The cast that plays together…

August 5, 2008 · Filed under General Description, Silly · Tagged ,

…does? We went out for the first real time after a rehearsal, at least that I know of. Pizza house called my name not once this week, not twice, not three times, but… oh, it was three times actually. Or five, but it doesn’t really matter how many times it was, now does it? Wow, so it was pizza house for a great cast get-together post rehearsal extravaganza. We had 15 and they had big tables to accommodate. There was a boy named Ryan to serve us and he did a fine job. Thank you. Minus the exploding glass.

It wasn’t exactly an explosion, but the result of hot glass, cold beverage? No comped alcohol for sam as repayment was unfortunate, but I suppose understandable for the type of restaurant. Sam raised the glass, not to toast, but to drink. The bottom of the glass fell off and liquid – icy, cold liquid – flowed viciously across the table and onto Sam’s, well… He asked for a towel. And a whiskey I believe.

We had a great time, being that loud and annoying group of people who like each other and care little for the comfort of the people around them. Additionally, there was a show on one of the large distractavisions hanging in the corner of the restaurant that was showing 100 crazy ass bloopers that hurt like hell. It probably wasn’t named that, but at least something close. It was distracting and wonderfully horrible to watch.

This was after the first half of our first act run. Thursday was the first time we had the “full” cast and the artistic crew together to start our hard work on combining everything. All in all, we got through a little more than the first act – just past the first midnight. (You would think considering there are three midnights that it wouldn’t be halfway. Eh, prologue!) We moved through the music pretty well, with only a couple bumps, especially considering the complexity of the show. 

The second half of the act was Sunday. We went out after that too. Almost to Pizza House. Ha. Café Habana was the goal to celebrate Kat’s birthday. Unfortunately, the shut down the food at 10:00 pm and we had nice princes to sing after rehearsal that kept the princess, the to-be-mother and myself to almost that time. ABC, (arbor brewing company), was the destination for the hungry and then the thirsty who had already spent some time in cuba came and joined us later. We drove out a nice old couple of the back area where we were sitting. It seems that our outings have this theme to them.

The second half of the act was also good. It’s impressive to see a slight level of polish to the show on the first “run”. Obviously, it’s reassuring that we’re not opening right now, considering we haven’t even blocked most of the second act yet, but the first act feels like a show unto itself. It feels good to know we’re moving along and I think we’re all feelings increasingly encouraged by the process. Into the woods!

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Go team prologue

July 31, 2008 · Filed under General Description · Tagged , ,

Returned from the edge of science, or at least the edge of the country, Sam is back and directing again. This means that my hermitic existence as the lone wolf music director is ebbing, and we’re approaching the more collaborative moments in the rehearsal process. Having completed all of the “music only” days, my role shifts now to being the rehearsal pianist/guy who yells corrections in the middle of blocking rehearsals and runs. Unlike some shows where the stage action and the songs are relatively separate, Into the Woods is a much more integrated show, and so it’s difficult to run scenes without the music director, or at least a rehearsal pianist in attendance.

The last two days of rehearsal have been the race to block and run the prologue for act I. We’re lucky that the singers worked so hard on learning the music for the first act, as neither Sam nor I have any idea how we could have blocked the prologue if they hadn’t been so prepared musically. We ran the music for the prologue over and over again and then slowly added in the blocking for scenes. Getting to see the actors singing their music while regarding the taped floor and while incorporating entrances, exits, moments, motivation and all that other acting stuff is really rewarding. The prologue is so exciting, even just musically, that when you add the staging, it just really is a thrill to watch.

The consistent level of excellence that our actors are bringing to their character development, even when just running scenes or doing the initial run after getting the blocking is so impressive. Every time I start the “ba-chunk chunk chunk chunk” of the prologue accompaniment, people snap right back into character from where ever they were, (which honestly, happens to be some pretty crazy places), and they are knocking out some great performances in our shabby little rehearsal hall.

Now of course, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t the occasional moments of humor or break. The first time we try out jokes, like a zap to the groin by a witch’s spell or a giddy laugh at Cindy’s misfortune, we all crack up instantly. But you have to have those moments now so that we can have the straight delivery on stage that’s going to make those jokes read so well to the audience. I mean, after all, who doesn’t find a fake cow doing anything funny?

After two nights, the prologue is blocked and now we start a two day attempt at running the first act. This will be the first time I see any of the staging, and I’m very eager to see what Sam has been working on, and I’m sure he’s eager to hear it all sung as well. The best part of working to present a musical is that all these people work so hard individually on their piece, but it all has to come together in the end. That collaboration is what I’m most excited about in the coming weeks.

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ACT test

July 30, 2008 · Filed under General Description · Tagged , ,

The show would be considerably easier if it didn’t have to be memorized. Not only is there a lot of music, lines, stage directions, choreography, etc, it’s all very difficult. The music is of course what I’m most familiar with, so I can really only speak to the difficulty of that task. Stevie seems to think that people obviously have no trouble what-so-ever remembering words, especially the multiple sets of different words that he conveniently places on the same musical phrases throughout the show. The quintessential example is the “Into the woods, duh dun duh dun” theme which has about 17,000 different word combinations that get thrust upon the poor unsuspecting performers throughout the show. 

I say all this because last night was our first attempt at an off-book sing through of the first act. We took the opportunity to run a few of the songs with movement/choreography first, which was great to see. I’d been in on some of the work with agony, and so it wasn’t much of a surprise to see the princes pining for their honey-fellows, but was fantastic to get to see the midnights starting to come together, the intercourse between red and her furry friend and of course the full ensemble number at the end of the first act finale. That being the most choreographed feeling number I’ve seen, I only wish I could look up from the piano more when I’m playing so that I could have seen what all was going on. They did a fantastic job, and I just get more and more elated about this show’s possibilities as we work.

Our vocal only rehearsal started after all of that, and we sang through, fairly successfully, the entire first act. I wasn’t looking to see if people had really fully abandoned their scores, but from all accounts, people were not using them while singing. They evidently only got pulled out during the breaks to check what was coming up. The score as security blanket approach seems like a good place to be at the moment, especially with the inability to see people on a completely consistent basis to remind them of their music.

Tomorrow, we start to block the prologue, with the return of Sam, we can now return to normal things like that. And by the end of this week, we’ll have run the entire first act, though it’s planned over a couple of nights to make that happen. In any event, regardless, things are starting to get pretty exciting with Into the woods. As we get closer and closer to the opening, more running and less working is going to start happening, and we can see how all that prep work has paid off.

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I open at the close

July 28, 2008 · Filed under General Description · Tagged , ,

MUSIC REHEARSAL on 7/24

We started with the ending of act 2 of course. Well, actually we started with a warm-up. No, we started with me explaining when people sing, which I would generally propose as an important thing to communicate to people, especially at a music rehearsal. So after those communicae like, “I know it seems like you all come in during part 4, but it’s actually in part 3 that you start”, and “This one is lower, thankfully, but different, sorry”, had been communicated it was right to the end.

We almost had the whole cast there, which was a treat for me to see, since I am generally blessed with more intimate interactions with the players in 1-6 person groups, depending on the section. This time we got to work out the big choral finish and I am convinced that if the musical doesn’t pan out, they’d make a very nice choir. We worked out a very tender chord under one of the witches warnings about the things you tell children, which is something she always seems to be rambling on about. We also worked on being able to sing softly, something not always appreciated in a musical theater production, and I was happy with the results.

After we worked out the chords we needed to, we went back and learned parts 3 and 4 of the second finale and had a chance at running it in its entirety. Then it was back to the finale of the first act, which thankfully was still in a relatively comfortable place with the cast. No major problems as we worked on it occurred and we were able to run the entire act I finale, plugging in our stepmother for the first time who did a fantastic job. Our Florinda was both our Florinda and Lucinda because of our other stepsister being involved in another show in tech week. But even with not having the whole family united, things went well.

I decided that some midnights were in order while we had everyone there,  seeing as they are some of the most involved ensemble numbers we have in the show, and that movement rehearsals of the pieces had been hampered by our lack of comfort with midnights. So, we ran the first and then the second several times and started to, if not understand what Stevie was doing, at least appreciate enough to get it right.

Openings were last, as they should be really. First act first though, which I know is confusing. We had some rhythmic problems getting through all the parts, but on a second run, were able to correct almost everything. Entrances are a big challenge here, because the accompaniment seems to just plunk along on the same chord without ceasing and you have to count 1-2-3-and or something difficult like that the first time, which of course is 1-7-15-e-ah the second time and you don’t count at all the third time, just feeling it. It will come with more practice, but we haven’t had that much more practice yet, so it still hasn’t quite arrived.

The second act opening was a little less prepared as we have had less time with it, and even though there is less to sing in it, it’s much more difficult harmonically. Jack and Mother, Baker and Wife, Cinderella and Prince all have pretty unique vocal lines which the Stepfamily, with the exception of the father join in on to make things more complicated. Several 4 5 and 6′s later, we came out on the other side of the openings, just a little shy of 10 PM and really had made a dent in the learning of the music for this show. 

Everyone worked really hard and was definitely interested in getting it right, so if we can keep that attitude going, I can’t imagine anything but brilliant success in the future. I’m sure we could stand with a little bit more brilliant and flawless performance now, but it’s rehearsal after all, and as long as we get there by our opening, I think we’ll all be satisfied.

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You’ve changed…

July 24, 2008 · Filed under Silly · Tagged

Since last Sunday, and until this coming Monday, Sam has been pursuing his real job as a post-doc in chemistry, and they had some time with the “machine”, so he had to drop everything and fly out to the west coast. In the meantime, it’s been a reprise of music rehearsals from the beginning of our time together, with a full week of banging our heads against notes. We’re starting to win the battle in places however, so there is some joy to be garnered from that.

In a while the cat’s away kind of mentality, it had been suggested to me by some friends of ours that I take over the complete artistic control of the show while Sam is off shooting lasers at something, or breaking particles apart, or something with rats, who knows. So, what have we changed then?

  • The witch will now be played by a drag queen. However, our current witch is so serious about the role, she’s taking the necessary steps to ensure she keeps it.
  • Because of the lack of room in the pit for a percussionist, we will be placing the percussionist on stage, representing the post-production, post-manufacturing version of the woods.
  • Milky white, Jack’s beloved cow, has been changed to Milky stand-in, due to the complexity in construction. Our current sketch is a movable ballet bar with a hand-written sign on it that says, “cow… moo”
  • On the other hand, the Hen that lays golden eggs and is to be remote controlled is also being fitted with lasers and a flame thrower. We’re hoping to appeal to some of the summer blockbuster crowd.
  • We thought the second act was a little too dark for the younger audience so we cut it. Happy now, and happy hence and happy ever after.
  • Too many words… actors are being encouraged to sing, “into the woods, duh dun duh dun…” whenever possible.
  • Since I don’t have much experience with coaching acting, we’ve cut all of the scenes when things are spoken, and now are only doing the musical numbers. Who needs plot, eh?
  • We’ve rescored the whole thing to be performed with a rock band, much more timely. I’m sure Stevie wouldn’t mind

I think those changes seem all for the best. And I’m sure Sam won’t mind, it’s only his vision we’re playing with after all.

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Structure

July 24, 2008 · Filed under General Description · Tagged , , , ,

I’m late. I should have done this back at the start but here we are in the middle of it, and that’s probably the most apropos way to begin this anyway. So, I’ll jump around to fill it all in. I’m only disclaiming this so that I can blurt out my new thoughts while I have them and still have the opportunity to go back and recollect the other thoughts as I have the time.

The week of what seemed like the 31st of June, though clearly must have been the 1st of July due to that pesky 30 days hath rule was a musical blitzkrieg. Less destructive than you may have imagined, we set out to finish the week having seen the entirety of the notes for the first act of the show. The first act of Into the Woods, were it not written by Sondheim, would have probably been split in the middle at some illogical point, or maybe after milky white dies and been made into a perfectly happy and morally boring show of it’s own. But instead, Sonheim, in his infinite wisdom and desire to make things difficult, wrote a second, more poignant act that follows a seriously difficult and long first act of singing, acting, moving and cow jokes.

I was leaving at what seemed to me to be the start of July, but actually was known as the second week for North Carolina to go into the woods to a camp in Arden to work with Middle School singers and to meet some great new conducting friends and to see a bunch of camp friends, both old and new. Because of my schedule, Sam and I knew that we had to get the music learned early. What other way was there to prepare the cast to go into blocking with knowledge of their songs than to be so intensive for a week? We may be making it out to seem more like a movie schedule than a theater production, but it is the summer, and people travel, especially the directors who are supposed to be in charge, so this is how it’s come to be.

So, without straying too far from the path in my description here, the moral is there was a lot to learn, and it needed to  be done by the time I left. So we broke it down and I saw people individually. And I left the cast on the thursday of that week, (which I won’t even venture to guess what day in July it was), having heard them sing through the opening of the show with a convincing amount of notes and rhythms sung accurately and several fantastic moments of character.

In the weeks before, I had become acquaintance to the host of people who could have been in our show, but now this week I was finally getting to meet the Baker and his Wife, the witch, the young girl with the cape, a wolf, two princes, a girl in a tower, a young lad, his mother, a young maiden with a world of social opportunities ahead of her, her dead mother who lives in a tree, and others, who I all got to work with individually. I asked everyone coming through the door, “Are you excited about the show?”

“I’m so excited”

“This show got me into musical theater”

“…eh? I mean, I’ve always wanted to be in this show, I can’t wait!”

So the response is overwhelmingly positive, and it showed when people came in to work. We were eager to start singing the music and start peeling back some of the layers of a very complex show to see what all Stevie had hidden there for us to find. These fairy-tale fellows I found were fantastic singers, who were prepared and even at the start were ready to bring their character into their singing. The first act had been sung, though not all at once, and certainly not from memory, but we had at least encountered the pitches and shaken hands with the rhythms and gotten to see some glimpses of the moments that we’ll get to study later. It left me leaving that Saturday, eager to return and anxious to get a chance to sit at the piano with the cast again.

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Into the blog… er, woods

July 24, 2008 · Filed under General Description · Tagged , , , , , ,

Hope it’s good to meet me. Scot Hanna-Weir, musical director for Ann Arbor Civic Theater’s production of Stevie Sondheim’s Into The Woods that opens on September 11th, 2008 at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theater in the Michigan League building on the campus of the University of Michigan. Day to day, excluding summers, I help youngish ones, and youngish ones becoming older ones make vocal music together as a vocal music teacher in michigan public schools. In this particular exclusion from that daily activity, I’ve been working with an incredibly talented collection of folks to put together a fantastic piece of theater art.

We began rehearsals back in June, on a day that was like the 30th. We sat in the garage/warehouse/shop/office/cranny that I’ve been held up in a good portion of the summer for the first time since our auditions the two weeks before as a production staff to assess what we had done and what was left to do. Auditions were finished, which was about all I had to report, other than out of those 80 vignettes of singer/actor/dancers we had cast a show of incredible individuals, who despite the looming peril of undertaking Sondheim seemed positively elated to be undertaking this project. Pop-up book models of set pieces were passed around along with stage diagrams with fly rails numbered and light electrics indicated. There was a mechanical chewing and dying cow to be built, costumes to collected and the show of course, to be learned.

First on that list was meeting the cast, who came in and got whisked away to be assessed in height, shape and deed. It reminds me that I bailed on the opportunity to be in an opera in undergrad because I was confused about a costume fitting and so never undertook the show. I think I’d have the courage to face the tape measure now that I know the results can be worth it.

We sat in an energy circle and introduced ourselves one at a time, in full on first day of school fashion. What’s your name, where do you come from, what do you do, who are you when you’re in the woods.

When I was a camp counselor, we used to do the same kind of introductions as our campers arrived on sunday for each week. Though, we also added fun questions like: If you were a piece of living room furniture, what piece would you be. Or, if you were a set of kitchen appliances, what kind of finish would you have. And of course, in regards to toilet paper and it’s use: wrap or wad?

We dove right into the music on the first day, and for the first week. Of course our first piece was the last, how biblical of us. We started with the act I finale, breaking the characters into their groups for the round of “though it’s fearful, though it’s deep and though it’s dark, and though you make loose the path, etc…” This also got us our first chance to sing through the main theme, which I know affectionately by it’s true lyrics: “Into the woods, duh dun duh dun…”

The cast sounded magnificent. And through the concrete thin walls, the rest of the production staff seemed excited about the show already, hearing the sounds of grandmothers and girls in capes and princes and would-be princesses, bakers, fathers, mothers and even narrators join in the singing of a journey.

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