7
« on: Mar 12, 2009, 06:35 am »
A bit of background: I'm currently involved with a production of Miss Saigon which a local (well-respected) amateur company is producing. It's obviously primarily amateur actors, although quite a few of them are drama school graduates who are now in other jobs because they can't find paid work as an actor, so they're doing the show to keep their skills tuned up. Kim, the Engineer and John are professionals who are all being paid - basically they couldn't find anyone who could sing it well enough and was prepared to do it for nothing. The director has directed a lot of big shows around the country - although all for amateur societies as far as I know. He's also choreographing; I don't like the way he works, but I can get past that - everyone has different methods, right? Anyway. We were rehearsing The American Dream tonight when one of the chorus (a drama school grad - very smart kid) said "I had a costume fitting the other day, and I showed Wardrobe this move (it's a bend at the waist, as close to heads on the ground as they can get) and they said that our costumes won't allow us to do that." The response from the director was "Don't ever say things like that to Wardrobe. They don't need to know about things like that, we'll sort it out when we get to the theatre." I had to be restrained by the other two ASMs who were sitting either side of me, as I was ready to jump up and beat him around the head with my script - that is, when I'd recovered from the shock hearing him say that! As the evening continued, people were asking questions which were quite logical, sensible questions I'd normally expect to be answered very quickly. His response every time? "Don't worry, we'll sort it out at the theatre." It's going to be one hell of a tech rehearsal, and I'm starting to be rather scared! How can you leave the cast not knowing how things are going to work before the tech? They're all going to be incredibly insecure when we get to the tech and it isn't the director who'll have to pick up the pieces, it's me and the other SMs. Thank goodness for a crew with fantastic heads of department (I couldn't have asked for a better team) and two full days to tech the show, but it's still going to be long, drawn-out and painful.
Just needed to rant!