Messages

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Students and Novice Stage Managers / House is Open or Closed?

« on: May 04, 2011, 10:43 pm »

Not sure if this is the proper place, but I have a general question for everyone: When the audience is entering the house do you call "house is open" ( as in open to the audience) or "house is closed" ( as in house is closed to the actors)?
I usually call house open when we open the doors and let the audience in to let the actors know that there is audience in the house and they should not be onstage. But a friend of mine, who I was doing run-crew for, says the opposite and it created some confusion because half of us understood and the other half was lost.
So what do you say? What's the standard?
thanks!
Liz

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The Green Room / Re: abandoned theaters from around the world...sigh

« on: Apr 06, 2011, 11:18 am »

sigh....a lot of them are so beautiful! Or at least you can tell they once were.....if only there was enough money in the world to renovate them all

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Students and Novice Stage Managers / Re: Student SM Challenge #12+1: The old switcheroo

« on: Apr 06, 2011, 12:52 am »

Oh goodness.......
I would also announce it to the audience so they know what's coming and give him a binder to have on-stage ( it being the lead and all, I'm assuming there are many lines) I would also call him in immediately and go over blocking, cues, props and maybe some general character notes for a few hours. Then call in the cast members that he has the most ( or most complicated) scenes with and run those until dinner time. Get some take-out, thank him profusely, and get him into costume and make-up.

It's funny cause this (sort-of) happened at my high school but the stakes weren't quite as high and I wasn't the SM ( I was on the run crew). We were doing Peter Pan and the actress playing Jane was sick so her mother kept her home- with out any warning until half-way through when the director finally got a-hold of her! She only had a few lines so our wonderful tigerlily learned Jane's lines about 3 scenes before the very last scene ( the only one with Jane) and went on. It was awkward and some lines were missed but she saved the day!

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Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Re: TECH: Paper Tech

« on: Apr 06, 2011, 12:41 am »

Well, I am by no means any kind of an authority, but it sounds like a paper tech to me, Risa! Its great that you took the initiative since you SM wasn't giving you much.
Generally I find that paper tech is nice because it gives you a chance to make sure you know all of the cues and everyone is on the same page for dry tech. I think it saves some time because it allows the LD and SD to start roughing in their cues and we'll all have the same numbers. But I am still in Uni so maybe it's just because most of us are new to the process.
One thing that I found that made paper tech go a lot faster ( especially if it's a long show) is after you sketch in where you think the cues should go and where they've been mentioned in rehearsals is sitting down with the director and making sure that they agree ( sort of a pre-paper tech) This way the Director can just sit in tech with a good book and say yes or no to small detail decisions. It makes the process go much faster as opposed to the director constantly interjecting and discussing the nature of each individual cue. ( Though the few times that's happened to me she was a pretty overbearing and micro-managing director)

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Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: SAFETY: Food allergies in rehearsal

« on: Apr 06, 2011, 12:21 am »

I've never met anyone with so serious an allergy that it is caused by airborne things, so until reading this thread I had completely forgotten about that possibility! But  I agree that it's just easiest to have everyone write down their allergies ( even if they don't think they'll run into that thing!) at the first Read-through/ rehearsal. It's just easier to purge your stash/ inform cast and crew if you make a point of asking them.