Won't You Please Take Me Along for a Ride?

Yesterday, we had our Forbidden Planet cue-to-cue rehearsal, a boring process but a valuable one for the lighting designer. Today, was our sitzprobe (a term from opera), the rehearsal where the actors sing the score with the band for the first time. For a New Line show, it's the first time the band has played the score together and it's the only time we'll run the music without running the whole show. Any potential problems or questions have to be sorted out in this one rehearsal. It's the most stressful part of the process for me, those four or five hours. But we have really talented, skilled musicians, and they pick up so much so fast.

The sitzprobe is a real turning point in each production. By this time, we've run the show several times, but only with solo piano. Particularly for a rock and roll show, it's just not the same. "Born to Be Wild" was not meant for solo piano. At the sitzprobe, the actors hear the incredible energy of the band for the first time, and the songs just leap to life. So, today was hard but it was also awesome -- our band ROCKS.

This is the weirdest time of the rehearsal process. All my hardest tasks are behind me, and yet I still can't think about anything but the show. Every waking hour. I can't accomplish anything that's not about the show. Ack!

As an example... After I got home tonight, in a desperate bid to escape RTTFP-on-the-Brain, I watched the film Frost/Nixon on cable. I had seen the play done extremely well by the Rep last fall The film was different but also very cool, very emotional, setting up those famous interviews as rounds in an existential boxing match. But then -- and I'm not kidding about this -- I started noticing parallels between Nixon and Dr. Prospero! Both of them do bad things thinking (or rationalizing) that it's for The Greater Good. Both their actions cause great harm. Both are challenged over their actions. Both volunteer to meet their fate before it can be thrust upon them.

See what I'm up against?

On the other hand, I am getting more and more zen-like about shows the older I get. For the last several shows, there's a point at which I realize that the end product is now out of my hands. The show is now the property of the actors and musicians. It's not theatre on the page; it's only theatre when performers bring it to life for an audience. I can still steer them a few more times, but it's theirs now. I set us on this road, I shaped our journey, but my work is largely done.

It will be what it will be. Some folks won't like it; hopefully far more will like it a lot. But we've done our best, we're made thoughtful choices, and experimented and played and explored, and the only real test now is that final missing piece: the audience. How will they receive it? Will we connect with them? Will the show be clear to them? Will they enjoy it as much as we do?

We will find out soon. Really soon.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Head Out on the Skyway

RTTFP Update: Our pre-sale is decent at this point. Hard to say what it'll be like be the time we open. Metrotix says our pre-sale is better than a lot of other local events right now. And the postcards just arrived, so hopefully that'll goose people into action. Also, Judy Newmark is doing a short piece about the show for the Post-Dispatch. We often get something in the RFT the week we open, but we never know beforehand.

I realized, watching a particularly funny run-through last night, that I don't really care if we get huge audiences (although that would be wonderful) and I don't care if everybody likes it (it's rare that a piece of art that's genuinely interesting is also hugely commercial). Whatever the reaction, I know this is a show that was worth doing, a show that was just waiting for us, a project to be proud of. It's twenty years old, but it's never been produced here before. If not us, then who?

When we did the deeply flawed but hilarious Anyone Can Whistle, people actually thanked us over and over for giving them a chance to see it. The same thing happened with The Nervous Set, Floyd Collins, The Cradle Will Rock, The Robber Bridegroom, High Fidelity... It may happen again with this show...

Part of what our company is about is sharing interesting, exciting work that nobody else will produce. Some of it is flawed and some of it is brilliant. Return to the Forbidden Planet is brilliant. And it's built exactly like a Shakespearean comedy -- and a 1950s science fiction movie! Two genres for the price of one! Luckily for us, Bob Carlton possessed the fearlessness to not only conceive of this crazy concoction but also the wisdom to see its potential and to follow through in writing it. There is so much smart and sly and subtle about this show, a lot of which some folks will probably miss. But I know I'll find new nuances every night sitting up in the booth watching my awesome crew literally throwing themselves around the stage. Hmmmm.... throwing themselves around the stage? Yes, very subtle. God love 'em.

New Line doesn't just produce shows I want to work on. It produces shows we ought to share with St. Louis audiences, to lay before them the full range of this amazing art form of ours. And what self-respecting musical theatre lover wouldn't kill to see a rarely produced gem like Return to the Forbidden Planet? That's who this is for.

Next week is Hell Week! Ack!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Get the Motors Running

We have moved into the theatre! Wahoo!

Well, we've blocked all of Forbidden Planet, the cast is largely off script, many of the costumes are done, and our set is mostly up. Holy crap! Load-in was Saturday afternoon, and thanks to our most excellent set designers, Jeff Breckel and David Carr, much of it was pre-built and just had to be assembled and tacked down. The actors who were there Saturday got their first glimpse of Betsy's spaceship uniforms, which are awesome!

We'll take some PR photos tonight, then run the whole show for the first time. We've run both acts individually and they're both in pretty good shape. But it will be so much fun to run the whole thing all together, so the actors really get a sense of the pacing and flow of the show. My hardest work as director (the actual staging) is done -- although the hardest part of my producing job is yet to come...

Now we get to my favorite part. We'll run the whole show every rehearsal and I get to see what we've wrought and to fine-tune it all. I probably won't give them too many notes this week, as they acclimate themselves to the actual set (rather than just folding chairs outlining the playing area in our rehearsal space). Then next week, after they've gotten fairly comfortable, I'll start fine-tuning and finding solutions for all the little problems and obstacles that will present themselves from now till (or even through) opening night.

I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve. I know I get to see our show in full blossom soon, but not quite yet...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

I'm Just a Soul Whose Intentions Are Good

I've been in a dark place this week. I've been having these weird dreams -- every single night I've been dreaming a different but related dream about me not being able to get into a theatre or not having my ticket or there's someone in my seat... you get the idea. The story is always different but I always wake up pissed off. Which I hate.

I finally realized it's my worry over where we're going to find a new theatre when our current space is no longer available in fall 2010. That's only 18 months away, so that problem is always in the back of my mind, and now, annoyingly, it's coming out in my dreams. At least I oughta get my own dream ballet! And my own Dream Curly! (musical theatre joke)

But I also get in a bad mood after the Kevin Kline Awards every year. By most measures, New Line is wildly successful. We're in our 18th season. We get tons of local press and a bit of national press now and then. We have a loyal donor base. We sell out a lot of performances (though fewer recently because we're in a much bigger house now). We get many, many rave reviews and almost no negative reviews. Audiences were thrilled by all three of our shows in 2008 -- Assassins, High Fidelity, and Hair. All three enjoyed repeat customers (a lot for Hair). And yet, in four years and after twelve shows, we've never even gotten a Kline nomination for our shows, for my direction, or for any of our leads. (We have gotten some nominations but none for the major categories.) And no one from New Line has ever won a Kline.

I know, awards don't matter. That's true, they really don't. It's the opinion of seven judges. Hardly something to be annoyed by. And truthfully, I'm incredibly uncomfortable with the very idea of winning awards for making art. That seems creepy and inappropriate to me. The only real measure is: do we connect to the audience in a meaningful way. And we do. And yet it still bothers me somehow that we get "de-Klined" every year. I admit it's ridiculous.

Really, other than my worry over where we'll move in 2010, everything else is going great. Forbidden Planet is going so well, and the cast is so strong and having so much fun. I am positive that our audiences will fall in love with this show. And we've chosen our shows for next season and all three of them positively thrill me!

So why am I in such a dark place? Maybe because I'm 45 now and New Line is 18, and yet it's still so hard to get shows up and opened. And we still don't have a permanent home. I feel like after all this time and all this success and all this praise, at some point it should be easier than it was ten years ago. But it's not.

And yes, I chose this life. I chose to live on the minuscule salary New Line pays me, plus a bit on the side from my books. I chose to start a company that does alternative work, a company that by definition does not attract a wide, mainstream audience, a company that by design operates on a shoestring; and doing often obscure, quirky shows that I'm constantly having to "sell" to actors, designers, etc. Maybe I'm just realizing that it's going to keep being hard as long as I do this. I thought it would get easier.

Part of my darkness is probably just that we're at that nebulous midpoint with Forbidden Planet, where I've poured all my ideas into the show, but it will take a few run-throughs for me to see what the result is, to see how good my work is, and what work still lies ahead. So I'm done with the biggest (and least fun) part of my job, but I don't get the payoff quite yet. I can sort of imagine the end product, but none of us really knows yet what this crazy and beautiful piece of art will be.

I don't have too long to wait though. We move into the theatre in a week and open 2 1/2 weeks later. I can't wait to hear the band and to see the set and costumes! This is the part of the process where I have to have faith and patience. Neither is my strong suit.

Ah, just shut up and go smoke a joint, Miller. Okay, if I have to...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott