Tech Week
We moved into the performance space at BU on Saturday and worked mostly on spacing. It was a long day but being in the actual space renews energy. Everyone's faces lit up when they got to see their new playground. We can all see the big picture now.
Sunday was our first 10 out of 12 (10 hours of rehearsal, 2 hours for dinner). It was our first time working with lights, sound, and costume. There was a lot of starting and stopping as we waited for light and sound cues to be created and quick costume changes to be completed.
The staircase posed the biggest challenge. We had no staircase in the rehearsal space and what we have now is vast. It's imposing and dramatic and everyone is adjusting well. I have no doubt that by the end of the run it will be a favorite space for the actors. On Sunday night, Adrianne and Ben bet Vicky (playing Young Siward) fifty dollars each that she couldn't run from backstage the theatre entrance all the way to the top of the staircase in sixty seconds. Now, mind you, to do this involves going out the theatre double doors, up four flights of stairs and down two very long corridors before hitting the door to the top of the marble staircase. Sixty seconds is all the time she has between the time Robin (playing Malcolm) charges her character to go and by the time she needs to reappear at the top of the stairs on the other side of the space to challenge Macbeth. Vicky, not one to shy away from a challenge, covered the distance with time to spare and adrenaline pumping. However, now she has to make that sprint every night for the next four weeks! Not quite easy money. Its moments like this that make the ten o'clock hour worthwhile after hanging out for nine plus hours on a Sunday.
Everything's coming together to set the mood, and the totality of this event is so clear. I can't wait for the audience to see this space. It is a castle, both cavernous and intimate; it includes you in the action in every way. The costumes are fabulous, both masculine and feminine, lights and sound are maddening and moody and the set is an abstract of decaying royal domesticity. I marvel at how much these details add. You think all this time you've been living the story, but this puts it in perspective.
Anon,
Dawn M. Simmons
Assistant Director
the management
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