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Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / CALLING: "calling a show by feel"
« on: Jan 17, 2007, 09:53 am »
Please note -- I'm taking a quote from another forum on this board (*things you'll never hear a stage manager say..*) and starting a new topic with it because I'd like to start a discussion.
Seriously, no one's ever said something similar to this before? =) It seems to me that there's always some level of "feel" when you are calling a show; especially a straight play -- you really have to be at one with the actors; feeling where they're at that night so that you can call the best possible performance for that particular night. I mean yes, you have everything written down and there are certain exact times that you have to do the Q, but that exact time depends on the exact time the actor decides to say his line or to move SL to SR.
I did a show in college called "Still Life with Iris," by Steven Dietz. It's a beautiful piece of children's theatre and I loved working on it. A little girl, Iris, gets taken away to the "Land of the Great Goods" because the rulers there think she is the one perfect little girl -- as a consequence, she loses all her memories, but happens to retain one button from her coat from her former life, and every time she holds it, she sees the memory of a table and chairs from her home -- but doesn't know what this memory is. the play takes us through her search to try to figure this memory out so she can get back home. There is a recurring moment in the show where Iris holds up her button, the 3rd movement from the serenade for winds (K. 361) by Mozart plays , and these sails came in and the image of her home was projected on them...and then it faded away as she realized she didn't know what the memory was. The q-ing sequence for this was something like, "lx go, sound go, deck go (the sails), projection go" (then there was a short wait while the memory happened) then I had to call everything out in reverse order.
So, opening day of the show (it was mostly all matinees since it was children's theatre) my last great grandparent died -- and for the rest of the run I was on pretty heightened emotions. Every performance, the "memory moments" became more and more beautiful and poignant and it became increasingly difficult for me to call everything out -- and I could tell that the actress playing Iris was experiencing the same thing (she was a senior and this was her last production), and so each night this sequence got a little bit longer as neither of us wanted to end it (listen to the piece of music -- you'll understand why. There is this long, sustained oboe note that I always wanted to hear the end of, but was supposed to call everything out in the middle of it). The last performance I was practically in tears as I called the last sequence out -- and Iris was too.
It was weird -- it was truly a moment of "calling by feel." Yes, the sequence was there and wouldn't change, but the timing of when I did it was just something I had to feel out with Iris every performance. Certainly the whole show wasn't like this, but those three particular times that moment happened in the show was definitely something I had to do on feeling.
Has anyone else had similar experiences to this?
Quote
I'm calling this show... by feel.
Seriously, no one's ever said something similar to this before? =) It seems to me that there's always some level of "feel" when you are calling a show; especially a straight play -- you really have to be at one with the actors; feeling where they're at that night so that you can call the best possible performance for that particular night. I mean yes, you have everything written down and there are certain exact times that you have to do the Q, but that exact time depends on the exact time the actor decides to say his line or to move SL to SR.
I did a show in college called "Still Life with Iris," by Steven Dietz. It's a beautiful piece of children's theatre and I loved working on it. A little girl, Iris, gets taken away to the "Land of the Great Goods" because the rulers there think she is the one perfect little girl -- as a consequence, she loses all her memories, but happens to retain one button from her coat from her former life, and every time she holds it, she sees the memory of a table and chairs from her home -- but doesn't know what this memory is. the play takes us through her search to try to figure this memory out so she can get back home. There is a recurring moment in the show where Iris holds up her button, the 3rd movement from the serenade for winds (K. 361) by Mozart plays , and these sails came in and the image of her home was projected on them...and then it faded away as she realized she didn't know what the memory was. The q-ing sequence for this was something like, "lx go, sound go, deck go (the sails), projection go" (then there was a short wait while the memory happened) then I had to call everything out in reverse order.
So, opening day of the show (it was mostly all matinees since it was children's theatre) my last great grandparent died -- and for the rest of the run I was on pretty heightened emotions. Every performance, the "memory moments" became more and more beautiful and poignant and it became increasingly difficult for me to call everything out -- and I could tell that the actress playing Iris was experiencing the same thing (she was a senior and this was her last production), and so each night this sequence got a little bit longer as neither of us wanted to end it (listen to the piece of music -- you'll understand why. There is this long, sustained oboe note that I always wanted to hear the end of, but was supposed to call everything out in the middle of it). The last performance I was practically in tears as I called the last sequence out -- and Iris was too.
It was weird -- it was truly a moment of "calling by feel." Yes, the sequence was there and wouldn't change, but the timing of when I did it was just something I had to feel out with Iris every performance. Certainly the whole show wasn't like this, but those three particular times that moment happened in the show was definitely something I had to do on feeling.
Has anyone else had similar experiences to this?
Smaller shows at our studio or other venues I generally don't follow this because I usually have to do more physical work.