On several occasions, I have had to literally cut and paste pages from the libretto and score together.
Ditto. For my last musical, I also originally intended to call off the libretto, but later found that a number of the cues were better called from specific points in the music. (Actually, I spent half of tech week chanting, "Thank Goddess I know how to read music!") Instead of adding chunks of pages, additional, "TURN NOW" notes to myself, etc, I just spent a couple of (long, arduous, brainwracking) hours in the company of some scissors, tape, my script, a copy of the piano/conductor and vocal scores, and a photocopier with a good reduce/enlarge function and double sided copying. Process was thus (read all directions first for it to make sense!):
- Take page 1 of the script with libretto only.
Pull together all the pages of music that go to that section of libretto. Decide whether there is more useful information on the piano/conductor score or on the vocal score (note, you'll usually get more than enough from the vocal if the cue takes place while there's singing; otherwise go with the piano/conductor).
Decide if all that music is going to fit on one page (it probably won't).
If it won't all fit, play with the photocopier's reduce function until it looks like it will.
Cut the chosen bits of the score into one-line strips.
Tape all the strips to a blank sheet of paper, cutting the strips into further chunks and piecing them together if you need to, to make them all fit.
Take the strip covered sheet and page 2 of the script with libretto only. Double sided copy them together.
Lather, rinse, repeat until you go out of your mind, but have a useful script.
What you end up with is something like this in your binder:
Script | Score
Script | Score
Script | Score
With the next page of the script on the back of that page of the score. You get to keep all your blocking info you took in the libretto and all the musical info you need to cue from. You can cue from either action or musical notation if you need to without flipping pages. Sometimes the music gets a little small, but you're not singing from it, you're cueing from it. You don't have to know if the Tenor is suppose to be singing an E or an F in the tenor, as long as you can see there's a gong crash (or whatever) there!
Good luck if you choose this method. It's easier to do than explain or read about, and it will make your head hurt a bit, but the effort was SO worth it for me!
