The Show Must Go On! (Continued)
We’ve been exploring onstage gaffes that the audience doesn’t notice. I can’t resist one last story about snafus, only in this case the audience didn’t notice a thing because we solved several problems before the show opened.
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BUT FIRST! A quick reminder that Pegasus Theatre’s Churchmouse Productions has a show in this year’s Festival of Independent Theatres (FIT). It’s called The Watch by Trace Crawford, and it opens this Saturday 7/12 at 8 pm at the Bath House Cultural Center.
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Now, on with the blog!!!!
Case #3:
We were in rehearsals for a show that opened in less than one week. Most of the show had come together nicely and we were proud of the work everyone had done.
Except for ONE scene, which appeared to be cursed from Day One. It should have been hilarious: A man who fancies himself a super-hero literally rescues a woman and flies her to safety, with plenty of cute metaphors about people having unrealistic expectations about relationships built into the script. The actors, director, and playwright all seemed to have done their job, but the scene just wasn’t working. Lines that were clearly funny on the written page fell like lead balloons during each rehearsal.
Quick aside: When you are producing a comedy, there comes a point in the rehearsal process when you are convinced it all sucks, nothing is funny, and we are all doomed, DOOMED I tell you!! This was not one of those times. We knew the rest of the show was funny. It was just this one scene. What to do?
With only five days until opening, it was time to be practical. Many talented people had analyzed the scene to death, trying to understand what was wrong. Our theory was the dialogue was being obscured by the physical challenge of simulating the flying effect.
It was time for bold action. We decided to videotape the scene and make it a multi-media production. This gave us complete control over the flying effect and allowed the audience to focus on the cleverness of the script and the actors. It was genius, I tell you, GENIUS! Except for two small problems.
Problem #1: How were we going to produce even a short video in five days? This is where relationships (and the blessing of the theatre gods) become critical. In theatre who you know can be the difference between a successful production and a failed one.
So it was in this case. We were blessed to know an amazing video producer named Phil Allen (who later went on to win an Emmy but that’s another story.) We asked, he said yes, and five days later we opened the show with a charming little video embedded where the problematic scene had been. It took one mind-numbingly long video shoot with some very patient and resilient actors, plus a couple of days of no sleep for our videographer friend as he edited the footage. But thanks to determination, talent, and sheer luck, we were able to rescue the scene about a man rescuing a woman. Now THAT’S irony.
“But wait,” you’re saying, “didn’t you say there were TWO problems?” Very clever of you. Yes, I did indeed say there were two problems. You see, one of the actors (Cheryl) refused to do the scene on video. One could argue that her motives were pure, that she had “artistic objections” to a video embedded in a live stage production. Perhaps.
More cynical readers who know that film actors make more money than stage actors might guess that less noble motives were at play. Would Cheryl have done the scene on video if we had offered to triple her salary?
We’ll never know. The subject never came up. All we knew for certain is we had an actor who wasn’t willing to fulfill a reasonable request from her director. And that is one of the Seven Deadly Sins of the theatre world.
It isn’t an easy decision to fire an actor, and we’ve always considered it the last resort, a worst-case scenario. Committing one of the Deadly Sins is one such scenario. I gave Cheryl a chance to reconsider, and while she did so I calmly walked outside and down the block, screamed until I could scream no more, then calmly walked back inside. Having unburdened myself in this way, I knew my tone of voice was neutral when I asked Cheryl for her final answer. And when she maintained her refusal to participate in the video, I knew my tone of voice was neutral when I told her that her services were no longer required and I would write her a check for time served plus two weeks’ severance pay.
We split up Cheryl’s roles between the other two women in the show, who were only too happy to have the extra lines, even with now less than five days until opening. One of those women was in the video, and we opened on schedule. And I learned that when you are working with talented, professional, and passionate people, there is almost nothing you can’t accomplish. That’s when live stage theatre is at its most glorious.
Next week: The audience knows…something’s amiss!