ENTER THE REHEARSAL HALL -- WHERE THE MAGIC BEGINS!

There is something magical about sitting in an audience as the house lights dim.

The buzz in the room settles into quiet anticipation as we wait to be transported into someone else's world, someone else's story. But what we see on the stage is just the culmination of weeks, sometimes months of work behind the scenes by artists of all description: actors, directors, designers, wardrobe people, carpenters, painters, sound and light experts and others.

This blog will give you a fly-on-the-wall glimpse into that unknown world, following the rehearsal process.
This will be your guide to the hard work, fun and weirdness of putting together a play
for a professional theatre company.

You'll never watch a play in the same way again!

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Tuesday, September 25 -- Day Fifteen


Talk about life imitating art. I can't go into too much detail about what happened at lunch today for fear of giving away some things that happen in the play. But it was pretty funny.

PTE provided the staff and cast with a nice pizza lunch today, with cake for the people with September birthdays and gifts for people celebrating milestone years working at this fine place. So we had a good time sitting around the big table. Alana was happy because 650 of the 1000 receipt books required for the show had arrived (sorry about the props by the way). They look like receipt books but they're blank and after the run is over, will be given to everyone to use as scratch pads or little tiny sketchbooks. We quickly discovered a small error on the front of the books, and from that moment, the conversation played out very much like the dialogue in the play. " Did you see this? Who proofed this?" Bob - just to keep the drama going like a good director should - tried to make everyone believe that Brian (the designer) was going to be really mad about it. Turns out the finger of blame is pointing right at Brian himself. For added entertainment value, this particular error prompted a series of wisecracks about male sexual performance drugs. What was the error? Well, I can't tell you that because it would spoil all your fun trying to find it when you come to the play. If you spot the error, you win a little tiny sketchbook.

Spent most of the day on that same benighted scene I've been trying to fix for months. Think it's maybe 10 to 15 percent better: we'll find out tomorrow. At the end of the day today I had the pleasure of watching a run of Act Two. The boys made me cry. And here I thought my days of boys making me cry were behind me.

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