Tech week can be a bitter sweet portion of the production process. Many associate it with impending disaster and late stressful nights. I've been fairly lucky with my tech weeks, and this one is no exception, though not without it's hiccups. We only have our dress rehearsal this evening and then we will have survived the infamous tech week.
Andrea as "Laura" with her favourite piece
from her menagerie.
Some of the highlights of the tech week for Glass Menagerie include:
A love seat that my stage manager and I carried up the stairs from the basement of the Staircase, and then after turning it pretty much every way possible realized it would not fit through the wings of the space, so we had to carry it outside and bring it up through the loading door. Not a big deal.
Realizing that the original lamp I wanted to hang in the 'dining room' has a European plug so I took the lamp from my mother's kitchen to use.
Moving a ladder inch by inch, as Danielle my stage manager, fed and flung extension cords over dusty poles in the ceiling. She also used a large blue plastic crayon somehow to help this process along.
I broke the unicorn. The delicate, fragile unicorn that lost it's tail during shipping. The unicorn that has been very carefully wrapped in about three scarves, and bubble wrap and carried in a box. The one that needs to seem like the horn is broken off in the show, but isn't and doesn't get broken for our three week run. I broke the horn off the unicorn on Tuesday.
"Tom" couldn't be at the first rehearsal in the space, so my boyfriend was kind enough to sit in the dark with me and read in his lines from a script he's never read. Did I mention this was in the dark?
However, tech week has been successful and enjoyable. I always love getting in the theatre and seeing all the pieces you've been working on for two months come together. The actors' performances reach another level when you add costumes, lights, music etc. It's difficult to explain what it's like to see all these elements come together in a way that you envisioned from the start, but somehow it always looks different in the end than it did in your head. Usually better. And that's how it is with this show. Somehow, with a tiny stage, eight or nine lights, and a unicorn that was once a reindeer, the show looks great. The actors have worked so hard and humoured me by somehow making sense of the ridiculous notes I give, and through my muddled way of explaining things, they have created beautiful and real characters in this show. They are what makes this production worth seeing.
We had a 'rehearsal' at Michael's, where we ate snacks and met
his bird.
I loved having a bird on my shoulder.
Ryan loved the snacks.
Andrea and Gail rehearse in The Staircase.
Andrea and her best friend.
Day 1 of Tech Week. Move in.
Amanda in all her girlish glee.
Tech Day 3, Tech Dress.
Once I knew that I would be directing The Glass Menagerie, I talked to Damian about creating a poster for auditions and for the production. Damian has helped me many times over with posters and headshots in the past. Damian is always able to infuse the feeling I'm going for in an image. Just as I want the production to be engaging, I want the poster to engage people as well.
We used this to advertise auditions
in the program of our October show Dracula.
Originally, we had discussed having each character in the Wingfield family pictured with something that correlates to their character. Laura would have her unicorn, Amanda jonquils and Tom a notebook or perhaps on his fire escape. The idea being to show each character and their preferred reality or the world they take refuge in. However, shortly before getting ready to take photos for the poster, I came across a trailer for a recent production of The Glass Menagerie in Greece that completely captivated me.
This is a very stylized production of the show, and nothing like what Black Box Fire's production will be like. I loved the unfocused nature of the video, and how that speaks to the theme of memory in the play. I love how this video represents the 'vapour-like' (Gail who plays Amanda used this word and I thought it was so perfect) quality of memories. Just out of reach and hazy. My favourite part of the video is at about 50 seconds when each character is lined up on stage and their image is projected overtop of another image of them. The gentleman caller is just out of reach and the other characters shift and seem to be the embodiment of memories that are a little unclear. So, I thought why not use this as inspiration for our poster? I just couldn't get that image at the 50 second mark out of my head. I thought it was so beautiful and haunting, which is exactly what this story is for Tom.
So, I talked to Damian, showed him the trailer and he went to work.
"Tom" takes it easy with a giant coffee.
Tom, a slave to texting.
"Laura" receiving direction from the photographer.
Damian Ali did the photography for the poster as well as our headshots for The Glass Menagerie. I sent him examples of headshots of actors from the 1930's to use as inspiration. I thought it would be nice to have a nostalgic look to the shots since it works with the theme and time frame of the play.
Danielle Dean-Alton, our stage manager, is not pictured here as she was working on a beautiful cruise ship when these were taken.
When I was eight years old my dad took me to the set and prop shop at Theatre Calgary where he worked as the head scenic artist, and he showed me the props for their upcoming production of a play called The Glass Menagerie. My dad showed me this tiny glass unicorn which broke and lost it's horn in the play, but then showed me that each night it was 'fixed' and ready for the next performance. There was something very intriguing about the notion of this single glass unicorn being broken each night and then like new again, only to be broken again. A couple weeks later, my dad took me to see the play and I feel in love with it. I didn't fully understand the play, but loved it nonetheless. It is one the first stories I remember not having a happy ending.
I am currently directing a production of The Glass Menagerie for Black Box Fire, which will open in about a month. I know it is one of the most produced plays in amateur theatre and that it is a classic which is loved by many, which does make it somewhat of a daunting task. I do however, have a wonderfully talented cast who are as dedicated as I am to telling this beautiful story. And that's all I really want to do. I don't want to re-invent the production, I am not concerned with doing something that has never been done before; I just want to tell the story. Who doesn't want to hear lines spoken like " blow your candles out! - for nowadays the world is lit by lightening", or "For time is the longest distance between two places", and "I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion" and my personal favourite "Unicorns, aren't they extinct in the modern world?"
Cast and production team
Thanks to Damian Ali for the photo!
