Sand Castles

I've been having weird dreams this past week about Candide. They usually occur right before I wake up. I'll be dreaming about a point in the play and I'll think, 'Oh, I should check that out next time I watch the production.'

Then, I wake up and realize that it's all over and I'll never see it again. It reminds me of the acceptance speech Robert Altman gave at the Oscars a few years ago when he won an honorary Oscar. He compared his style of movie making to building a sand castle with friends and then watching the tide come in and wash it away; all that's left are the memories of a great day. My only issue with that comparison is that with a movie, at least one has the finished product preserved for all time on celluloid.

But the comparison holds true for theater. Never again will I have the chance to watch Candide as it was staged at the Arden Theatre. All I have left are the memories of the production. The tide in the form of the strike crew has come in and washed away the set and costumes and lights and left the sand for another production to build on.

I feel that life is like that as well. We go through stages that sometimes evoke great emotions and then after we're through that stage, we are left with the memories. I visited a friend from People's Light earlier this week who has 2 young children. As I chatted with her and played with her toddler I was nostalgic for when my children were that young and we had all these years ahead of us. Now, my children are a bit older and we've built several sand castles together and they are starting to build their own as well.

I ache when I think back on some of my memories; I ache to relive the emotion that I felt at the time. The joy in my daughter riding a bicycle, the proud sadness of watching my son go to school, the laughter around a fire on a lazy Sunday afternoon. These moments form the path of our lives and in these moments and many others--those that fraught with deep emotions like a funeral or a wedding--that we form our true selves.

Theater, I think, gives us access to those emotions as well as many others; grief, anger, despair to name a few. For the short span of a play or musical, we connect and identify with the emotional lives of the characters and recognize in them something of our own lives. Often, it is through this recognition, that we discover new ideas and new ways of seeing ourselves and the world around us. And yet, after the final curtain, the tide washes the play out to sea and we have our memories.

So, while Candide has left with the tide, I will always remember it fondly because it has changed the way I see myself as a Stage Manager. I have a new found confidence; I no longer shrink with insecurity at what I don't know because I realize I have the knowledge within me to figure it out.

But now, it's time to build other sand castles.

Last Call

Candide closed on Sunday afternoon. Normally, when a show ends, actors say good-bye, promise to keep in touch and rush off to catch a train. But this show was different. When I came down from the booth for intermission, everyone had gathered in the green room. It was as if they needed to spend every precious moment left with each other. The farewells after the performance lasted longer than most. We felt closer than a normal cast because we had all been through and created something that was larger than any one of us had done before. It was one of those times when a group of people have been through something so emotional that only those involved in it can understand it. I'm not sure what it's called or if I'm explaining it correctly. The first rule of Candide is that no one talks about Candide. Or something like that.

When I hit the go button for the last few cues, my eyes welled up. I thought back to the start of rehearsals when I couldn't remember any one's name and to tech which felt as if it would never end. But it did end, and we had a show that ran like clockwork. I never thought it would become this good or this easy a production. Yet, it did and I was a part of it. I'm not a sentimental person but I was sad at leaving it all. I had seen this show through to the end with success--and no injuries.

No actors were harmed in the making of Candide.

So saying good-bye was bittersweet. I was excited to return to my normal life at home but sad to be leaving behind the challenge of each performance. The crew and I started our strike almost immediately after the curtain went down. Well, to be honest, the crew started the strike, I wandered around saying good-bye, not willing to begin the final closure of the show.

I had to though, because everyone had left and I had no one else to talk to. So I wiped down dressing room tables and took apart body mics. It was with mixed feelings of pride, joy and sadness that I turned in my keys and left my prompt book for the production manager; I was leaving behind the last tactile vestiges of my involvement with Candide. I'll be back of course, for The Seafarer at the end of the season, but this show had affected me in much the same way it affected the actors. I didn't know how to leave it. Yet, I did leave it, in the same way I left it every night after a performance by walking out the door of theater.

And then, like every night after a performance, I went to the bar.

Hey Buddy, You on Stage, You Got the Time?

Have you heard the phrase, "You can set a watch by his performance"? It's used in theater to describe an actor whose timing is so consistent night after night, right down to smallest hand gesture, that you could probably set a watch by his performance.


I first heard the phrase years ago on my first show as an Equity Stage Manager, Shaker Heights. One of the supporting actresses turned in such a performance. I didn't even have to watch her to know exactly what she would do next.


In my limited experience, I have found that it is mostly supporting characters that are so consistent. Once the actor has discovered the essence of the character, there are not many outside forces that alter that character's path.


Actors in leading roles tend to have more stage time and therefore more contact with the other characters in the play as well as the audience. In addition, leading roles have stronger emotional arcs as they are the ones driving the dramatic action of the play. Given that, it is easy to see how a performance might be influenced by the mood of the actor or the rest of the cast or even the audience.


For example, during Piano Lesson, Brian Anthony Wilson played Avery, a supporting character. You could definitely set a watch by his performance. During each show, I would watch for him to take off his hat and bend down to whisper in Berneice's ear. It happened the exact same way every night and it fascinated me, this precise timing. Having only worked with Mr. Wilson in this one play, I'm not sure if he would do the same thing if he had a leading role. Luckily, he's a great actor and well-loved by Philadelphia audiences so I hope I get the chance to find out. Now, another thought just occurred to me, Mr. Wilson also works in film which requires an actor to turn in the same performance take after take. I wonder if this informs his stage acting?


During Piano Lesson, I also worked with Kes Khemnu (who incidentally, is on stage right now at the Arden in Gee's Bend) who played Boy Willie, the lead in the show. I loved watching Mr. Khemnu for the opposite reason of Mr. Wilson. Mr. Khemnu truly played off the emotions of the rest of the cast as well as the audience. His performance, while consistently amazing, changed slightly (and sometimes more than slightly) with each show. It's not he altered his blocking drastically, it's that his gestures or the height of his emotional state changed as he reacted to his own mood or the mood of the cast or even the audience.


Anyway, I've been thinking about this while watching Candide because you could really set a watch by everyone in the cast; they are so exact night after night. Part of it has to do with the fact that it is a musical but also I think it has to do with the show itself. The show is huge, it's performed in the round with chalk and mops and boxes. In order to get through it without a misstep ("do I chalk here or move a box?") or without crashing into another cast member, the movements have to be precise. And even within little scenes where the actors have some wiggle room, there is very little deviation.

But don't get me wrong, it's not monotonous at all. It's great fun to watch, especially since the performances are so good and I marvel at how much energy each actor brings to the stage, show after show. I guess I'm getting a bit nostalgic since this is the last week of the show. It's rather like watching your favorite movie over and over again; only this movie won't be playing next week.

Feeling Groovy

There is something about the second week of a run that makes it feel like the show has finally left the starting gate. In the flurry leading up to opening, everyone--actors, crew, designers, and production staff--works furiously to put all the elements in place for the production. This was especially true for Candide. With the large number of props and costume pieces not to mention the mops, chalk, boxes and rigging, I felt like I was constantly playing catch-up. I told the crew numerous times, "We'll find our groove and it will run like clock work." But I didn't believe myself.

Then the show opened (to great reviews by the way), and we had our first five-show weekend (one on Friday night, and two each on Saturday and Sunday). It was as if the grown-ups had left the building and all hell broke loose. In the push to get the production to a performance level some smaller issues had been put on the back burner. And it wasn't until the weekend, when the entire production staff was enjoying a much needed break, that these little problems came to light. Unfortunately, on a production as big as Candide, the little problems add up. So I still felt behind this past weekend as I searched for shoe pads for an actress whose shoes had stretched too much or worked on a wobbly box for an actor who didn't feel safe. In addition, the crew and I had to work out how to do laundry on two show days and what to do about lamps that suddenly weren't working among other things.

And then we had a day off. On Tuesday evening, I arrived at the theater and the crew and I started set-up. We were done, without glitches, in under an hour. The actors arrived fresh from an almost 48 hour break and settled in as if Candide had been open for over a month. The production staff at the Arden, like little elves in the night, had fixed all the little problems that had cropped up over the weekend.

The shows this week have been fantastic. The actors, secure now in the knowledge not only of their characters but in also how the costume changes, props, and box moves work, are discovering new aspects to the myriad of characters they play. There are fumbles of course--a missed line, wrong notes in a song, and little maintenance things--sewing buttons, finding wig pins. But this show that I thought was too big for me to handle (a few times I thought I'd be discovered as a fraud and 'hung from the highest gibbet') has become manageable. It's almost, dare I say it, easy.

I guess it was all a matter of finding the right groove.

Out of the Box

Yesterday, or was it the day before? Even though we've opened Candide, time is still very fluid. I think it's because I don't get home from an evening show until midnight or 1 am and then I have to get up at 7:30 am to get my kids to school. Yes, I know tons of parents who stay up even later and still have hugely productive days. Not me, I've always been one who needs sleep.


Anyway, yesterday, I think, I wrote about some of the challenges of tech week including mops, chalk, fly cues, light cues, etc. Another challenge that presented itself to us right from the start of rehearsals was boxes. Nestled around the stage in four different nooks are eight boxes--4 cubes and 4 rectangles (or double-wides as we call them) all exactly alike. With these boxes the actors create a classroom, a canoe, a gondola, Venice, a galley ship, an inn and more. From these boxes, the actors pull many of the props and costumes used during the production.


It sounds easy but then you realize that the actors are constantly moving boxes from one part of the stage to another. From the very first rehearsal my assistant, Alec Ferrell, and I had to track the movement of every single box in order to know into which box to place props that might not be used until the end of the act. For example, a box sits at the top of the ramp at the end of act one. Out of that box comes a rag and some clothing. But how did that box get from the floor of the theater to the top of the ramp? We tracked boxes using letters. Every box had a letter and every time it moved onstage, I would draw a picture showing the placement of every box (and what props were in each box). It sounds tedious but it came in handy when we moved to the stage.


A lot can happen when the cast moves onto the set. Blocking (the movement of the actor on the stage, which is recorded by the stage manager in the prompt book) changes frequently and with this show, so did the box movements. Props that were placed in box F say, had to be moved to box D because box F was no longer being used. It became even more complicated as box F was used for some stuff at the top of the show but then box D took over. Confusing? Yeah, tell me about it.


Needless to say, I became obsessed with boxes. As we worked slowly through the show it was easy to place the correct box in the correct position for the upcoming scene. But where did that box come from? Had we tracked its progress so that when we ran the show it would be in the right position?


The actors also had to deal with the boxes since they were the ones moving them. As we would set up for a certain scene, I would inevitably hear, "There's supposed to be a box here that isn't here." And I'd go for my notes tracking which box indeed sat there for that scene. One actor told me he has 14 box moves before his character enters.


We have everything working smoothly now mainly because Alec and I don't let anyone else on the crew touch the boxes as we set up. I just hope the understudies have been tracking box movements as well as character blocking because on Candide, there is no thinking outside of the box. See, I really do need to get more sleep.

What a Long Strange Tech it Was

For the past two weeks, I feel as if I have done nothing but live, eat, and breath Candide. It truly is one of the most grueling productions I have worked on. Terry Nolen, the Artistic Director of the Arden and the director of the production has said that this is the hardest of all possible musicals. And on top of it, we're doing it in the round and with chalk.

Yes, chalk...the actors write all over the set with chalk which means cleaning up the chalk. So the actors also mop up the stage. Much of tech week was spent working out what type of mops we should use and how damp the mops should be. I now know more about mops than I ever thought I wanted to.

But tech week wasn't just about mops, we also had to add in the fly cues, the sound cues, the costumes, the props and the light cues--all 400 of of them. It was a slow and tedious process but it had to be that way to ensure not only artistry but safety as well.

During the week of tech, actors are allowed to rehearse for 10 hours out of 12 on three consecutive days. This is in accordance with Actor's Equity Association (the union for stage actors and stage managers). Those three days spent in the darkened room of the theater can make one a bit loopy. I forgot what day it was and couldn't remember if I lived at the Arden and visited my home or if I was visiting the Arden.

The hours spent paid off though and the production is amazing. The team of designers, directors, orchestra members, cast and crew deserve a standing ovation for the feat they have pulled off while keeping their tempers under control. I don't even have any stories about people losing it and screaming.

At the opening last night, we said good-bye to many of the designers and directors who are off to other projects. We've left them at this station but the rest of us, the cast, orchestra, crew and I are going to chug on toward closing.

Theater as High School

Several years ago I went to the Lake Placid Film Festival and saw a short film entitled Dodgeball. No, not the Ben Stiller Dodgeball. In this short film, the characters worked in an office and each character was a caricature of a high school type--the jocks, the pretty girls, the nerds, the pot heads, you name it. Every afternoon, the manager had the office workers play dodgeball against each other; the ultimate in humiliation (except for the jocks of course). Anyway, the friend I attended the festival with, laughed hysterically at the film, commenting that it was just like her office. I didn't see it as quite that funny. I would never have thought that theater productions could be compared to high school cliques...until today.

Another rehearsal for Candide and we spent most of the time on music and dance. While the actors learned the music, the stage managers had very little to do. Oh, we made lists, but even that has it's limits. So we chatted with Jackie Goldfinger, the dramaturg--what's a dramaturg you say? Well, that's another post, altogether--who mentioned that you could, actually, make connections between production personnel and the different high school personalities. So for what it's worth, here's how we made the comparisons:

• The Actors are the cool crowd
• The Crew members are the pot heads (I didn't say it)
• The Dramaturg is the nerd (her words because she's always looking things up)
• The Production People (Production Manager, Costume Shop Manager, Props Master, Technical Director) are those "ivy leaguers." You know, the kids who seem to be able to do everything and easily float between the different cliques. The ones who have it made.
• The director is, of course, that great teacher that everyone wants to impress.

As for Stage Managers, well, we're the Assistant Principal. Remember that guy? He was always enforcing the rules and yelling at you for breaking them:

You're late! No smoking at school! Aren't you supposed to be in class now?

Except we say:

You're late! No smoking in costume! Aren't you supposed to be on stage now?

So I'm wondering how we'd all do in dodgeball?

Procrastination is Making Me Wait

I went down to the Arden the other day to say hi, get the groundplans for Candide and chit-chat. Starting a show, since I don't do them on a regular basis, is like getting into the water for me. It takes me about 20 minutes to get into the pool. I walk in slowly getting used to it. The rest of my family jumps right in and can't understand why I take so long. Well, it's the same thing for a show; I need time to ruminate about it before I do anything. Unfortunately, this show doesn't allow a lot of leeway in the "ruminate" department.


I popped into the production, office, saw the model of the set, and read the plans for the trap doors, the falling snow and the orchestra. And then I panicked.


"Why did I say yes to this show?" I asked Courtney Riggar, the Production Manager.


She just laughed but I was serious. I've never done a show this big. It's like Broadway without the pay.

• 20 in the cast
• An orchestra
• Body Mics
• Snow falling from the rafters
• 4 follow spots
• Mops popping up out of the floor
• Things that go bump in the night

Well, perhaps not bump in the night but I can't be sure; I didn't actually get through all the special effects.


The Assistant Production Manager, Jessi West, said I'd kick this show in the ass. Well, we'll see after it's all said and done.


So now, I'm sitting here drinking wine and instead of updating contact sheets, and pouring over scene breakdowns, I'm just panicking. I'm on the third step of the pool and it's time to just jump in.


Sink or swim, there is no getting out of the pool now.

Let's Get This Party Started

As a French major in a previous life (and by that I mean before husband and kids), I studied pre-revolutionary France. With the court ensconced at Versailles, the Parisian aristocrats had run of the city. Those in the know met at Salons where they discussed everything from politics to art to the latest gossip. I am fascinated by the idea of a group of people getting together to discuss the arts. I find that happens a lot when I stage manage a production. Artists gather on their breaks to discuss the state of theater, the latest plays, new projects and how to make a living--especially when one has kids. A question, I most often receive when I work on a show is, "You have two kids? How do you do it all?" I honestly can't say I know except that I have an understanding husband who makes an awesome cosmopolitan.

Interestingly enough, my next theater project will be at the Arden Theatre Philadelphia this Fall where I will stage manage a production of Candide. Voltaire wrote Candide in 1759 to satirize the popular optimism movement of the time. Voltaire, the pen name of Francois Arouet, was very popular in the salons of his day because of his wit and imagination.

This past Spring, I did my first show at the Arden, The Piano Lesson by August Wilson. It was such a great experience that I am looking forward to this next project. As an added bonus, the rehearsals start in August and this is the first summer in two years that my children are not in camp. The days can get long.


My family and I are new to the Philly area. We moved here two years ago because I thought I wanted a full-time, day job in Theater. Not so much. I did write an essay published in the Philadelphia Inquirer about our move. It was published in June of 2007, I'm having trouble finding the link to it. A quick update on our situation in case I do get the link to it. We no longer live on the Main Line, we've bought a house in Abington Township. My full-time job at the time of the article was with People's Light and Theatre Company, another excellent theater located in Malvern, PA. But I missed stage managing and Malvern is too long of a haul from Abington. Luckily, as I decided to leave People's Light, the Arden was hiring stage managers so it worked out perfectly.


And here's another coincidence, the Arden periodically hosts salons that gather artists together to discuss, you guessed it, theater.

See it all comes full circle.