Process and Obsolescence

I wanted to expand on what Paul had said about previews, mostly because he has been a little modest about how unusual their process of working on an adaptation is. This was my first project with Lifeline, so I was not familiar with their process, which is unique to their mission to present adapted works of literature on stage. A few weeks ago, I got to sit in on an in depth discussion of the script with Paul, the artistic director, stage manager and ensemble members.

You should understand that many of these ensemble members are double or triple threats, they are actors, directors and adaptors in their own right and they have a carefully honed ear for storytelling and how it translates on stage. We sat there for a couple of hours, with a couple of bottles of wine and worked through everyone’s notes on the script after seeing it on stage. These were very detailed thoughts or notes about the script, how things translated to the stage and looking for places where the storytelling hit bumps. I was impressed both with the thoughtfulness of the comments and the kindness with which these comments were delivered. It was clear that the priority was making sure that a good story made it to stage and didn’t get muddled in the process.

Last week, I got to watch previews with the design team and more ensemble members all taking notes and comments on each run through of the play. In addition to all of these, Paul also got comment cards from the audience as part of the preview process. Again, I should explain that these were pretty enthusiastic audience members; some standing in the lobby writing notes well after most of the audience had left. The adaptor, Rob, then made more rewrites, Paul, the cast and the design team re-teched certain scenes and there will be more previews this week.

Admittedly that is a lot of cooks in the kitchen (to start mixing metaphors) but, remarkably, there seemed to be no bumps or crashes.

I am looking forward to watching the play again this week, even having seen the play in various forms many times. When you get to see theater again and again you get to see subtle changes in the performances and big changes as technical or design elements change.

At the same time, I am starting to get a little wistful and sad. This is the point at which my role (a shadowy, vague thing to begin with) in the process starts to end. A dramaturg is always a bit of an outsider, a benevolent observer, an information gatherer, a bit of an interferer, a scribbler and but always a fond well-wisher. At certain point, I stop giving feedback and just watch the creature that is a play as it lives, moves, and has its being.

Previews

We have been through three incredible previews thus far. Previews are full runs of the show with lights and sound and all tech running as a performance with paying audiences who are invited to give feedback via paper surveys in their programs.  It gives me a chance as director to sit in the back of the theatre and watch the actors juggle their many roles in front of a large audience (about 300 people saw the show this weekend) and to gauge how our show might be improved.  


Clearly the show is working, the audiences are enthusiastic, but with consultation with my theatre collective, the Lifeline Theatre Ensemble, and Rob as adaptor, we have made some significant cuts and re-writes and are re-staging some elements this week, tightening choreography and fights, and making some of the technical elements clearer. 


Our Ensemble is fortunate enough to own our performance space - a luxury not common in Chicago Non-Equity theatre.  Since we are constantly producing world premiere adaptations, we have adopted this preview process with a full week of rehearsal between previews and opening for just this purpose - honing and enhancing our work with the benefit of audience experience and thoughtful feedback. 


Here are some of the promotional pictures - are you getting excited? We sure are!

Getting close!

Today, the Chicago Tribune's daily commuter publication RedEye featured an interview with adaptor Rob Kauzlaric (also posted on the entertainment guide website, Metromix). 


This is a welcome energy boost coming in the middle of a grueling week! Our actors and designers have been working overtime to complete all the challenging little details we need to confront to utilize everyone's contributions to telling the story of Neverwhere.  We started adding costumes last night, and just as actors starting rehearsal often have questions about their characters, are reading words off a page for the first time and don't know which way to enter or exit the stage area, our costumer is at the fledgling point in her process, handing out pieces built from scratch in her home to the live actors and seeing them move in them for the first time. She has brought a wall of 30 to 40 costumes, many of them rigged for lightning fast quick changes for the cast of nine to switch into and out of as many of them play multiple characters. Our props are coming in for the first time too and must be evaluated for their effectiveness and ease of use so as to support the actor's work and not hinder it.  


Last night we worked for the first time with a mini-projector that we had hoped to incorporate into Lord Portico's Journal. Alas we discovered that the controls were too complicated for use in the scene and had to move on to plan B.  It's time for that - moving on to plans B and C and D for moments where we are relying on a variety of theatrical stagecraft to get the story telling elements of this sprawling fantasy feeling just right. So sometimes you have to - as Stephen King puts it in his memoir On Writing - kill your darlings. How many darlings will be killed before May 10th? Hard to tell, though everything seems to be able to be kept for now, you just have to stay flexible and keep moving on. Just another way the creative process mirrors the developmental one.

Dress rehearsal

Sunday night I had the opportunity to watch another run through of Neverwhere. I have to confess this is the fun part. Every time I pop into the theater there some cool new feature to the set or suddenly there is music or an actor enters in a costume piece I have never seen before,oh and the puppets are really spiffy. This week there will be preview performances with audiences.

Tonight, I stopped by the theater to start installing the messy collage that will hold some dramaturgy and production photos as well as maps of London, the tube, quotations, a variety of other images. It may be the only time I have looked at a lobby display and said I think it needs more rats and pigeons.

At this point I don't know that I have much more to add other than the wonder and excitement I feel at the close of a process like this. I look forward to watching it again and seeing what other new discoveries are waiting.

Dry Tech

I'm currently sitting in the theatre while Assistant Sound Designer Adam Hubbell gets his computer plugged into the sound system from the audience seating. Charlie Alves has his projector set up. Kevin Gawley just told me that 80 - 85% of the lighting fixtures are ready. We're hunkering down for Dry Tech.

Why "Dry"? We are essentially doing a run of the show without actors and without lines, hitting every moment of light, sound and projection transition before we add actors tomorrow night and start Tech rehearsals. It is a Dry Run.

We're getting started almost an hour late - these things happen of course - and it will probably be a late night. But the time we spend on this stuff now will save the actor's from too much sitting around and expedite our process to come.

The Floating Market Benefit

Hello all!

Monday evening our theatre company had a benefit themed around the Floating Markets of Neverwhere and don't just take my word for it, the event was an incredible success.  Bleeding Cool contributor Greg Baldino was there and wrote up a cool piece about the event here.  And photographer Lisa Marie Ogle has put some pics up on her Flickr page. I'm the guy in the white tux jacket. :P

Old Bailey: "London shall have all its ancient rights"

The quote above is one of the inscriptions in the Old Bailey the name given to the criminal courts in London and named for the street on which it stands. It is close to Newgate prison.

Old Bailey also makes a cameo in a children’s rhyme, “Oranges and Lemons.” Like many old rhymes there seem to be many variations. I have included one below. When will you pay me feels appropriate for Old Bailey in Neverwhere, although I have also heard the perhaps apocryphal story that it refers to the bells of Old Bailey ringing and being used as a signal for hangings at Newgate prison which lends a darker tone to the concept of “being paid”. Old Bailey is linked closely both to death and to the obscure bartering system that governs London below.

"Oranges and Lemons" say the bells of St. Clements.
"You owe me five farthings" say the bells of St. Martins.
"When will you pay me" say the bells of Old Bailey.
"When I grow rich" say the bells of Shoreditch.
"When will that be" say the bells of Stepney.
"I do not know" says the great Bell of Bow.

Old Bailey is also the court in A Tale of Two Cities. Old Bailey in Neverwhere is certainly a Dickensian creation. Unlike the other denizens of London Below he is a self-proclaimed “roof-man” and a costermonger branching out in his business from birds to information. Like a lot of characters in Dickens he is likeable but one suspects he is often be on the wrong side of the law if the law is anything he stops to consider. He occupies the other neglected spaces of London - the rooftops.

In looking for images of the Old Bailey I stumbled across this website, which is part of an effort to put cases from the Old Bailey between 1647-1913 on line. It is not particularly relevant to Neverwhere but it was so interesting I felt I should add the link.