Room Service Rehearsal, Day Eight

Prior Reports:
Day 1 - Sunday, 29 June: Read-Through and Act One Blocking
Day 2 - Monday, 30 June: Act Two and Act Three Blocking
Day 3 - Tuesday, 1 July: Act Three Blocking, Publicity, and Working Act One
Day 4 - Wednesday, 2 July: Working Act Two and Meet the Cast
Day 5 - Thursday, 3 July: Run-Through and Meet the Cast
Day 6 - Friday, 4 July: Run-Through and Meet the Cast
Day 7 - Saturday, 5 July: Work Session and Designer's Run

Sunday, 6 July: Load-In*, Hang and Focus, and Running Lines
*timelapse video

Hello again! Eric Silvertree reporting from the Tibbits Opera House in Coldwater, Michigan, on all the preparations here for our production of Room Service, the classic 1937 comedy by John Murray and Allen Boretz.

After the Saturday designers' run came the final performance of Little Women. Once the audience had gone home and the actors changed out of their costumes and cleaned off their makeup, it was time to strike the set. To strike something is to move it off the stage, and everybody in the company - even those not otherwise working on a particular show - participates in strike at the end of a show's run. Chuck Griffin, our technical director, is the man in charge at strike, and under his well-organized leadership, we had the Little Women set dismantled, piled on a trailer, trucked over to the scene shop, and unloaded in just a little over an hour.

Of course, we were all pretty tired at the end, but we were in a very good mood, because earlier that afternoon at the end of the designers' run, our director for Room Service, Charles Burr, had announced to the cast that he was making a change in the schedule. Because the show is so fast and takes so much energy to perform, and because rehearsals had been going so well, he'd decided to give us the whole day off on Sunday! After a few seconds of stunned silence, we all cheered. Imagine playing tennis or basketball flat-out for three hours at a time, two or three times a day, for a whole week, and you'll have some idea how most of us were feeling Saturday night - even before we started striking Little Women.

I spent a leisurely Sunday morning at the laundromat, and then a few of us who have a huge amount of dialogue (or have been memorizing more than one show at a time) got together on the front porch of the company house to spend a few hours running lines. Running lines is something actors do on their own time. One actor, or a helpful friend, will hold the script and follow along while the others practice. The book-holder will read any parts that belong to an actor who isn't there, and will interrupt the rest of us if we skip a line or make a mistake. We concentrate purely on the words, without worrying about movement, emotion, or delivery. It's a very intense memorization technique, even more focused than working a scene. If one of us keeps getting stuck on a particular line or two, we may do that half-page over and over dozens of times until it's perfect.

Meanwhile, on the stage, Chuck and Lex were overseeing the rest of the load-in process. Load-in, for a set, is the opposite of strike. Let's meet the fine folks on the set construction crew.

Chuck Griffin, the technical director, is in the center, and Lex vanBlommestein, set designer, is all the way to the left. Kyle Garrelts, our technical theatre intern, is standing between Lex and Chuck. Kyle starts working on his BFA in technical theatre this fall at the University of Wyoming. The gentlemen on the right are Charlie Cochran, carpenter, and Chris Otwell, master carpenter. Charlie has a degree from ITT in Phoenix, Arizona, and Chris is working toward his MFA at Wayne State University.

The set was constructed and pre-painted at the Tibbits scene shop, and we carried all the pieces of Room Service in and stacked them against the back wall during the Little Women strike. On Sunday, it was time to put it all together. Thanks to Chris, we have a series of photographs taken at five-minute intervals, enough to make a short video showing the construction of Room 920 at the White Way Hotel in Times Square, New York City.

^ ^ ^      Click the play button above to watch the video

Once the set is up, it's time for the lighting crew to work their magic. Lights for theatre are referred to as instruments, and each instrument needs to be hung in place, aimed, and focused to make sure both the actor's faces and the entire set are clearly illuminated, without unwanted shadows, hot spots, or gaps. The color of the light is controlled with gel, sheets of colored heat-resistant plastic held in frames in front of each instrument's lens. Even shows without visible color effects have a gel in every light.

That's Kat Lanphear, lighting designer, on the left, and up on the ladder adjusting an instrument is Ben Paciorkowski, the master electrician. Ben has a BA from Hanover College, and starts working on his MFA at Purdue this fall. Together they test each instrument, individually and as part of the complete lighting scheme, until the whole setting has the right atmosphere for the show.

On Monday, we actors get our first chance to rehearse on the actual set. More about that, and about the props and costumes for Room Service, in my next report. So long for now!