Blog posting, Sunday, October 03, 2010

Hello, I am now riding through Tennessee on the BUS! I will now take the time to write a more complete recounting of our time so far.

First, we had our second preview last night in Chattanooga at the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Auditorium. We had about 1700 people last night. What a wonderful crowd, we got a standing ovation. A friend of one of the cast members who has seen many incarnations of FIDDLER said this was one of the best casts he has ever seen and predicts we will only get better and better!! Yesterday, Sammy, our director, had us in early, fine tuning scenes and dance numbers, making sure we were in better positions for sight lines for the audience as well as having more fluidity in the scenes. Dialogue was helped along with more background information. Ken, the Assistant Director/Assistant Choreographer, gave great advice and counsel to us, adding more flavor and depth to our characterizations. It paid off, the performance was so much better.

I have said it before, and I will probably say it again throughout the next 9 months, this cast is exceptional. Every person, now including our clarinetist, mandolin player, violinist and trumpet player (they are on the bus with us as well as the merchandise lady and our Company Manager, Nicole) is incredible-very talented at what they do as well as being very interesting nice caring human beings! I am so lucky to be a part of this cast. Our Tevye, John Preece is a veteran of 9 National Tours and yet he is so supportive and wonderful to be with onstage, generous with his talent and with his humor! Our conductor, David Andrews Rogers, or DAR as he likes to be known has gone off to Singapore for a quick gig as part of a Musical Festival Celebrating Rock Musicians of the 1980’s. We will miss him, but Nathan will take over the baton. He is our rehearsal and pit pianist. Very talented!! DAR will rejoin us in Lincoln, Nebraska and will then be with us for the duration.

All of us this morning felt as if we have graduated from a very intensive course on building a top notch show and are now ready to spread our wings and perform on our own. Ken and Sammy as well as Suzayn, our Stage Manager and all of the fabulous Design Team were very much in charge during our Tech Week. The actors were very secondary to all of the various people and things that had to be accomplished during our marathon 9 days in Chattanooga. Luckily we had two performances or previews for audiences there. Now we are heading to Detroit to open on Wednesday, October 6, 2010. Sammy will meet us there and we will have more rehearsals where he will further refine our performances.

The crew is traveling separately in three 20 foot container semis! They had a load out last night and will load in to the theater on Tuesday. All of the costumes are in large gondolas as are the props and sets. It is quite amazing to see all of the thousands of articles of stuff that we use boxed up and sent on its way. Last night was hilarious in that we were trying out best to get out of costume and quickly give laundry, shoes, wigs, costumes, makeup and other various sundries to the appropriate person, who would then pack it up and load it on the correct gondola. My dressing roommate, Birdie, who plays “Yente” in the show, said it reminded her of a hospital room where the nurses keep coming in to take temperatures or straighten up while the poor patient is trying to sleep. We of course weren’t sleeping, but trying out best to get organized, yet having constant interruptions. Anyway, it all got done.

I haven’t mentioned the wig person, Sonia, a lovely young woman who is very calm under pressure. I have a quick change right before the song “Sabbath Prayer”.  For those of you who are not theatre people, a quick change is a costume change that has to occur on stage or in the wings as there is no time to get back to the dressing area. Usually it occurs in less than two minutes hence “quick change”. During the two days of rehearsals before the previews, I was not making it back on in time for my entrance. A scene is constructed in such a way that there are cue lines when an actor must be walking onstage in order for their next line or next action to be on time and not cause a huge gap with others standing onstage doing nothing….So since I was late both rehearsals it was a little disconcerting for me to say the least. At one point the director told the actors to start calling for me and adlibbing. When I finally got on I told them I couldn’t find my “Shaitle” (Yiddish for wig). Since we didn’t want this to happen during the actual performance, it was decided that we would have a quick change rehearsal. When we first started we finished in two minutes. Our Wardrobe Master, Jay, who is really on top of things, helped us figure out what comes off first and how to best get the dress on quickly. There were two people helping me and we practiced the moves 5 times and got it down to 50 seconds! Not bad, Huh?? Needless to say, I was on time, even early waiting for my cue for both of the previews. Every new theatre, and there will be 80 of them, will have a new dresser assisting me as well as Sonia, our wig lady helping me. Luckily Sonia will instruct the new dresser as to the sequence of events that have to happen to make the quick change work. Thank goodness, Sonia will be there and Jay will keep his eye on this as well. Ah, the life. Oh I didn’t mention that the quick change takes place behind the house on stage next to Tevye and his dresser, he has a quick change as well and there are four brawny stage hands back there waiting to move the house for the next scene, a little crowded. Oh, and we can’t let the audience see us!!! But we are getting it done.

Well that is enough for one day. I will let you know how the bus is in the next installment. We will be stopping for lunch soon.

More later…..