A Musical is Born! -Part 15- The Set

It's a busy week, so this will be my final post before OPENING NIGHT!

Last Saturday, we moved into the Village Theatre in the town of Danville. This theater is not very large; it has two small dressing rooms and almost no backstage. For our larger cast, we put actors (and costumes) in the dressing rooms and spill out into the hall. Large props that cannot fit backstage must sit on a covered porch right aside. The great thing about this small theater is that there is no bad seat in the house. Every audience member has a wonderful view of the stage.

And this is what they will be seeing:

The lower part of the stage in the front is the "apron". We added those platforms to extend the stage and give our actors more room to move. There are steps leading up to it. We also added a platform to the left for the sandpit, where the sand fairy will live. And you can see that there is no "pit" for the band, so we fit the five-piece band to the right of the stage.

As far as sets go, this is pretty simple. There are some doors and fences that come off and on, but not much else. We could have made it more elaborate (which would have been hard in such a small space, but not impossible), but KW wanted to do this show in a more "poor theater" style. "Poor theater" is when everything is stripped away except the stage, the actors, the audience, and the pure essentials. The audience must use their imagination more because there is no "Disney theater magic" happening. Even our scenes that involve magic will have no fog machine, no flashing lights, and no explosions. The audience will see everything that happens, and feel like they are a part of the magic!

So we are eagerly counting down the days. It has been refreshing to get to rehearse on the stage. The past two days (part of what we call Tech Week) were all about problem solving. 

"How do we actually get that bike on and off stage?" 

"What should the lights be doing at this moment?" 

"How do we time that sound effect so it matches the action on stage?"

"Why can't I hear that actor when he's onstage, but I can hear everything he's saying backstage?!" 

I'm just kidding about that last one, though we did have some issues with mics.

Tonight, we put mics AND costumes on the actors, which really makes the show come to life! But with costumes means timing costume changes and making sure everyone is wearing what they should be at the right time!

Tomorrow night, we add make-up, which is the final element.

Then on Wednesday, it's our dress rehearsal, when we run the show from start to finish as if it was the real deal.

This is it! We are on the last few miles of this marathon!!