked to me about something completely different. It worked. Out of the bunch there is one picture that I can really use for that particular purpose. I was very moved at the empathy. Most people don’t readily tap into the fact that I’m actually a bit squeamish when it comes to attention of that ilk. Yes, I can stand in front of a crowd and talk – dealing with choruses will teach you that – but when it comes to myself, I find that really hard. So, thank you, David. Now back to your narcissistic Ezra Pound persona!

Week 2 – the tunnel.
There always inevitably comes the phase in the rehearsal period, sometime sooner, sometime later, when the first flush is gone. The phase of instant comprehension is no longer instant, the head now gets in the way of first instinct, as we all try to comprehend more deeply what is going on with these people, Ezra and Elizabeth. And what it is they want at any given moment. Or what they resist, or what their mood is on this particular visit, and why Ezra would like to talk to “Liz Bish” about a dream but not about his writing. And what happens to a writer when he cannot write? And why is lineage so damn important to poets? Hayley, for instance, really doesn’t like Rimbaud, but has a thing for Blaise Cendrars. Well, Elizabeth Bishop had a thing for Pound long after it was cool to have a thing for him at Vassar. She even bought a clavichord to be more… musical.

From Hayley I also know that poets are not at all polite about what they think about poets they’ve decided they don’t like. Poets sure are not lyrical, but whenever I confess that I’m on my third glass of something fermented, Hayley will tell me: “Finally you drink like a poet!”

So has Bishop stopped drinking for a while, that when one visit to Pound is particularly ornery, she comes home and unearths the bottle behind the books in her bookcase?

“No.” Lisa says adamantly. The way she sees her Bishop, she hasn’t stop drinking.

Ok then. While some things become more labored – and I know it’s a necessary phase, I suppose I become more labored as well - the upside is that the actors slip more and more into a deeper knowledge of how their characters operate, like slowly slipping into a jacket. Taking your time, as the material is so wonderful and the fit so intricate.

“This does feel like doing Shakespeare.” Lisa said once, while we were working on a monologue. And I assume Hayley wouldn’t object, as she has Pound say that Shakespeare was “one of the few good English poets, there’s fuck all after that.”

Lineage?
Do directors have lineage? Certainly, if they’ve come up through a straight line of assisting one big guy/gal in the business. In the German theatre world I can tell if someone’s been a Neuenfels assistant, or Konwitschny’s, or Ruth Berghaus’ (though those get on a bit), and it usually annoys me, as the original is so much more powerful. Since that was not my passage, I guess I’m a jumble of influences. Rather than following one director from job to job, I was assistant director at a theatre, the Opera of Frankfurt, and it was the directors that came and went. So I got to work with quite a grab bag of styles, different ways of working, of communicating, and since I’d graduated by then, I didn’t latch on to a mentor. I picked and chose what inspired me. Some of the directors I admired most I could take hardly anything, because what they did was so different to my way of thinking. Wittgenstein wrote once that one’s philosophy depended on one’s character, and I do strongly believe, as a director you can’t really help the way you direct. Sure, you can increase your knowledge, add to your technique, improve your communication skills and bag of tricks, along the way hopefully getting rid of what REALLY doesn’t work, but in the end - you are how you direct. There’s humility in that. But also pride. For the reverse is also true. I can’t do what they do, and they can’t do what I do. On a good day, that’s real comfort.

 Space A to B and Back Again
When I was planning rehearsals, a fairly academic endeavor happening weeks before the actual start of anything, I insisted on having regular slots at our performance space, the Odd Duck studio, even though the rental was the most expensive of any of the other spaces and parking pretty awful.  Stone Soup Theatre, our main other space, is free to us and parking is free AND easy. The director in me had to wrestle the money-conscious producer into the ground, all the while shouting:IT’S ARTISTICALLY ESSENTIAL TO BE IN THE REAL SPACE, MORON!!! Not only for a reality check before tech, lest you have an experience like: “Oh, what looked awesome at Stone Soup really doesn’t work at all at Odd Duck, and let’s restage an entire scene now three days before opening!” Even more important, the “real” performance space will inspire you to try site-specific things you wouldn’t thought of at the rehearsal space. And it’s worth exploring because, well, you’ll actually be DOING it all there.

Now that I’ve tested this theory, after working at SS for two days and then taking Scene 1 and 2 to OD, I can attest that, yes, it’s worth every penny. However close your rehearsal space is to the real thing, it’s just not the same, and you do, do, do need that real experience. Nevermind that we’d just spent two days at OD, reading the script, sitting down. Memory is treacherous that way.

OD is arguably even colder than SS, and during the last run of Scene 2 I thought my teeth were louder than the actors. SS is also a generous space to be in, as their work lights are brighter, clearer, and therefore more conducive to making what is happening look better. The work lights at OD are murky and flat against black. It’s very tiring, but has one real advantage: Boy, does it not flatter! If something kinda works in that light, chances are it’s pretty damn good.

“Wer nichts sieht, hört auch nichts.“ (“Who doesn’t see, doesn’t hear either“) Says my friend and set designer Verena in Frankfurt, who had me back up her insistence, when we were rehearsing Manfred Trojahn’s opera Enrico, to drape the rehearsal sets (yup, the good ole days) in white instead of leaving them black. She knew the conductor would stop giving me a hard time about the singers being too far upstage. It worked. Incredible, how our senses do not operate in isolation but are connected. And since for most of us vision is primary, what we see is what we hear, what we feel. In this case, OD’s work lights are fine with me, I shouldn’t be flattered.

Shopping!
On Thursday set designer Shimon and I went to scout for paper, furniture, recording equipment, typewriters, globes. We found the paper roll that was right, but Deluxe Junk“I didn’t think I’d leave you doing that!” he said with a note of surprise. Disdain? No, but I guess he thought I was more high-brow than CD rummaging. Ah, another illusion shot! was closed. The hardest seems to be – surprise, surprise – the portable recording equipment from the 1940s. Since Shimon really wants to paint the stage – grayish white for Pound’s space, another color for Bishop’s space, and we’ll have to return the space back to black, that already puts a goodly dent into our budget. Then the calligraphy wall will be an expense, and it seems to me that the furniture will have to be very inexpensive indeed. Which is fine, as the set-up of Pound’s space will be painted anyway, so it don’t have to be pretty to begin with. Shimon left me at one of the vintage stores rifling thru 2$ CDs for the car, as I find it hard to deal with the ongoing radio chatter on my commute to and from Bellevue.

Well, here’s the selection I made off with: Liz Phair, Gregorian chants, Suzanne Vega, the Cranberries, Mozart symphonies 40&41, Stevie Nicks. I’ve yet to listen to the Gregorian chants, but I thought I could use them as meditation music, as an antidote to road rage, as a source for music for future projects, to drown out Fox News… it made me think of my mother returning from the Thrift store: “Look what I got! I have no idea what it is, but it was only 3 francs!”