PTT Program 5 Day 5 Video 1.txt

One of the more important jobs you'll have during rehearsal is tracking the props. You'll need to know where they start, who uses them, and where they wind up. As soon as the actors start on their feet, you'll want to start a preset list, a list where all the prompts start at the top of each scene....

One of the more important jobs you'll have during rehearsal is tracking the props. You'll need to know where they start, who uses them, and where they wind up. As soon as the actors start on their feet, you'll want to start a preset list, a list where all the prompts start at the top of each scene. This is usually done on a legal pad. You want a system that allows constant changes. Remember, this preset list is a fluid document. Expect changes. List all the various areas that will have props preset on them. For example, the table. On the table, there might be a book, a set of keys, and a glass of milk. Write down table and under it write book, keys, glass of milk. Now this doesn't tell you where on the table these items belong. You might want to include a diagram showing the spatial relationships or you might wanna make a small pencil mark on the table. You might even wanna take a Polaroid or digital photograph of the table. However you do it, make sure that the actors can count on you to not only have the items in the exact same place, but the book open to the same page, The milk to be at the same level in the glass. Take notes to make sure that you do it the same every time. If another item is added to the table, incorporate that item into your prop list and into your diagram. If there's food in rehearsal, always make sure that the plates, glasses and silverware are clean. Wash them after every use. Put your stamp of cleanliness on these props. If an actor has to worry about whether something is safe to eat, they're not thinking about the proper things. It all gets back to building a strong safety net for them. If you lose their confidence, it's gone for good. Once you move into tech rehearsals, cover your prop tables in butcher paper and outline in magic marker or Sharpie where each prop will be preset. This way, you can see if the prop is in the right spot at a glance. In the silhouette on the butcher paper, also write the name of the prop and the scenes in which it is used. Paying solid attention to prop presets is a way for you to quickly gain the confidence of your actors. Conversely, it can also be a quick way to lose their confidence if the props are not set properly. After each rehearsal, you'll compile a list of information and send it to the various departments and individuals involved in the production side of your show. This information is timely. It needs to get to the proper people on a daily basis. The name of the game is communication. Daily notes are an itemized list of all the information that you found out about the show that will be needed in the various production departments. All the department heads and all of the designers should most definitely get dailies. Anytime an actor uses something in a way that it is not designed for, that's a daily note. If someone leans back in a chair and rests on 2 legs, tell props. Chairs are meant to be used with 4 legs in the floor, and props will want to know. There might be a reason that the actor can't lean back on 2 legs. It might be a borrowed chair. It might be an antique that cannot be strengthened. If Props tells you that a certain piece cannot be used in a certain way, make sure that it isn't used that way. Be sure to tell your director and also tell them why. They might wanna cut the business. They might want props to find another chair. It's your job to find out and pass along all the information so that the people around you can make the very best choices. If your director wants an actor to look at an imaginary window down center, your note to electrics might say, character Susan looks out of a window down center. The lighting designer might want to put a window gobo into his plot for down center. Then again, he might not. If you don't have any notes for department, simply note sound, no notes. This way the sound department doesn't think that maybe their notes somehow didn't make it on to the dailies. It's all about communication. Even if you have nothing to communicate, communicate that you have nothing to communicate. It's never appropriate to scold or punish someone through the daily notes. If you have issues with someone, take it up in private. If you have information that is of a sensitive nature, don't include it on the daily notes. If you know that someone is disabled, or having a personal problem, make a phone call instead. Never embarrass someone through the daily notes. In most high school theaters, the notes are given personally, or put in a sealed envelope and stapled to the call board with the department's name on the envelope. The call board is the nerve center of an academic theater. You should check the call board at least twice a day for schedule changes or other information. Daily notes should contain the rehearsal schedule for the next day. However you decide to do this, remember they're your notes. It's your job to get the information out to everyone. All the items listed on the daily notes should become items for the next production meeting to make sure that all the departments have followed through on their notes. There are as many different approaches to directing as there are directors. No 2 directors work exactly alike, so there's no one size fits all relationship for working well with directors. Hi. I'm John Bredkowski. I'm an equity actor and I've directed many shows. I'd like to talk to you about what makes a good stage manager from a director's point of view. 1 of a stage manager's early goals should be to establish a solid working relationship with the director, and then keep nurturing that relationship. A good stage manager discovers the director's needs and methods, and then tries to anticipate those needs and methods. The ultimate goal is to have a smooth, organized, and thoughtful rehearsal process. A good stage manager always supports the director and never does anything that indicates anything negative about a director. A backbiting stage manager will do more to damage a production than you can imagine. If the relationship between the director and the stage manager sours, the whole production will suffer. If for example, an actor comes up to the stage manager on a break and starts to complain about the director, a good stage manager voices support of the director and changes the subject, letting that actor know that he or she is not going to join in and that the subject is off limits. And above all, a good stage manager never ever fights with a director, especially in front of the cast. If you fight with the director, you lose. Even if you win the argument, you lose. That's true of every relationship in theater. Let your ideas be known, but in private, not in front of the whole cast. And remember, it's the director who has the final decision. As the director is working with the actors, a good stage manager tries to discern where the production is headed, the timings that the director is seeking, the outcomes that the director desires. That kind of understanding will help immeasurably during technical rehearsals and performances. Learn the vocabulary of your director. Many words in theatre have multiple meanings. Learn what your director means, so that when you have to maintain the performances, you have ready access to the words that he or she has already used. A good stage manager is a solid resource for the director and needs you to understand where the director and cast are trying to go and what they need to get there. Hi. I'm Carrie Hauck. In my job as a casting director, I've worked with 100 of professional actors. I also acted professionally in dozens of plays before I got into the casting business. I'd like to talk a little bit about the role of the stage manager from the actor's point of view. The primary goal of a stage manager is to build a strong safety net for the actors, so they can be free to worry about the things that they need to worry about like how to play a certain scene, learning their lines, or inhabiting a role. The last things actors need to worry about are things like, will my props be set in the right place? Is this glass been washed? Is someone on book? Actors need to know and trust the environment in which they are working. Setting and maintaining this environment is the stage manager's job. When an actor calls for a line, the stage manager should quickly say the next three words loudly. The idea here is to get the actors back on track as fast as possible. If they can't hear the cue and the stage manager has to repeat them again, time has been wasted. When actors say the wrong word, the stage manager should circle the word lightly in the prompt book and show the actor the proper word at the first opportunity. Sometimes, it might be appropriate for the stage manager to type up the line mistakes and distribute them the next day. This is a no way design to embarrass the actors. It is a tool for them to find out where they still need to work on lines. If actors skip a line or sentence, the stage manager should quickly get them back on track by saying the omitted line loudly, quickly, and without inflection or interpretation. Actors shouldn't be allowed to go too far down the wrong path. One of the goals of rehearsal is to learn the sequence of the show. The longer the actors rehearse something wrong, the harder it will be for them to get it right. Good actors are precious and need to be treated as such. Bad actors want to be good actors and should be given every opportunity to be good. This doesn't mean that actors are allowed to treat either the stage management staff or technicians rudely. That simply cannot be allowed. Actors must treat everyone with respect. The stage manager helps establish an atmosphere of respect and professionalism amongst the ensemble of actors and technicians. The sound plot is a document that lists all the sound cues that the sound operator will play during the performance. It starts the beginning of the play and works in sequence to the end of the play. I like to label the sound cues with letters. For example, sound a, sound b, sound c, and so on. If you have a level change during the cue, you can simply add a number to the letter. For example, sound a 1 might be a cue to increase the volume of sound q a at a certain point in the cue. And sound a 2 might be a slow fade on a 10 count. The reason I use letters for sound is there are so many cues that have numbers. The electric or light cues have numbers. The fly cues have numbers. The turntable might have numbers. This way, there's at least one set of queues that do not have numbers, and I find it avoids a certain level of confusion. The sound plot should be made at a point late enough in the rehearsal so that you know all the cues in the correct sequence. You might also know how long the cue is supposed to be. The sound board operator rewinding. There are many options for recorded sound these days. There are many disc players, DAT machines, cassettes, CDs and many other ways, the sound board operator will choose the best way for your production with the options available. Your job is to make sure that they have the information to do it correctly. What I like to do is label across the page from left to right the following headings, cue, page, peace, time, speaker, and volume. The cue is what you will call it during the show, whether it's sound a or sound t 3. Page is the page in your script that the cue occurs on. This allows the operator to know approximately how much time there is before his next cue. Peace is what the piece is, whether it's a dog barking, Beethoven's 5th Symphony, or waves on a beach. If it's a piece of music, you will also want to tell them where in the music the cue starts. For example, 1 minute and 20 seconds into the second cut on a particular CD. Be as specific as possible to avoid taking time during tech. Time means the length of time the cue takes. If you're playing an entire song, you can say entire cut on the sound plot. If you know you need 3 minutes and 25 seconds of waves crashing on a beach, note 3 minutes and 25 seconds on the sound plot under time. This will help keep the operator from recording too much or too little of a cue. You should also tell the board operator that these timings are rehearsal hall timings. The actual timings might change when they happen on stage. Speaker refers to the speaker the cue is to come from. If the cue is a dog barking in the backyard, then your speaker note might say upset her speaker. If the cue is for music to come from the radio, then your note might say radio speaker. Very often, the speakers are general speakers for the theater. Just mark them general. The volume column is for the sound board operator to mark down the volume that is decided during tech rehearsals. Since you won't know what these are, just type in a line for the operator to fill in later. If you need to give more information about a sound cue, you can type it in after you have filled out the previous information. For example, after cue a and before cue b, you might type sound a cross fades into sound b, or sound c will start before sound b has played out. So, both cues will be happening at the same time. You might find yourself in a position where a cue has been added after you have already made up the sound plot. You don't want to relabel all the cues. So if it happens after sound k and before sound l, call the new cue sound k 10. Avoid using the letter q. If you say sound q, your operator might hesitate waiting for the letter, so just skip it. If you have more cues than letters in the alphabet, go back to the top and call them double a, double b, double c, and so on. Your organization might already have a system set up. If so, do it that way. Remember your job in all this is getting the information to the sound operator. They can't do their job unless they have the information. Just as you made a sound plot for the sound board operator, you will have to make cue sheets for the other technicians that will be performing other cues during the show. The one exception to this is the lightboard operator. You get the cues for lights from the lighting designer. We'll talk more about this later. All the others who will execute cues during the show will need cue sheets that tell them what the cue is called and what happens when the cue is called. You don't wanna say bring in pipe number 2 and take out pipe number 4 when all you have to say is fly 1. But how is the fly man supposed to know what fly 1 means unless he has a cue sheet? A cue sheet is a list of all light cues on a single page. The fly cues, for example. Or if you have moving platforms, you would need a platform cue sheet. If you have panels that zip across the stage, you would need a panel cue sheet. If you're using a turntable, you'll wanna use a turntable cue sheet. Start at the beginning of your show and list all the fly cues and what happens with each cue. Fly 1 might be to take out the main curtain. So on the left right, fly 1. And the next column say main curtain out. The second fly cue might be to fly in a street backdrop on, say, pipe 4, and also to take out the forest drop on pipe 6. So your cue sheet should say fly 2, pipe 4 in, then pipe 6 out, and sew out through the show. Leave plenty of room for notes. Your technicians will probably want to write down how fast to operate certain cues or watch for certain things. Also, cues change in tech rehearsal. So if there are changes, your operators will have to note the changes on their cue sheets. As I said earlier, you get the light cues from the light designer. You should schedule a meeting where you and the lighting designer can sit down and put the cues in your book. The light designer will tell you what the cue is called, the number, and where to call the cue. Before you actually have to call the cue, find out whether they're called electrics cues or light cues. Theaters have different names for them, so find out what protocol is used at your theater. The reason some theaters call them electrics cues is because saying, lights 4 can sound an awful lot like fly 4. And in the heat of the moment, you're liable to see fly 4 instead of lights 4. The more complex the show, the more cue sheets you will have to make. Once, doing a production of Dracula, I had to make cue sheets for flies, platforms, fog, projections and bats. Then, take all the cue sheets and put the cues neatly into your calling script. If the cues happen on a word, circle the syllable of the word where you want to make the call. Then, using a straight edge, draw a line to the margin on the right and write in the cue, say, fly 5. If you have more than one cue being called at the same time, list them all together, then bracket them so that you know that they're all being called at the same time. Lights and sound cues often happen together at the ends of scenes. If the cue is on an action, using a straight edge, make a line where the action takes place in your script, then write down what the action is in the line you just made. Say, electrics 45 and Soundell happen when Romeo sits in the chair. On your straight edge drawn line, write, Romeo sits in the chair. Follow that line to the right margin and write E45, And then right below it, write s l, then connect the 2 of the bracket. Since there are so many more electrics and sound cues than fly cues, I only write e for electrics and s for sound. If you wanna write the entire word, be my guest. The important thing here is to make it easy to read, not only for yourself, but someone else should you wind up in the hospital or worse. Keep your calling text clean and easy to read. Take your time. After you have put all the cues into your book, you'll wanna go back and put warnings in your book. Write a warning or standby for each cue above the actual cue in your book. You can warn multiple cues together if they happen to be in the same sequence. The warning or standby should be given about 10 to 15 seconds before the actual cue is called. I make a little dot in my book on the word that I should begin talking for both the warns and the cues. If I find that I have to move the warning, I just erase the dot and move it to where I think the best place should be. This way my cue calls are consistent and the operators can count in a smoothly called show. When you put the cues into your book, always use pencil. Cues will change. Be prepared to change your book. Think about how you will call every cue in your show. Make cue sheets when you need to and make sure that they are clearly entered into your call and text. There is no standard procedure for technical rehearsals. Find out early what is expected and when it is expected. Some theaters begin tech rehearsals with actors in costume. Others fold costumes in at a later date. Some focus each rehearsal on one specific element of tech, while others wanna see everything at once. Once you know what to expect, make sure that everyone else does also. Make a tech week schedule telling everyone when rehearsals happen and what will happen at each rehearsal. Include the times the actors are called to the rehearsal and when the rehearsal will end. As you slowly work your way through the show, try to make sure that everything is perfect before you move on to the next segment. Having said this, it is nearly impossible for everything to be perfect in a tech rehearsal. The lighting designer might wanna make some change in the color on some instruments or maybe the focus. The director might want the sound operator to add another speaker for a certain cue. All of these take time that you might not want to spend while the actors are standing around waiting. I have found my best approach is to fix the things that can be fixed quickly and move on to the next sequence, and take notes on the things that will take more time to complete. As soon as you get to the theater for your tech rehearsal, check with every department and find out what will be missing from this particular rehearsal. There might be something your director is expecting to see that might not be ready yet. Get the list and make sure your director and actors know what's missing. At the beginning of the day, I like to announce the actors not to wander away after a scene shift. Chances are, it'll be run again and possibly again and again. Instead, stay close to their exit and make sure that they are indeed moving on to the next scene. If you are able, you might announce that we are moving on over the PA system. Every time the rehearsal comes to a stop, you should know why it has stopped and about how long it will take to resume. Sometimes, it's just a change in the preset. Sometimes, the lighting designer needs time to build the next cue. Sometimes, you have to go down to the stage to see exactly what the problem is. Don't be slow getting there. Find out what the problem is, discuss the solution quickly and move on. After every tech rehearsal, I advise you to have a brief production meeting to discuss the notes from the director and the designers. You'd also wanna discuss problems that the actors are having with anything technical. Since this is happening right after the rehearsal, you won't be expected to have a prepared agenda. Make sure that the director and all the departments have an opportunity to speak. Make sure that everyone is on the same page as far as what is needed, and that all the notes have gone to the right people before dismissing the meeting. When you get into full tech dress rehearsals, advise the actors that you're going to try not to stop. Of course, if it's a matter of safety or if they simply can't continue, then stop. But the goal is to keep the show moving. Notes will be taken by the director and the designers, and the actors will be asked for problems after the run through. Then make sure the actors have that opportunity to mention problems. Everyone will learn a great deal about the show during tech rehearsals. There's lots of information flying around. Your main job is to learn how to call the show. Your secondary job is to keep the rehearsal on schedule. Stay on top of things and exercise patience.