PTT Program 5 Day 4 Video 1.txt

Once you've read the play, you'll need to sit down and talk to the director. You'll need to find out if there are any special needs for this production that might not be mentioned in the text. For example, they might want to add props or make some costume changes that are not included in the script....

Once you've read the play, you'll need to sit down and talk to the director. You'll need to find out if there are any special needs for this production that might not be mentioned in the text. For example, they might want to add props or make some costume changes that are not included in the script. Also, ask about the first rehearsal. How do they want the first rehearsal to be structured? Do they want designers to present designs? Do they want to talk about the play first? Do they want to have part of the first rehearsal set aside for research? Do they want to have a read through? Most first rehearsals include a read through, but sometimes they don't. You'll want to ask the director if they need any special equipment, such as a CD player. Make sure that you and the director are on the same page. Make no judgments about how your director wants to handle things. Find out what is comfortable for them, and go with the flow. As soon as you know the rehearsal schedule, call the actors and let them know when they are called to rehearsal. They might have questions about how the rehearsal will be handled and what is expected of them. This is your only chance to make a first impression. You'll want to give them the information in a courteous manner and establish yourself as the person to talk to about schedule and other production matters. You want a good working relation with them, so establish that relationship rehearsal or any rehearsal for that matter. The structure comes from what the director wants to accomplish and what the theater organization wants to accomplish. Some directors do without a read through and spend the first several days doing research and improvs. This is a day of first impressions. The actors all meet and begin to learn about each other and how they work. They also meet you and learn how to work with you. They will see much of your work before you see any of theirs. Opinions are being formed, so make sure your work is of the highest level. Before the actors arrive, at each actor's station, set out a performance calendar, a contact sheet, a contact card, and a sharpened pencil. Don't just toss them on the table, arrange them so they can see what the stack contains. The director then has the opportunity to talk at length about this particular production, about the choices that were made in approaching this play, how the play might function on an audience, and how we, as a group, will achieve this. Oftentimes, designers will follow the director with their designs. The costume designer can show the company the renderings and explain how the design was arrived at. The set designer can explain the model to the actors and also explain how the design was arrived at. At some point during this rehearsal, make sure that you tell the actors how they should get the rehearsal schedule. Will it be posted and where? Will you phone the actors with the rehearsal call? Is there a phone number that has the rehearsal schedule on the answering machine? There are many ways to get the rehearsal call to the actors. Before you do your first read through, talk to your director and find out if they expect you, the stage manager, to read the stage directions. Some directors want the stage managers to read every stage direction. Some, just the important ones like the phone rings or John shoots Bob. Usually, the directors tell the stage manager not to read the words that indicate how the actor is to play the line like angrily or dubiously. Each director will desire a slightly different amount of input from the stage manager during the read through. Usually, this means that you will have to decide on the fly, so stay alert. Use your stopwatch to time that first read through. I have found that act times for the first read through eventually are pretty close to the performance times for the piece. Times will expand during the staging rehearsals and during the first several run throughs, but then the act times will begin to shorten and wind up very close to those first reading times. After the read through, it's usually time for table talk. The director might wanna discuss relationships. The director might have questions for the company. There might be some discussion about the play from a personal point of view. Sometimes, research is introduced. Other times, the play is simply read again with questions asked and research folded into the reading. This second reading often takes considerably longer than the first reading. Watch the process. Watch how the seeds are planted. Watch how decisions are made. Watch where decisions will be slow in coming. Watch it like a hawk. But always remember, there is no single correct process. Every organization has a different way to conduct production meetings. And just like rehearsals, they can take many different shapes as to when they are held, who conducts them, who attends them, and what is to be covered in the meeting. Find out early who is expected to attend these meetings. Usually, every designer, every department head, the director, the production manager and the stage management staff are asked to attend. There might be others like the producer and the managing director. Certain staff members also might want to be there, find out what's expected, and make sure the right people are invited. Oftentimes, the stage manager runs these meetings, except in academic theater where the meetings might be run by the director. At the 1st production meeting, assume that everyone needs to know all the information. Earlier, we mentioned that it is the stage manager's responsibility to create the production meeting agenda. You'll want to distribute your completed agenda so that everyone has a chance to see it before the meeting starts. This will give everyone a chance to think about what points they would like to make when they bring it up at the meeting. These items will include cross department items such as pieces that will need to be built by props and then wired by electrics. At the end of the meeting, it's your job as the stage manager to take all the information, questions, and requests and write up a summarized version of what was decided at the meeting. Don't assume that just because they were there, they understood all those discussed. It's now up to you to take the information and process it into notes that will be distributed to all who attended the meeting. These are often called production meeting notes. Be sure before you adjourn the meeting that you have discussed when the next meeting will take place. There are as many ways to take down blocking as there are stage managers. Everyone has a slightly different method, and the best one is the one that works for you. My method is a combination of ideas that I've seen from other stage managers, some ideas that I've made up. I'll teach you my method, and you feel free to customize it for your needs. 1st, you'll need to have a symbol for every character in your production. Usually, the first letter of the character's name will suffice. Sometimes, there are many characters with names that start with the same letter. If that's the case, let the major character have the single letter and use the first two letters for the minor character. This works fine until you're doing a play where there are 3 characters whose names begin with s t, Stanley, Stella, and Steve. In cases like this, you will need to invent a variant of the letter s. It might become a dollar sign. It might have an arrowhead on it. It might have a cross at its base. In any case, you decide what the symbol will be for each and every character in your play before the actor gets on their feet and starts moving around. Write these symbols down in the beginning of your script as a a key for others to be able to translate your notations. Some quick symbols that I use are x for a cross, which is an actor moving across the stage, s with a tail pointing down for sit, r with a tail pointing up for rise, a squared off pie sign for table, a small squared off h for chair. A small o means of. If you have a number of chairs, you can assign each chair a number and write the number under the chair symbol. You will also be using shorthand for the traditional nine areas of the stage. My blocking notation takes the form of a sentence such as s crosses curved arrow to stage left. I use the arrow because it allows me to add a curve to avoid furniture or another character. Always use a pencil for blocking notation. Blocking isn't set in stone. It changes and your process should allow for that change. Follow along in the text. When a character makes a move, note the move on the text with a letter. Then, on the mini ground plan page opposite your text, write the letter followed by the blocking. The letter and the notation corresponds to the letter in the text, letting you know that the move happened at that moment in the text. So the first letter of my blocking notation is always a reference to the place in the script where the move took place. The first move on any page begins with a. The second is b, and so on through the page. On the next page, the alphabet starts over. The next letter in my notation is a symbol for the character. For the character Ben, I've decided on the capital b. If the first move on some page is Ben crossing stage right and sitting in a chair, I write it like this, a b x curved arrow, ampersand, s with a tail, chair symbol. The first letter a refers to the a on the page of the text where he started his move. The b x indicates that Ben crosses. The curved arrow indicates the direction as you face him. The ampersand indicates there's more to the notation. The s with a tail indicates that he sits, and the chair sign indicates that he sits in a chair. If there's more than 1 chair stage right, you might want to put a number under the chair symbol. Using the chair as a reference point, you can also note the position in relation to the chair. For example, if Ben crosses stage right to above the chair, abcrossarrow, the direction of the cross, to capital U, small o, chair symbol. If Ben crosses stage right up of a chair, the small o means of. So, if Ben crosses stage right to left of the chair, abx curved arrow to capital l, lowercase o, chair symbol. Now, the second move would be indicated with a b. How do you know the b means that it's the second move and not Ben? By its place in the structure of your notation. The first letter always indicates the position in the text. The second always indicates which character moves. Say, the first move is Ben crossing stage right to left of the chair. And the second move, Ben crosses stage left and turns off the light. Abx, arrow pointing right, 2, capital L, small o, chair symbol. B b x, arrow pointing left, the word light slash off. You will constantly be making up new symbols, so make sure that you keep track of them in your key. Sometimes, a new move is added to a scene in between 2 existing moves. Say, after letter a and before letter b, Susan rises from her chair. Since it happened after the a move, I call this move a 1. Mark the a one in your text where Susan stood up. Then on your blocking page, between move a and move b, write a one s rise, or your symbol for rise, the r with the tail pointing up. With this process, you can always adjust to additional blocking without having to start all over again. An arrow curving above a chair symbol indicates that the cross was made upstage of the chair. An arrow curving below a table indicates the cross was made downstage of the table, and so on. If a cross is made to an area of the stage, you can combine different letters to show where the actor crossed. For example, if Ben crosses to left of center stage, you can write this by saying capital L, small o, capital c, or left of center. If Ben crosses to just right of down center, you can indicate this by writing capital r, small o, capital d, capital c, or right of down center. How specific should you get? If your director asks for a move, be sure that you write it down. If your actor adds a move, be sure to write it down. Some of the moves will stay in the production and some will be cut. When a move is cut, either draw a line through the notation or erase it. The mini ground plan comes in handy when you have several people on stage and there are multiple moves. You can track them graphically on the mini ground plan. But be sure to also follow through with your blocking notation.