www.broadwayworld.com: Since Les Misérables' pre-Broadway run at the Kennedy Center in 1986, it has changed the world of musical theater. Now that it has returned to the Opera House, go behind the touring musical with Production Stage Manager Ryan W. Gardner, who explains how the musical continuously loads in and out of each venue on a tight schedule.
8 comments:
I love getting to see some behind the scenes of these giant traveling broadway shows. The sheer production value of all these shows is crazy, and the fact that they just move from city to city in a week is crazy! I also liked getting to see the big brother style set up that the stage manager had with shots of every possible angle of the stage, it seems like quite a step up from the single camera that seemed to have around 16 total pixels that stage managers would sometimes have to use at my old highschool shows. I wonder how this show compares to other traveling broadway shows, because it feels like there's a lot more going on in le mis than in something like hamilton, though I feel as though I have seen the amount of lights that hamilton has, so everything might balance out timewise between those two shows.
SO COOL! The spectacle of Les Mis is truly spectacular! I got to see the touring show last year in my home city and the ability of the set and lights alone to transport you into an entirely different world was theatrical magic at its finest. I wish the video showed more of the process to load in and out the set, which includes towering, climbable, automated flats of a narrow french street. When does the crew get a day off? They spend all Sunday night loading out the show just to drive to the next city and set it all up again in 16 hours. The actors get some time as they’re driving up, but does the crew ever sleep? I wonder how much touring shows make compared to their broadway run counterparts? The ordeal of traveling with a massive show must be extremely expensive. But, it allows them to see a new audience every week, filling huge venues.
It’s crazy to see the scale of these productions and how many people and hours go into making it happen. While I have some understanding of how the process works from Production Planning, seeing a portion of it in action still blows my mind. The production value is insane, with so many moving part and people all working together to get it moved as fast as possible and identical to the previous city. I applaude the technicians and crew that work late into the night daily to deliver the best performance to the audience and are able to do it again and again. I also recongize the management that it takes for this to go smoothly, something that I can’t do as well and know the skill it takes to be a good manager. I would love to join a touring production at some point to have the full experience of moving the show all the time and learning how that influence workflow, hours, equipment, skillset, etc.
It's so cool being able to see how tours move from venue to venue and how much work it takes because as a person who only really sees shows in New York City I forget what it takes to put on a touring show and how quickly they move from venue to venue. I also always love seeing the computer screen set a stage manager calls from. It's really cool to see all the video feeds that they see live to call a show. I think it's so cool how from venue to venue the Scenic Design and all the other designs look exactly the same to each other and how they are literally identical. It's just very impressive and sort of shows the talent of the people working in this field to be able to do that every week and how tirelessly they can work to put on a show like Les Mis after night and many different venues.
Hearing about the timelines for these kinds of productions is always insane to me. The complete turnaround always baffles me, especially considering it isn’t just striking the set and electrics, they have to pack it up and move it, which undoubtedly would take much longer and more specific planning. I’ve heard about productions like Wicked, where they have two exact same versions of the set, and they can send one set to be loaded in and teched while the other set is running a show in another city, I wonder if Le Mis would be a good show to do that while considering the extent of it. I think its really cool how these sets are adapted to fit all sorts of different stages, I feel like there have to be some parts of the set that they can’t use at every single venue due to lack of space, and I wonder what are the first things to get cut in that situation.
I have always been really interested in touring shows and how quickly they are able to travel between places. When you look at a regional theater near where you live their schedule is jam packed with every popular show of the season with a limited number of showings. The show can be loaded in quickly and the cast is only there for a week or two before moving on to the next place. Managing the actors and traveling technicians' housing and cost of living becomes a whole new aspect of a production. Every actor needs to be able to know their exact schedule in order to guarantee that they will have a roof over their head when they reach the next destination. If they are unable to find housing I don't know what a production might do because they are dealing with at least twenty or so other people all traveling around with the production.
WOW that is an incredibly quick turnaround time! And that 7 hour strike / 2.5 day load in doesn't even include travel time. Do they have to start at later dates for cities that are really far apart? Or are they able to send certain trucks ahead of others and the 2.5 day load in already accounts for travel time? I'm so curious about the additional logistics! It sounds fun getting to work in such a fast paced envioronment, but that also sounds like it could be pretty stressful. I imagine that it being a well oiled machine takes a lot of uncertainty-related stress out. However, the hours do sound pretty rough. Having to work overnight after a full show day would suck and I imagine it could take a pretty significant toll on your health. I wonder if they have separate people from the show for that overnight shift so that people can sleep.
The way touring shows operate with such extreme intricacy will always amaze me. Each crew member and each physical component needs to work like such a crazy flawless and quick machine. Each little cog and/or ant is crucial to moving each part and completing each task. The way everything gets loaded in and out and then transported within the span of 3 day is absolute balls to the wall craziness. I could not imagine how physically and mentally exhausting it must be to be a crew member on these. As someone who gets stressed very easily and already has no interest in stage management, being a production manager for such a big operation such as this sounds absolutely frikin terrifying. Oh. my glob. The backstage live feed from the video in this article was really cool to see though. It also must be super duper fun to document and edit tours on such a huge stage because of all the different camera angles.
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