Putting It Together

 

Slowly the show is starting to take shape. We’ve staged the entire first act, and then did a stumble through. Unlike most past shows, where we blocked the show in sequence, for this show we jumped around scenes depending on characters. So it was cool to finally start to see the arch of the first act emerge, as we put all the pieces together. 

It was weird from a stage management perspective to be playing catch up. I had to miss two major rehearsals due to the United State Institute of Theatre Technology (USITT) conference, so the run through was the first time I was seeing some of the big group dance numbers. Three of the big dance numbers (Disco Inferno, Night Fever, You Should be Dancing) had internal cuts to the music, so it was a challenge to properly collate my prompt script, making sure the pages synched up to the action onstage. One page of music may only last about half a minute of stage time, so it’s easy to get behind fast when you are trying to write down the spacing of the actors, and you flip to the next page while the actors are actually two pages in front of you. I’ve found stage management relies heavily on an individual’s ability to adapt, and to roll with the punches. 

We’ve also started doing simultaneous rehearsals with staging in the Dance Studio and choreo review in the John Patrick Theatre. This resulted in a humorous crossover with the other show that BW is currently working on, Dark of the Moon. They are rehearsing in the Allman, which is the blackbox across the hall for the JPT. It’s a heavy show about the romance between John, a witch boy, and Barbera Allen, the town girl he falls in love with. In the second act he gets her pregnant, and she gives birth to a witch baby. The townsfolk view the child as demonic and in zealous ferver burn the baby. While they were rehearsing the witch baby burning scene, they could hear “Burn baby burn… disco inferno…” coming across the hall. I’ve been told they all froze in a silent “what the…f?” moment before continuing with the scene.Very humorous and yet very disturbing.