Week 9:
All Shows Close

July 18, 2016

I have now surpassed the typical fellowship length of 8 weeks. By Cornell fellowship standards, I could have left after last week; however, theatre doesn’t exactly work like that. I’ve still got shows to run! I am grateful that I get to spend almost the entire summer here at a tiny theatre in the middle of the Rocky Mountains.

It seems every week here I surprise myself with how much work I am able to get done–this week was no exception. It was tech week for the KID show, Rodeo and Juliet. But, because it is a children’s show, tech wasn’t quite the way it is for other shows I’ve worked on here. We don’t call children to 12 hour work days like we do with professional adults.

This means we had very limited time to tech the show. Tuesday was not only our first day in the actual theatre space, but our first day of tech. We got through most of the show, but not quite the whole thing. Wednesday was an absolutely crazy day. In the morning, we spent two hours on tech, wrapping up the end of the show. Then, in the afternoon, we had trapeze call and fight call. Immediately after this, we had an invited dress rehearsal.

A large group of kids came to the invited rehearsal–we were expecting about 20, but there were almost 60!  A lot of the kids in the show were getting nervous and stressed out about the first run with an audience. Not only would it be the first time with an audience, but the first run with all technical elements, and the first run with costumes. Some of the kids played multiple characters and had some quick changes.

That’s where our dresser, EJ, came in to save the day. Despite the run through being EJ’s first chance to run the quick changes with the kids, she kicked butt. One actor was a bit late for a transition, but we managed to go on with the show and all was well.

It was a stressful week. Despite Rodeo and Juliet only having a few days of performances, we had a couple of changeovers during that span. That means I would be at the Ruth bright and early before call to change the set out, then immediately get to work on setting for top of show.

The only two crew members backstage during the show were me and EJ. EJ focused on costumes, I focused on props and on any last minute fixes we would need to come up with. I was on headset with Dana, the stage manager, the entire time, so if she saw anything from the booth that needed to be taken care of, she could let me know.

In one case, this involved me sneaking on stage to turn on a microphone. In another, I had to pull an actor off stage to take off a set piece that accidentally didn’t get struck in a previous transition. There was one moment in the show where we used fog and I controlled the fog machine from backstage.

But with a kid show, I would say by and large my job was keeping track of the kids. I was constantly checking to make sure kids were in the right place. I was consistently reassuring nervous kids that it’s really okay that they dropped that line, that I would get their props to the right place, and that they had plenty of time to get to their entrance.

Of course, in addition to running Rodeo and Juliet, I still had Watson and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels to worry about because that is the nature of repertory theatre. No day screamed “repertory” more than Friday.

I began the day with Rodeo and Juliet. I got to the theatre at 9:30 to prep, then the show started at 11:00. We were done with the show a little after 12, but there was a changeover happening immediately after, which means I also had to pack up all our props. I was excused from changeover, however, because we had a matinee of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Typically crew is called at 12 for matinees, but that just wasn’t possible for those of us working Rodeo and Juliet.

Thankfully, we thought ahead. We almost entirely preset for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels after the previous performance because we knew that Dana, EJ, and I wouldn’t be able to make it to crew call on time. Sure enough, we weren’t at the main stage until almost 1. But all was well and we had a great performance.

My day wasn’t over yet. After a quick dinner break, we had an evening performance of Watson. This was my third show of the day and I was exhausted, but I made it through.

After Watson, there was a performance of Boomtown, the comedy improv show. Though I was tired, I figured I could use some laughs so I decided to stay for the show. Boomtown is extremely popular and it was sold out. Times like these are when being on the stage management team has its perks. I asked the stage manager Jean if I could sit in the booth with her to watch the show, and she said yes.

This was actually my first time being in a booth at CRT, and I loved it. The show was hilarious of course, and it was really cool to watch Jean work. I’ve never run an improv show before, so it was interesting to see how it was done differently.

Jean was furiously writing down quotes from the show to put in the rehearsal report so there would be some record of what the show was about. She used a cue light to let the actors know when they had about 7 minutes left and it was time to wrap up. She had to use improv skills to run the lights just as the actors did. If an actor moved to a certain place in the space, she would make sure that space would light up.

That brings us to Saturday and our last performance of Rodeo and Juliet. This was my first closing night at CRT. It was a reminder to me that all shows close. In the moment, it can be sad. I was a little emotional watching those kids take their bows for the last time. Yet, it can also be happy. Closing is a time to look back at all the work and say, “We did it!” It’s a chance to get excited about the next opportunity.

I am happy to look back on Rodeo and Juliet and say, “I did that.” Some really hard working people came together to make an awesome piece of theatre for these kids. I was lucky enough to be a part of it.