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Jun. 11th, 2007 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lykanthropoiThe week before the theater performance is called Hell Week, and it's called that for the reason that traditionally everyone is stressed out and usually everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Our hell week started yesterday and things have been going thus:
On saturday we had a tech-rehearsal, a rehearsal in which the technican (in this case mostly the director and a little bit the writer) works out lighting cues with the actors and last minute technical stuff gets done. Well, to start off with, the director's computer broke down completely and refuses to start up again. It has all the edited songs on it and was basically all up and running until blop. The director panicked, sent me home to get my computer and we rehearsed the music parts with music from Les Miserable and random punk rock instead of Ray Charles and Eels. Aside from a mild buzzing in the loudspeakers (which is where the writer's technical expertise comes in, I turn the amp on and off three times) the music worked.
Then we left the hall for ten minutes to look for cables, and when we got back the projector (a small metal box tucket away in the darkest corner with no light and hidden under a jacket) was gone. We frantically hunted through all the places we'd been and hadn't been, called up all people we knew who occasionally operate in the same building and might have an interest in projectors, snapped at each other for loosing it in the first place and were eventually put at rest when Tim, one of the inhabitants of the LBB, came and informed us that he had taken it and given it to someone else, for one reason or another. The rehearsal, which was planned to last three hours, in the end took nine.
Sheduled for today was the costume rehearsal, with all the cast and the costume designer present. What happened instead is that the main actor's coat, the coupe de grasse of the entire play and the one thing our costume designer has set her heart on, was eaten by the costume designers sewing machine in the late hours of the night. The costume designer, upon realizing what the machine had done and that fixing this would cost her an extra 10 hours, had a nervous breakdown, which was the state I found her in this morning. She was sheduled to come to the LBB and show the actors how to apply their makeup, but instead I arrived with half the costumes and the makeup on my own and we inexpertedly applied makeup, then started rehearsing.
*sigh* Aside from that, every day there seems to be a birthday party of some good friend I won't see because I'm moving to another country or a goodbye party of a friend who's leaving the country before me, so between rehearsal times and organizing stuff for the play the director and I find ourselves helping out at parties at 3 am in the morning and saying emotional goodbyes. During the day we'll randomly remember something for the play and call each other up, yell frantic sentences at one another which don't make sense to the other person as our ability to make sense is slowly dropping. To save energy, we quote lines of play because occasionally that's all that's in our head and we've heard them so often. We're also paying less attention with what we do, consequently the count is that the director was almost hit by a bus and I was almost hit by two cars. At the same time, it was a busy crossing.
But aside from that... the dress rehearsal today was amazing. The actors were the best I'd ever seen them and for the first time the play came over simply great. Even though there were minor mishaps of forgetting the lines and wrong cues, the energy was amazing and just right, and it really came over. I hope they keep up that performance for next week.
Breath in, breath out. All will be fine. All will be lovely.
*realizes she's just quoted lines from the play and goes to bang her head against the wall*
On saturday we had a tech-rehearsal, a rehearsal in which the technican (in this case mostly the director and a little bit the writer) works out lighting cues with the actors and last minute technical stuff gets done. Well, to start off with, the director's computer broke down completely and refuses to start up again. It has all the edited songs on it and was basically all up and running until blop. The director panicked, sent me home to get my computer and we rehearsed the music parts with music from Les Miserable and random punk rock instead of Ray Charles and Eels. Aside from a mild buzzing in the loudspeakers (which is where the writer's technical expertise comes in, I turn the amp on and off three times) the music worked.
Then we left the hall for ten minutes to look for cables, and when we got back the projector (a small metal box tucket away in the darkest corner with no light and hidden under a jacket) was gone. We frantically hunted through all the places we'd been and hadn't been, called up all people we knew who occasionally operate in the same building and might have an interest in projectors, snapped at each other for loosing it in the first place and were eventually put at rest when Tim, one of the inhabitants of the LBB, came and informed us that he had taken it and given it to someone else, for one reason or another. The rehearsal, which was planned to last three hours, in the end took nine.
Sheduled for today was the costume rehearsal, with all the cast and the costume designer present. What happened instead is that the main actor's coat, the coupe de grasse of the entire play and the one thing our costume designer has set her heart on, was eaten by the costume designers sewing machine in the late hours of the night. The costume designer, upon realizing what the machine had done and that fixing this would cost her an extra 10 hours, had a nervous breakdown, which was the state I found her in this morning. She was sheduled to come to the LBB and show the actors how to apply their makeup, but instead I arrived with half the costumes and the makeup on my own and we inexpertedly applied makeup, then started rehearsing.
*sigh* Aside from that, every day there seems to be a birthday party of some good friend I won't see because I'm moving to another country or a goodbye party of a friend who's leaving the country before me, so between rehearsal times and organizing stuff for the play the director and I find ourselves helping out at parties at 3 am in the morning and saying emotional goodbyes. During the day we'll randomly remember something for the play and call each other up, yell frantic sentences at one another which don't make sense to the other person as our ability to make sense is slowly dropping. To save energy, we quote lines of play because occasionally that's all that's in our head and we've heard them so often. We're also paying less attention with what we do, consequently the count is that the director was almost hit by a bus and I was almost hit by two cars. At the same time, it was a busy crossing.
But aside from that... the dress rehearsal today was amazing. The actors were the best I'd ever seen them and for the first time the play came over simply great. Even though there were minor mishaps of forgetting the lines and wrong cues, the energy was amazing and just right, and it really came over. I hope they keep up that performance for next week.
Breath in, breath out. All will be fine. All will be lovely.
*realizes she's just quoted lines from the play and goes to bang her head against the wall*
