Thursday, July 07, 2016
How to Build a Moving House Without a Turntable in ‘Rain’
AMERICAN THEATRE: Who knew building a house would be so difficult? After all, a lot of plays are set in houses. But the set for Michael John LaChiusa and Sybille Pearson’s musical adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s Rain at the Old Globe (which ran March 24-May 1) ranks as one of the most difficult projects I’ve faced in the last 16 years as technical director of the theatre. Because it wasn’t a normal house.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Its really fascinating how this magnitude of set is build. The process is incredible the amount of thought that goes into it. Also the creativity of the set designers is amazing. The coolest part for me is the fact that any of this is possible. Raining on stage is so cool and amazing. How far the theatre has come over the last years is amazing the fact that it can be possible to rain on stage or that a full house can be built to do the things it did. I have serious respect fort these people because the work they do is not easy and there so creative. Theatre has some of the most creative people because they have to not only build a house but build a stage house that can move. All the materials and the technical aspects of how everything works is so cool. When you watch a show and see all the aspects you really begin to appreciate everything that goes into it. Thats one of the best things about broadway shows for me as a techie is seeing all the cool technical aspects of everything and how they make it work. Its really inspiring for someone that would love to work on shows when there older.
This is one of the craziest sets I've ever seen, but I feel like everyone can relate to the "how are we going to build this" or "how are we going to do the transition in an intermission" scenario. What always fascinates me is how every show has at least one "impossible task," and yet it always gets done. My school did a production of Into the Woods, and we had to ask a physics teacher at my school to make a ten foot wide color coded spread sheet that would show our director what scenes and what actors could be simultaneously rehearsing. In one show we did, we had actors stand right behind a cellophane wall lit with twinkle lights and they were somehow completely invisible. That same physics teacher was actually astounded at how we could pull it off and almost brought in her class to show them. Last year, we did a play where the intermission transition was forty minutes long the first time we rehearsed it, but we refined and practiced it so many times, we got to the point where we were able to do the entire transition in eight in a half minutes every time. In this)article, the author mentioned how the audience could actually stay and watch the transition happen, and how it got a lot of compliments, but in our play, we actually made everyone step outside because the transition was so hectic. One day, though, our principal stayed in the theatre and watched our transition (we couldn't really force the principal to go), and even though she was a theatre major in college, she said she had never seen anything like it. I think that's one of my favorite parts about theatre; the sheer determination to get everything done, and how that allows us to then accomplish the impossible.
Post a Comment