HowlRound: Ask any performer or director and they will tell you rehearsal is the place to explore and experiment. It is too late to wait until tech week to integrate interactive media into the performance. We accept that actors need to spend weeks in a room together to explore, take risks, and create the physical and psychological world of human emotions and spoken word.
9 comments:
Fascinating how, with interactive media, we begin to think of projected shapes more like characters than set pieces. It's very understandable to want media pieces in the rehearsal process, especially if they come into contact/interact with the actors in a way that is integral to the story line. To me it seems just like having do-for props in a rehearsal room; they're obviously not the finished things, and aren't completely representative of what they're going to be, but they're useful for an actor to play around with the weight of something in their hands as they're talking, or how it feels to wave it around when they're gesticulating. If we didn't have the bare bones of whatever we're doing (interactive media, rehearsal clothes, do-fors, apple boxes) then, when the cast gets on stage, they've rehearsed with a complete blind eye, and have to learn all their blocking over again with the materials of design they previously didn't have.
I think it would be a very good idea to incorporate media in the show while in the rehearsal hall. If the projections are just background elements to the show then it is not totally necessary, but it could still be a good idea. Though it puts more pressure on the designer because they need to complete their content and make it look good enough for people to see it and get the concept. Rehearsals are meant to test things out and see what works. Normally it is just the acting that is worked on and not really the technical elements because those come in later during tech week. Trying media out during rehearsals would be a very good idea to see what actually works. If a designer spent a lot of time on something and then it just was not right for the show when it came time to use it during tech week, they would have a lot of work to do to fix it in a very short period of time. If they saw that it did not work in rehearsals then they could work on it and try new things during rehearsals to get the best possible final product.
I think that having the interactive media in rehearsal is absolutely a must. I get that it may not be the most practical thing to set up, but the more that can be made real for an actor, the easier their job will be. Not to mention the results are probably far better. Waiting until tech to incorporate interactive media sounds like madness, in tech NO ONE wants to be waiting on a director trying to still piece together the show. Rehearsal wise the performers should be almost good to go by the time tech weeks rolls around. There is too much madness with all the other departments (although it can depend on scale) to then have another beast in the room. This article makes this point pretty clear to the reader. The author also points out that interactive media can be incorporated in even the more traditional rehearsal structure which is an important thing to note.
I find this article very interesting! In about a month I’m going to embark on a rehearsal process for a very media heavy show. Last year, the show I was on was extremely media heavy. The show was so media heavy and dependent to the point that if the media went down there was no show there. It was such an important factor that the designer was on stage during the show, and operating his designs. He was in rehearsal everyday. I had mixed emotions about this because on one hand it was really helpful to have him there. However, some days the equipment would get in the way of setting up the room and what not. All in all, with the kind of show it was he needed to be there. My conclusion is that depending on what the show needs than that is who should be in rehearsal.
Last year I worked on a show where we integrated the media and sound into the rehearsal process from the very beginning. At first I was confused at this decision because we are used to added all tech items at tech. But by the end of the process I was completely on board with the idea of incorporating tech into rehearsals because there was no way we could have had tech run as smoothly as it did. We would have taken so much time on media that we wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere near the final product. I think this idea is very important in devised pieces because things are changing constantly and without the media there to work with the show wouldn’t have changed much. Each element is important to the process and sometimes integrating those elements earlier in the process will help the actor’s journey and the ultimately the show’s journey to the final product. If you can integrate tech items into rehearsal as much as you can, even though it may be tough, it will pay off in the end.
The sooner you know if the media will work with the essence of the show you are putting gone, the better it is for everyone and that means starting to use it as early and often as possible. It’s a lot like props. The props department gives the actors mock props to use in rehearsal until the real ones are made so the actors can get used to finding it and having it for the scenes and learning how to use it. So if the actors are going got be physically interacting with the media like they did with the armbands on the Wiz, even if the media is not solid for the first parts of rehearsal, they can still practice with something. This also gets the director actively thinking about how he or she wants the media to meld with the show because they see it every day at rehearsal. 10/10 would recommend using media in the rehearsal rooms.
Media can give life to a production; it can truly bring a set to life and change the way even simple spaces can be perceived. In addition, its precise applications of color to surfaces can change what would be a drab set into a firestorm of color and back in seconds. Media however also ruins productions every day. One of the most frustrating things when I am watching a show is media cues which take me to a new location like a high school PowerPoint. I tend to be a very visual person and watching a production with media like this or even some professionally done cues that for some reason fall right down my uncanny valley is just miserable. I can’t even begin to think about the story you’re telling if it stops after the scene change. I think integrating media into the rehearsal studio is fantastic because it forces us to consider media at all points in the production not just the specific parts where it would be “cool”.
This is great that people are starting to realize that media is no longer just an effect on stage, it is a prop and a character that the actors and actresses have to or can interact with in order to tell a story better. Tech week today has become more of a fine tweaking of all the tech elements rather than start t finish implementation. In the Wiz the armbands had to be tested and implemented before tech week because it added to the actors performance and forced them to implement it themselves. At a theatre company I worked for we were able to add media as well as cut it from the show before actors were even up on stage. This allowed us to focus on other aspects of design during tech week and this led us to produce a over all better show. In today's entertainment we have to think start to finish and test as soon as we can. There is no longer a do it later attitude because there is so much technology involved in story telling today.
I think this article brings up a strong point about how a media department should operate in a theatrical setting. Being a technical visual aspect I think it is too often associated with a similar time frame/scope as the lighting department, in which all the build is during load in and the vast bulk of the more refined designing occurs only during tech. I like that this article explains the benefits from breaking this cycle and doing a lot of exploratory design in rehearsal because I have too often seen media that was designed separate from the work of the directors/actors, and it can often be too distracting or colluded to add to the production effectively. Experimenting with media (even in a simpler form) during the rehearsal process could minimize these pitfalls significantly, but the issue is having media departments adjust to a new time frame that is much more front loaded with preparing content ahead of time to be able to test it earlier in the process. Being that media is the newest department in theater I think it would behoove practitioners to adopt this front loaded time frame sooner than later so they can reap the benefit from it now and not have to adjust later.
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