Tibbits Opera House

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Room Service Rehearsal, Day Eleven

Well, our final dress rehearsal is over. All the last-minute details have been seen to, all the choices have been made, everything about the show - from the sets to the props to the costumes to the lines to the blocking to the bowl of fruit snacks backstage to keep our energy up - are ready.

Other than to thank all of you for joining me backstage by reading the blog, there's little left to say before the curtain goes up. I'll be back with more reports as the show continues its run, but for now I'll leave you with a little gallery of photographs taken during one of our final pre-dress rehearsals by my partner, Rhett Ramirez. Hope to see you at the show!

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Room Service Rehearsal, Day Ten

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
Day 8 - Sunday, 6 July: Load-In*, Hang and Focus, and Running Lines
*Including one-minute timelapse video of the set going up!
Day 9 - Monday, 7 July: Costumes, Props, and Adjusting to the Stage

Tuesday, 8 July: Stage Management, Box Office, and Dress Rehearsal

Hi again! I'm Eric Silvertree, a member of the cast of Room Service, the rollicking farce opening Thursday, 10 July at the historic Tibbits Opera House in Coldwater, Michigan.

Time is speeding by as the show gets ever closer to opening. During the morning session, the technical crew - set, lights, props and costumes - were hard at work finalizing all the details, from repairing the facing on a step that one of us accidentally kicked in, to finishing a hat for one of the ladies, to finding the right mix of Coca-Cola and 7-Up to simulate champagne.

The afternoon session was a run without costumes (except for garments changed on stage as part of the show) and in the evening we had another full dress rehearsal. Yesterday, our biggest concern was adjusting to the move from the rehearsal space to the stage. Today, we were back to concentrating on our acting, polishing our performances, and establishing our personal routines for the show. We and the crew all rely on each other backstage to keep things running smoothly. For example, Robert helps Whitney and Sarah by remaking the beds during the first intermission, Brian and Steve help J.R. with a tricky little bit of costuming before he makes a re-entrance, and I help John maneuver the breakfast cart into place so when the door opens, he can wheel it right on.

You've caught sight of the stage management staff here and there in previous posts, but let's get to know them a little better.

In front is Justin Carroll, the production stage manager. Justin started working with Tibbits Summer Theatre five years ago as an assistant, and is now the man in charge when the show goes live and the director turns over control to stage management. Justin is working toward a degree in theatre technology and design at Central Washington University.

Behind him is Whitney Shouse. Whitney is the assistant stage manager for mainstage shows, and serves as primary stage manager for the Tibbits Popcorn Theatre series for young audiences. Whitney is a theatre major at Hanover College in Indiana.

At the lighting control console in back is Ben Paciorkowski, the master electrician. From this nest off to the side of the stage, Ben and Whitney perform the technical aspects of the show - raising the curtain, ringing the telephone on the set, controlling the lights on stage and in the auditorium - while Justin gives them their cues from his post in a booth behind the last row of seats in the balcony. Justin, Whitney, and Ben are in constant communication by headset microphone, and Justin also makes announcements to the actors thorough speakers in the dressing rooms.

We also have dedicated folks keeping things going at the Tibbits year-round. Joan Spaulding is the darling lady in charge of keeping things tidy throughout the building. Cleaning our individual dressing room spaces is each actor's responsibility, but then there's the auditorium, the lobby, the downstairs intermission space with art gallery and gift shop…

Dave Brown is the house technical director, making sure the lights and fans work for us on both floors of dressing rooms, for instance, as well as working with the community theater and other performance groups that use the opera house when Tibbits Summer Theatre is not in season. I never know when I'm going to come across either Joan or Dave when I zip through the place at random odd hours, and Joanie always has a sweet smile and a laugh for me, and Dave's always ready with a new joke.

There are a lot of people involved in mounting a production - not just the actors you see strutting their stuff in the light. We all work hard to bring the show together - and by now, I hope you're as eager to see the production as we are to present it. Here are the friendly people to talk to for tickets!

That's box office manager Jo Summitt on the left, with assistant manager Vanessa Bloom on the right. In the second photo are Shannon McKinney and Sam Haberl.

They'll be very happy to reserve your seats - either in person, or at 517.287.6029. The box office is open from 10am to 5pm every weekday, 9am to 4pm on Saturdays, plus at 7pm (an hour before curtain time) on all dates with evening shows. Room Service opens on Thursday with two shows - a matinée at 2pm and an evening performance at 8pm. We continue Friday and Saturday at 8pm both nights. The following week, we re-open on Wednesday with a 2pm matinée, then complete the run with 8pm shows on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Tomorrow (Wednesday) we have our final rehearsal before we open the doors and bring up the curtain - and your backstage pass with me on the blog will go on all through the run of the show. More coming soon!

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Room Service Rehearsal, Day Nine

I'm sure you noticed some props and furniture pieces gradually replacing the folding chairs that stood in for the real things during rehearsals at the Jefferson Elementary School gym. On Monday, however, we got our hands on all the genuine articles we'll be using in the show. Minor additions and changes will continue right up to the final rehearsal, but all the departments try to make sure that the technical aspects of the show are as close to finished as possible for the first on-stage run.

Properties master Sarah Simrau had her work cut out for her - there are three and a half pages of fine print on the last pages of the script, listing the props called for in the action of the play - and none of them are allowed to look as though they were manufactured in the twenty-first century. Period suitcases, doctor's bag, dinnerware, linen and towels, a typewriter in a carrying case - all have to be either found, made, or modified from items in the Tibbits stock.

It all looks like a pile of mess as it's brought in, but Sarah and assistant stage manager Whitney Shouse quickly get things organized. Props are either pre-set in the right locations on the set or laid out on tables backstage, with a specific place for each prop, so that we actors always know exactly where everything is and can easily grab what we need and get back on stage.

Lights and set also have some details to attend to, like wiring the lighted sconces attached to the wall above the side tables by the beds. Here you can see Whitney and master electrician Ben Paciorkowski hooking up power to a bell ringer that has the right sound for a 1930's telephone and can be controlled from the light operator's station.

During the morning session, while the crew was busy working on the stage, the actors met in the greenroom. Nobody can agree on why the room set aside for actors to relax offstage as they're waiting to go on is called the greenroom, but it's been called that since at least the beginning of the eighteenth century. Ours is down a flight of stairs from the door opening onto the back of the stage, and it's the perfect spot for the whole cast to go through the dialogue of the whole show from beginning to end, talking our way through the script one last time before we start doing it on a set with stairsteps and doors and furniture and props in our hands.

After lunch, we walked around on the set for a few minutes to get used to the space, and then we began our first onstage run-through. We've been rehearsing on a flat floor without walls up until now, pretending to be holding papers and dishes and things, so we were all a little distracted the first time through, and kept forgetting our lines. That's not a problem - the director expects it to happen, and so do we. When an actor goes blank in rehearsal, he or she doesn't (and shouldn't) waste time apologizing for it. Instead, we just shout "Line!" Someone - usually Justin Carroll, the stage manager - has a script right in front of him, ready to feed us a few words to get us back on track. There comes a point, of course, when we're expected to recover from problems on our own (since we can't shout "Line!" during a performance) but that point doesn't come until we've had a chance to get used to the stage.

For the evening session, we added costumes to the mix. We've paid individual visits to the costume shop for fittings at various times during the last week, but this was our first time wearing them for a dress rehearsal, or rehearsal in costume. Getting used to our clothes, and when we change them for different scenes, is another distraction, but we all settled in very quickly. In fact, I think I was the only one who called "Line!" during the evening dress.

Costuming a show set in the 1930's - or any other historical period - presents the same challenges as gathering props. All the garments have to have to be in the right style, with no obvious color or fabric choices from the wrong era. Some of the clothes are simply pulled from the Tibbits inventory, and some are constructed from scratch. Let's meet the costumers!

In front is Melissa Swanson, the designer for Room Service. Behind Melissa is Kathleen Reid, and behind Kathleen is Em Rossi. Kathleen recently earned her BFA at the University of Central Missouri, and Em is working toward her MFA at Wayne State University. They all share the work as stitchers for every show, but they divide the design responsibilities up. Em designed Little Women, which just closed, and is working on the upcoming show The Goodbye Girl, which follows Room Service. Melissa will design again for The Bop She Bops, and Kathleen is in charge of all the shows in the Popcorn Theatre series for children.

Now that we're on the stage, and into the dress rehearsal phase, we're almost ready to open. Tuesday and Wednesday will be our time to work out the last of our hesitations and uncertainties as we prepare to open the show to the public on Thursday. I'll talk to you again soon!

Monday, July 7, 2008

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!

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Room Service Rehearsal, Day Seven

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

Saturday, 5 July: Work Session and Designer's Run

Hello! I'm Eric Silvertree, a member of the acting company with Tibbits Summer Theatre in Coldwater, Michigan, bringing you yet another backstage report on the rehearsals for Room Service, the mile-a-minute comedy opening this Thursday, 10 July.

This is the end of the first week of rehearsal, and also the opening morning of the other show I'm acting in at the moment. The Tortoise and the Hare and Other Fables by Aesop is part of Tibbits Popcorn Theatre for young audiences. The Popcorn shows are performed on Friday and Saturday mornings at 10am. Because of the holiday, the theater was dark all day yesterday - which means there were no shows scheduled. Also because of the holiday, our audience for Aesop was relatively small. A little over a hundred kids came to see the show, which was pretty much what we'd expected.

Besides the free popcorn and juice during intermission, Popcorn Theatre shows feature a meet-and-greet after every performance, where the audience can get autographs and their parents can take pictures of them with the cast. With a small audience, the reception went by quickly, and I was able to make it to the morning Room Service rehearsal before it was halfway over. When I got there, we were in the middle of working Act 3.

The afternoon session was the designer's run. The heads of all the technical departments were in attendance for a complete run-through of the show. The designer's run is a final check for props, costumes, lighting, and set, so that they know - for example - whether a water pitcher on stage will actually need water in it or not, and which corners of the set need to be lit for actors' faces, and which just need lighting for atmosphere.

We'll be moving onto the actual set on Monday, and although there are always a few minor surprises and hiccups when we make the transition, all the departments (including the actors) do everything they can to make the transition as smooth as possible. You've met the cast. Let me introduce you to the designers.

First, on the left, is Sarah Simrau. Sarah is the properties master. Properties, or props, are any objects in the show which are moved or handled by the actors. In Room Service, that includes things like luggage, newspapers, champagne bottles, a stuffed and mounted deer's head, a serving cart of real breakfast for three of the actors to wolf down on stage, and much much more. Sarah has a theatre degree from Mid-Michigan Community College, and interned at the Florida Studio Theatre before joining the staff at Tibbits.

Next is Lex vanBlommestein, the set designer. Sets are anything on stage that doesn't get moved around. The walls and doors are part of the set, of course, but so are the furniture and decorative objects arranged on them. Lex holds an MFA in scenic design from Wayne State University, and is soon to take up a professorship at Southern Illinois University.

Moving on, we come to Melissa Swanson, costume designer. Costumes, obviously, are the clothes that the actors wear on stage, but her department also covers things like the actors' hair and makeup styles. Melissa is a student at Western Illinois University majoring in both art history and costume design.

And on the right is Kat Lanphear, the lighting designer. In addition to the lights for the show, her department has a hand in anything on stage that requires electricity and remote control. Kat has a degree from Alma College, and is working toward her lighting design MFA at Wayne State University.

The boundaries between these departments are not rigid. Lex and Sarah collaborate on the knickknacks that dress the set. Sarah and Melissa work together on the items of clothing that aren't actually worn but are tossed around as props. Kat and Lex consult on the light fixtures mounted on the walls in the room. And, of course, they all work together with the director to make sure that the actors look the way he wants them to in their costumes on the set when they're lit and carrying props.

My next report will be a closer look at the stage as the set goes up and the lights get focused on Sunday. Be back soon!

Room Service Rehearsal, Day Six

My daily routine is pretty familiar to you by now: rehearsal for The Tortoise and the Hare and Other Fables by Aesop in the morning, Room Service in the afternoon, and the evening off to study my lines and run my errands - not actually part of the schedule, you understand. I only have evenings off because I'm not in the current mainstage production of Little Women.

Today would have been different if it weren't a holiday weekend. Aesop is part of the Tibbits Popcorn Theatre series for young audiences, and Popcorn shows have their opening "nights" every other Friday morning - but families' plans for the Fourth of July usually don't include dropping the kids off for an hour. It's not cost-effective to burn electricity to light a show when everyone's out of town or at the lake. Therefore, Aesop will open on Saturday instead, and we used the time to get in another round of rehearsal. For the same reason, there's no performance of Little Women tonight. We figure everybody in Coldwater will be at the fireworks show instead - and since Tibbits is giving everyone in the company the evening off, that includes most of us!

So, in a roundabout way, the fact that it's a holiday means my workday worked out to be exactly what it's been all week. At 2pm, I and my fellow cast members were in the gym at Jefferson Elementary School for another run-through of Room Service. Each run-through gets smoother and sharper as we gain confidence in our lines and refine our acting choices under the watchful eye of our director, Charles Burr.

Enough about the schedule - let's talk about the rest of the cast. Some scripts are written with one or two dominant characters, called the leads, while others are written as ensemble pieces, in which the entire cast has roughly equal stage time. Because farces depend so much on multiple relationships and interactions among wildly different characters, even a farce with an identifiable lead (in Room Service, that would be the role of Gordon Miller) has a strong ensemble feel, and needs strong actors in every part.

To the left is Ken Washburn, who plays Senator Blake, president of the company which owns the White Way Hotel. This feisty Southern gentleman has a strong opinion on every topic, from the right amount of credit to extend a guest, to the kind of message a proper American stage play should present - and from his position of power, nobody else's opinion matters at all.

In the center is Kevin McDaniel, playing Simon Jenkins. Jenkins is an investing agent who represents a man so wealthy he can afford to bankroll an entire Broadway production just to give his stage-struck mistress a little something to occupy her time - as long as nobody knows the money came from him. Jenkins handles his business with the utmost discretion, and his job has never caused his heart condition the least bit of stress - until he met Gordon Miller.

To the right is Robert Dozzi, as a messenger from the bank that handles the hotel's finances. With the Great Depression in full swing, high-powered executives are just as nervous about money as any group of starving actors - if not more so. In that kind of atmosphere, whole fortunes depend on the messengers, and this young man doesn't do his job halfway. If he can't find you in your office, he'll track you down, and one piece of paper in his hand can spell the difference between success and ruin.

And finally, our cast is rounded out with the presence of George Spelvin. No authentic photographs of Mr. Spelvin exist - and who am I to buck tradition? His name has appeared in literally hundreds of stage programs, in a career that has spanned decades. He's a legend in the American theatrical tradition, with roles in comedies, tragedies, and musicals - there's nobody better to portray Timothy Hogarth, the representative of a collection agency called We Never Sleep.

Now you've met the cast - in my next report, you'll meet the designers, as they attend a run-through held specifically for them. Stay tuned!

Friday, July 4, 2008

Room Service Rehearsal, Day Five

As we get closer to opening the show on July 10, the rehearsal process is gradually shifting from memorizing and working individual sections of the script toward integrating all of our work into a smooth, unified show. We're becoming more confident with our lines, and some of us are starting to put our books down. I'm not ready to do that - not yet. Since I'm also appearing in The Tortoise and The Hare and Other Fables by Aesop, which opens Saturday morning, I've been spending more study time with that script than this one. After the holiday weekend, though, all my focus will be on Room Service.

My time on Thursday was once again split between the two shows. I spent the morning session with Aesop, but in the afternoon I was there for a complete run-through of Room Service. A run-through is just what you'd think: we do the whole show from the beginning to the end, stopping as few times as we can - although we do go back and work on problem spots when they pop up.

Speaking of problems, farces are built on them. There are many different types of comedy, and in a farce, the emphasis is on an ever-increasing level of frenzy as competing characters with opposite goals keep out-maneuvering each other. All the action of Room Service happens in one place: Room 920 at the White Way Hotel in Times Square, New York City. All the characters you met yesterday (except for Christine) are living in this one room, the bill is hopelessly past due, and they're desperately trying to keep one step ahead of the hotel staff. Let's meet the opposing team!

Seated on the bed is Dennis McKeen, who plays Joe Gribble, the hotel manager. The only reason Gordon Miller has been able to put off the bill for feeding and lodging the twenty-two people in his company as long as he has is that Gribble is married to his sister Flossie. We never meet Flossie, but judging from Gribble's nerves, it's a fair bet that she's about the same size, shape, and disposition as her brother.

The perky lass to the right is Tiffany Weisend, in the role of Hilda Manney, Mr. Gribble's secretary. She's got a heart of gold and a taste for chocolate. She'd love to help the theatre troupe any way she can (especially that cute young playwright) but anyone thinking of breaking a promise to her had better think twice.

All the way to the left is John Marsh. He's playing Sasha Smirnoff, a waiter in the hotel and friend of Miss Manney. Sasha's from Russia, where he spent seven years working under Stanislavsky in the Moscow Art Theatre. Here in New York, however, he supports his wife and kids on a waiter's salary - all the while yearning to get back on the stage.

Second from the right is J.R. Colbeck, who plays Doctor Glass, the hotel's staff physician. He's a respectable man, focused on his job, which he performs with (uncomfortable) thoroughness. He does his best to brush off frustrations of his efforts and assaults on his dignity, but the herd of jokers and con-men in Room 920 are going to test the far limits of his patience.

Finally, there in the middle is me - Eric Silvertree. I'm playing Gregory Wagner, supervising director of the firm that owns the White Way Hotel. Wagner's a bully who answers to nobody but the board of directors, and he was sent here personally by Senator Blake, president of the company, to remake this failing flop-house into a money-making operation - and on the very first day, he discovers a twelve-hundred-dollar unpaid bill. Guess who's going to be the theatre company's biggest problem!

But wait - that's not everyone yet. You'll meet the rest of the cast in the report on Day Six. More to come!

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Room Service Rehearsal, Day Four

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

Wednesday, 2 July: Working Act Two and Meet the Cast

Hi there! Time for another report from your behind-the-scenes reporter, Eric Silvertree, as Tibbits Summer Theatre gets ready to present a classic farce about making it big on Broadway, Room Service.

Wednesday's schedule was a little unusual, because the musical Little Women started the second half of its run with a matinee performance at 2pm. Everybody in the acting company had the morning off to get ready for the afternoon curtain, except for those of us rehearsing the children's show The Tortoise and the Hare and Other Fables by Aesop, which opens on Saturday. And, of course, since the afternoon work period also starts at 2pm, there was no rehearsal then, either.

So, the only part of today's schedule devoted to Room Service was the evening session, which we spent working Act 2. As I described yesterday, working an act is a three-steps-forward, two-steps-back process by which we make our way gradually through the act, repeating small sections of the script over and over again. It sounds slow, but it goes faster than you might think - especially when you have a sharp, experienced director like our Charles Burr, and a focused, dedicated group of actors like my fellow cast members.

Since you know what working a script is like now, this would be a good time to start introducing you to the other actors in Room Service and tell you more about the characters they play in the show. Room Service is a send-up of the trials and tribulations involved in mounting a brand-new play on Broadway in the midst of the Great Depression with no money, no time, and - most importantly - no food!

The handsome gentleman second from the right who shaves the top half of his head instead of the bottom is Brian Sage. Brian is playing Gordon Miller, producer of a long line of low-budget flops, who is absolutely convinced that his next show, Godspeed, will be the hit he's always worked for. Of course, that's what he thought about his last show.

All the way to the left is Steve Moore, who plays Harry Binion, director of Godspeed. Binion and Miller go way back, and when it comes to the art of mounting a production against impossible odds, the two of them are an unstoppable team - which means that anybody who gets within fifty feet of either one of them had better keep his hand on his wallet and his eye on the door.

The man on the right whose shirt proclaims that "Romeo Was A Whiner" is Mark Kelley. He probably got that shirt from his character, Faker Englund. Faker is Miller's general assistant, a streetwise native of the Big Apple who is, if possible, an even more energetic con-man than Miller and Binion put together. He has more bad ideas before 9am than most people have all day.

The lovely lady in the center is Melissa McKim, playing Christine Marlowe. Christine works in the office of a rival Broadway producer. Her boss may be richer and more successful, but her heart belongs to Gordon Miller - and her face and voice belong on the stage, not behind a desk. She's an actress in Miller's shows, and she's certain that he's destined for great things. If only his methods were a little more honest…

And finally, second from the left, is Beau Hutchings. He's playing Leo Davis, the innocent young man from Oswego, New York, who wrote Godspeed, that fantastic play that Miller is eager to produce. Davis is just dying to get out of the small town onto the Great White Way, and he's hopped a train to New York City with a pocketful of change, a head full of dreams, and his mother's picture in a silver frame. What could possibly go wrong?

I'll introduce you to more of our cast of characters tomorrow, after Thursday's rehearsals. See you then!

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Room Service Rehearsal, Day Three

Prior Reports:
Day 1 - Sunday, 29 June: Read-Through and Act One Blocking
Day 2 - Monday, 30 June: Act Two and Act Three Blocking

Tuesday, 1 July: Act Three Blocking, Publicity, and Working Act One

Hi again! Eric Silvertree reporting on the third day of rehearsals for Room Service, coming soon to the historic Tibbits Opera House in Coldwater, Michigan.

The director and cast finished blocking the very last scene of the play during the morning rehearsal session, which starts at 10am. My workday began at 8:45, however, because I was booked as a guest on “Delaney in the Morning” at WTVB-AM1590. Publicity work is part of an actor's job, too, from appearances at community events to interviews and articles for newspaper, TV, and radio - and weblogs!

I wasn't actually promoting Room Service, however. Caroline Stewart (Volunteer Coordinator for Tibbits) and I were on to talk to Ken Delaney about The Tortoise and the Hare and Other Fables by Aesop, which is the next production in Tibbits' Popcorn Theatre series for children, now that The House at Pooh Corner has finished its run.

As I mentioned yesterday, summer stock companies have multiple shows in the works at the same time. As of this moment, the count stands at three: Little Women is halfway through its performance run, and both Aesop and Room Service are in rehearsal. Come to think of it, both the director and musical director of The Goodbye Girl are doing prep-work already, and I'm sure the design staff are busy sketching and planning for shows further down the line… It gets hectic and confusing for everyone really fast. The person we actors rely on most to keep the confusion to a minimum is the stage manager. That's our stage manager, Justin Carrol, in the photo with the director, Charles Burr.

After I finished at the radio station and 10am rolled around, I still wasn't working on Room Service. I was rehearsing Aesop instead. Practically everyone in the cast of Little Women who's staying on for the rest of the season is in either Room Service or Aesop, but fortunately for everyone's sanity, I'm the only actor in both. Fortunately for my sanity, I'm not in Little Women.

On to the afternoon. Once blocking is completed, rehearsal switches over to work sessions. Working a scene or an act means doing it in tiny one- or two- or three-page sections. The cast does one section at a time over and over, stopping frequently to get feedback from the director, refining it and cementing it in their memories. When the director feels it's time to move on, he'll let the cast keep going past the end of that section, then loop back to repeat another few pages. Every now and then, to keep things from getting too choppy, the director will back up and run the cast through all the sections they've been working in one shot.

This afternoon's rehearsal period was spent working Act 3. Since I wasn't there in the morning for blocking, I got clued in on my movements by Justin. While the cast write down notes about their own blocking in their own scripts, the stage manager writes down blocking notes about everybody. Thus, actors who have to miss a rehearsal automatically have someone taking notes for them. Plus, when we get far enough along to put our scripts down, we have someone to ask if we forget a line or a piece of blocking.

During the evening rehearsal, we worked Act 1. Working an act involves a lot of waiting, because although you may know that there are three pages to go before you enter the scene, you don't know how many times they're going to do those three pages before they go on. We study our scripts on the sidelines, and at the same time we keep an eye on what's happening on stage, ready to jump in when the time comes. By the end of the day, both Act 3 and Act 1 had been completely worked. Guess which act we'll be working tomorrow!

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Room Service Rehearsal, Day Two

Prior Reports:
Day 1 - Sunday, 29 June: Read-Through and Act One Blocking

Monday, 30 June: Act Two and Act Three Blocking

Hello! Eric Silvertree again, with the second installment of the day-by-day backstage blog of Room Service, the madcap comedy opening July 10 at the Tibbits Opera House in Coldwater.

Tibbits Summer Theatre is part of the summer stock theatre tradition, which means that the actors, carpenters, electricians, costumers (and so on) don't put on just one show, we put on a whole season: two plays, three musicals, and four children's shows, one right after another. Some actors may not be here for the entire summer - and musicians only work on the musicals, of course - but by and large everybody in a summer stock company is working on more than one show at a time.

This makes it impossible to rehearse an upcoming show on the actual stage, because the set for the current show (in this case, the musical Little Women - three shows left: July 2, 3 & 5 - bring the family!) is already there. Instead, Jefferson Elementary School graciously allows Tibbits to use its gymnasium for rehearsal space.

The walls and doors are laid out on the floor with lines of tape, with the same dimensions the set will have when it's erected on stage, and folding chairs stand in for the furniture. It's not as hard to get used to as you might think - and if there's a serious problem with how the set will work for the show, it can usually be spotted and corrected here, while everything is still being manufactured in the scene shop. For example, one of the doors on the Room Service set that was designed to open into the room will have to be re-designed to open out - but it's much easier to make the change now, before the set is actually installed.

Today we continued blocking, moving forward through the show. We worked on the first half of Act 2 in the morning, the second half in the afternoon, and the first half of Act 3 in the evening. We don't have any props yet, and we're still carrying our scripts as we work - not only because we're all still memorizing our lines, but also because we're jotting down notes to ourselves about where and when we move.

The quality of the acting is not our top priority during blocking. That comes during the later rehearsals. We're definitely thinking about the acting, though - figuring out what our characters feel at a given moment, trying out different ways of delivering tricky lines - like the line drawing an artist will sketch on the canvas before he actually starts to paint.

Creating the blocking for a show is one of the director's hardest jobs. He or she has to make sure the movement makes sense and doesn't result in traffic jams. Charles Burr, our director in Room Service (on the right in the photo) has a well-deserved reputation for the quality of his blocking, with well-balanced, interesting arrangements of the actors in the performance space, connected by engaging movement that springs naturally from the characters.

Tomorrow, on day three, we'll finish blocking the second half of the third act. Then we'll go back to the beginning and start working our way through the show again to reinforce what we've already done and start building on it. See you then!