Apprentices » Arden Theatre Company Blog

Act One: Chicago, the early 1950s – Assistant Stage Managing A Raisin in the Sun

By Sophie Kruip, Arden Professional Apprentice Class 20

We’re just over halfway through the program (four shows down, three to go!) and the final three apprentices who have not yet Assistant Stage Managed received our assignments: I am on for A Raisin in the Sun in the Haas, Jenna is on Pinocchio in the Arcadia, and Wendy will ASM A Little Night Music in the Haas. Well cast, I’d say!

Our preparation for Raisin started today. The SM, Alec Ferrell, had me do a thorough sweep of the rehearsal hall upstairs, remove the spike tape from Endgame’s rehearsal process, and clear the furniture to make room for taping out the floor tomorrow. For those who haven’t done this, ‘taping out the floor’ means using fluorescent ‘spike’ tape to draw out the boundaries of the stage on the rehearsal floor, along with any doors, big set pieces, etc. so that actors can practice the staging before they can work on the set.

The scenery load-in for A Raisin in the Sun officially began on the Haas stage. First, we struck (completely broke down and removed) the entire set and platforms of our Cinderella (minor cuts and sore shoulders, but very proud of our work!) and cleared the way for Raisin’s doors, windows, and walls to make their way over from the scene shop. We currently rent the space for our scene shop from two long-time Arden supporters, Ted Newbold and Helen Cunningham, in a warehouse down the street, and we carry everything to the theatre by hand or haul it with a rented Penske truck. How fabulous it will be to move the whole operation to the Hamilton Family Arts Center this year, just three doors down!

The timeline is short for rehearsal, just about three weeks, before the Pay What You Can performance on March 6. In that time, the Haas stage will be transformed, by the expert skill of our production team, into the 1950’s Chicago home of the Younger family. The playwright, Lorraine Hansberry, describes the room in the production notes with this recommendation: “Ideally, the set should also suggest, if possible, the outer world of blighted tenements, clotheslines, fire escapes, etc.” and our designer, Daniel Conway, is integrating the outer world of the play in quite a lovely way. Our Scenic Charge, Kristina Chadwick, has already been turning out lovely “brick” painted walls that have started transforming our theatre into Chicago’s Southside.

Tomorrow begins the rehearsal process! I am excited to meet Walter Dallas, the director, and the cast! To “ASM land” I go…

Oh, one more thing:

Perhaps you’ve wondered what the title of the play means. Langston Hughes wrote this poem in 1926, at the height of the Harlem Renaissance:

Harlem (A Dream Deferred)

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

Like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

Like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

See you here March 7^th – April 21^st!

Supporting First Friday at the Arden

By Sophie Kruip, Arden Professional Apprentice Class 20

First Friday programming is very officially underway at the Arden with incredible acts from local musical, dance, and theatre companies The past few months have seen inspiring and impressive acts from Headlong Dance Theatre and the Dali Quartet, as well as the wildly entertaining circus group Olde City Sideshow. You never know what you’re in for when you walk in: the lobby may become an art gallery, or perhaps an improvisational movement group will take over: come check it out and have a beer from our keg (Philadelphia Pale Ale, anyone?) on the house!

Photo by Plate 3 Photography

The John S. and James L. Knight foundation made this programming possible through a generous donation—with one stipulation. We have to MATCH their donation, or we simply don’t get those funds! So please show your support of the Arden’s mission to bring you incredible local art, and help us reach this goal!

This First Friday, prepare for Tiny Dynamite’s “A Play, A Pie, and A Pint,” a casual, short, and comedic theatre piece enjoyed with a slice of pizza and a glass of beer. What more could you ask for? If you can’t make that, March 1st we will be hosting Applied Mechanics, a collaborative theatre experience that will roving scenes all around the lobby so that patrons may wander through to watch the scenes, and enjoy food and drink as they go. Stay tuned for more performances from The Berserker Residents, subcircle, and Johnny Showcase and the Lefty Lucy Cabaret!

First Fridays are FREE and open to the public, but please do bring $1, $5, $20—anything you can donate so that we can continue bringing you the quality programming you expect from the Arden.

So bring a valid I.D. to claim your complimentary beer, and we’ll see you on First Friday!

The Impossible Scene Change

By Zach Trebino, Arden Professional Apprentice

What do you do when you’re confronted with the task of converting a home from its 1950s splendor to its state in 2009 – derelict after numerous decades of disrepair – in less than fifteen minutes? Do you, quite literally, attack it with a sledgehammer, spray paint, and just vandalize the hell out of it? Albeit an über-exciting means of achieving this goal, the problem rests in the fact that this change – adding nearly five decades of wear and tear – must be reproducible. In fact, it needs to be accomplished over eighty times.

Of course, I’m not talking about a real house out on the streets of Philadelphia, but 406 Clybourne Street – the home erected from James Kronzer’s designs on our Arcadia stage as the set for Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park.

For the uninitiated, the first act of Clybourne Park is set in Bev and Russ Stoller’s home in the Clybourne neighborhood of Chicago in 1959. The Stoller’s are moving out of their home (due to some dramatic and traumatic reasons that you’ll just have to see the play to learn about…), and the Younger family from Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun have purchased their home. This first act pre-empts the White Flight out of this Chicago area and the influx of black families. Now, fast-forward 50 years for Act Two. Set in the same house (though its been unoccupied for several decades), a white couple has now purchased this same home and is met with bitter resistance when their proposed renovations are publicized to the community, perceived as an unwanted move toward gentrification. Tensions of race, class, and gender are ubiquitous; they pervade both acts and, ostensibly, both eras.

So, back to crux: the passage of time utterly necessitates a radical change to the same set. And unlike the Metropolitan Opera, our Arcadia stage is not equipped with full stage elevators that would permit us to simply insert a new set for Act Two. Thus, the primary challenge of this piece – well, speaking merely technically as Norris’s superbly written (it’s almost too realistic, I daresay) dialogue poses its own set of challenges to the actors – is accomplishing this intermission changeover with as little impact and damage to the existing set and scenic dressings as possible. Here’s a quick tally of everything that needs to be removed from the stage (feel free to skip down if you’re not a fan of long lists): all the furniture [dining room table, four chairs, china cabinet, shelves, side table, telephone table, arm chair, a bench, and love seat], three rugs, moldings, the door frames, the window frames, seven columns, thirty-four moving boxes, the kitchen door, and the stair railing. Then, we need to bring out work lights, two sawhorses, a toilet, a lawn chair, a sink, a milk crate, a paint bucket, and a whole lot of trash. Yes, all of that. In less than fifteen minutes.

No doubt a daunting challenge, but one I’m proud to say (as evidenced in the video below) we’ve managed to deftly accomplish. Just watch the video below to see us at work. You might think the video is sped up, but I swear we’re really THAT fast.

How did we do that, you might ask? Well, a crew of three of us set about devising tactics to accomplish this – strategizing as though we were simultaneously running a relay, playing Tetris, and entering battle. This crew consists of Kate Hanley (stage manager extraordinaire), Austen Brown (John Cage has nothing on this sound operator), and I (assistant stage manager). Ultimately though, our scheming and planning proved to be in vain, for the second we actually set foot on stage to attempt the changeover, we abandoned our pragmatic planning and followed our get-it-done instincts. Certainly, we’ve now assumed routine duties, but the first few times it was a free-for-all.

In our first attempt, guided by the inimitable Glenn Perlman, it took us nearly forty minutes, yet somehow our second attempt took only seventeen. After that, we’ve continuously decreased our time (our lowest was nine minutes and twenty seconds, though we average around ten and a half minutes). It was simply amazing for me to watch how the three of us worked; there was some real synergism happening on that stage. We all sensed each other’s movements, stayed out of each other’s ways, and knew what needed to get done. As though we had the same thought process, Austen and I always turn to each other to carry out the two-man tasks at the same time. I imagine with a less adroit and proprioceptive team, every step of this intermission change would’ve needed to be planned, choreographed, and rehearsed, but, miraculously, ours just fell into place.

However, I’d most assuredly be doing an injustice if I didn’t mention that the rather ingenious technical innovations of Glenn (the Arden’s technical director) facilitated the facile removal of every piece of molding, every door casing, and every column. Simple and elegant solutions prevailed here. Some simple solutions to create the second act’s shabby appearance include a crack in the wall (obscured by the china cabinet), floor sections sans the hardwood everywhere else (covered by rugs) and lighter paint beneath the columns and moldings, making the paint on the walls (that looked resplendent in Act One) look dirty and stained by comparison. I must say, though, that the cleverest invention of Glenn’s is for the removal of the stair railing. The entire stage-left (that’s the right side if you’re looking at the from the audience) edge of the stair unit is removable, attached by two hinges and seated in a recess in the floor. Another unit, the same shape but without the banister and railing, fits into this gap and attaches using these same hinges. Watch for this moment in the video (it happens around 22 seconds in). Oh, and then there’s the kitchen door too (and the kitchen wall!)… Suffice it to say, they’re quite clever solutions as well.

So, hey, if you ever need a crew to move you out of your house at hyper-speed, give us a call; we’ve got some serious credentials now. I promise we won’t charge too much.

The Lincoln Man

By Ryan Prendergast, Arden Professional Apprentice

In the second act of The Whipping Man as Caleb and John prepare for their Passover seder, the elder slave Simon (Johnnie Hobbs, Jr.) announces that Abraham Lincoln is dead, the victim of an assassin’s bullet. He recalls the experience of meeting Lincoln only a few days before on the streets Richmond after the Union army occupied the city on April 4: “I walked out to him. And I stopped right in front of him. And he stopped. And we looked at each other… I bowed… Only thing I could think to do… [and] he bowed back… Only thing he could think to do I guess.”

Hearing these words in the play took me back to a sunny September morning when I stood on the sidewalk outside Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. It was the culmination of whole summer’s Lincoln pilgrimage. My mother is a huge fan of the Doris Kearns Goodwin bestseller Team of Rivals and that summer my family did it all: the new Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois, the solemn Lincoln Tomb at Oak Ridge Cemetery. Standing in the burial room with Lincoln’s body just below our feet was a surreal experience, only equaled by a visit to the colossus Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Ford’s Theatre was now the only stop left.

Ford’s Theatre is still an active venue, restored to its 19^th century splendor. (The Lincoln box forever remains unoccupied out of respect.) The theatre was closed for rehearsals the day of my visit but the basement museum beckoned. Here the displays meticulously recreate Lincoln’s activities that day and offer an impressive array of artifacts, from the suit he wore to Ford’s Theater that fateful evening (his famous top hat rests a few blocks away at the Smithsonian) to the Derringer pistol used by John Wilkes Booth, and most ominously, a pillow stained with Lincoln’s blood.

Every single piece was important and significant, but something seemed to be missing. Here were the real things he wore and touched, but Lincoln still seemed a phantom of the past, close but somehow just beyond reach. Where was the conduit for this Lincoln of the past for us today? Hearing Johnnie Hobbs was the final spark. I saw Lincoln in his famous stovepipe hat bow to Simon on the charred streets of Richmond. He was real for me because he was real for Simon. None of the faded burial curtains or plaster masks seemed significant until that moment.

It’s really easy for a “history play” to become a “history lecture.” It’s a rarity when a figure from history steps out from the dusty pages and becomes something tangible, worthy of the apostrophe: “Father Abraham… there’s your Moses…”

Checking in with past APAs: A Live Arts/Fringe Round Up

By Mark Kennedy, Arden Professional Apprentice Class 17

110%

That’s what the Arden teaches its Professional Apprentices, the six young professionals entering the Philadelphia theatre community with a 10-month job at the Arden working in every department all day every day, to give of themselves. 110%.

Philly theatre artists are no strangers to giving more than it all, especially during the Live Arts/Fringe season every September. The Arden has started catching up with a few of its graduated APAs to see what they’re up to during Fringe time, which is usually a lot.

I have been fortunate enough to produce, write, and perform a solo performance

piece at the Fleisher Art Memorial Sanctuary about a lovelorn little servant named Checkers, which I adapted from an absurdist play called Ivona, Princess of Burgundia. To meet dear Checkers in a few short and silly video trailers, click here and here.

I was an APA during the Arden’s 2009/2010 season (Class 17) and if I hadn’t had the job I would be nowhere near producing, writing, or performing anything that came from my own brain today. Confidence in my abilities aside, the apprenticeship gave me the hands-on knowledge about, well, everything you need to make the project actually happen. Specifically it taught me, amongst an infinite amount of other things, how to fundraise. Funnily enough, we ended up with 110% of our goal after two weeks. There’s that 110% again.

After the apprenticeship, many former APAs choose to stay in Philly and work in theatre here. You’ll see them pop up everywhere, if you look closely. Here’s just a taste of what some of my fellow former APAs are up to in and around the Fringe:

Katherine Fritz (Class 16), is costume designer for The Speed of Surprise! by the Groundswell Players, along with actor/creator Scott Shepard (Class 15), light designer Dominic Chacon (Class 10), and stage manager Bryan Kerr (recently graduated Class 18). She’s also costume advisor for the Philadelphia Artist Collective’s The Oresteia Project. When she’s not doing THAT, she’s working on her costume designs for 1812 Productions’ Mistakes Were Made and Flashpoint Theatre Company’s Fat Cat Killers, coming soon after the Fringe.

Meredith Sonnen (Class 17) is assistant stage manager for New Paradise Laboratories’ Extremely Public Displays of Privacy (I’m also helping coordinate the interactive walking tours for their Act II: Displays, and working on NPL’s new website, Frame). Meredith is also involved in the production management of Applied Mechanics’ Overseers, which includes Thomas Choinacky (Class 15) as a performer/creator.

Maura Roche (Class 16) is scenic designer for 11th Hour Theatre Company’s The Bomb-itty of Errors, with sound designer Mark Valenzuela (Class 12) and lighting designer Dominic Chacon (Class 10), and she’s production manager and scenic designer for Theatre Horizon’s Kimberly Akimbo, with technical director Jefferson Haynes (Class 10).

Hillary Rea (Class 16) is performing in Philly Improv Theatre’s Dark Comedy. Tara Demmy (Class 18) is performing in Philly Improv Thaetre’s Fresh Laughs, working on marketing for OMBELICO Mask Ensemble’s Run, Grunt, Sing: An Open-Air Theatric, and working as Volunteer Coordinator for the Philadelphia Live Arts/Fringe Festival. Check in to volunteer if you’d like to help out! Anneliese Van Arsdale (Class 13) works for the Festival as Development Manager.

Georgia Schlessman (Class 12) is Master Electrician at the Lantern Theatre Company and Temple University, and is on tech staff for the Live Arts Festival and overhire for many companies, recently including Pig Iron Theatre Company, the Wilma Theater, Rude Mechanicals, and Swim Pony, to name a few.

Erin Read (Class 14), former Artistic Assistant at the Arden, is working in the Live Arts/Fringe Box Office and is rehearsing for her role in Simpatico Theatre Project’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone. Steve Gravelle (Class 14) is working as Second Lead Dresser for Aspects of Love at the Walnut Street Theatre.

Courtney Spiker Martin (Class 11), the Arden’s Business Manager, and Andrew Wojtek (Class 18), working in Development at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, promised me they’d be avid supporters of their APA friends.

Join them, and check out these shows!

110%.

Philly theatre artists are no strangers to giving more than it all, especially during the Live Arts/Fringe season every September. The Arden has started catching up with a few of its graduated APAs to see what they’re up to during Fringe time, which is usually a lot.

I have been fortunate enough to produce, write, and perform a solo performance piece at the Fleisher Art Memorial Sanctuary about a lovelorn little servant named Checkers, which I adapted from an absurdist play called Ivona, Princess of Burgundia. To meet dear Checkers in a few short and silly video trailers, click here and here.

Join them, and check out these shows!

It’s Important to Remember That You’re Totally Qualified to Do This

By Harry Watermeier

Arden Professional Apprentice

My time at The Arden as a Professional Apprentice is hurtling to a close. My contract is up on June 19^th, and, in these closing weeks, I’ve begun to reflect upon the lessons I’ve learned, the choices I’ve made, and any other pop song lyrics that come to mind. These “reflection sessions” morph into “uncontrollable wincing sessions” pretty quickly. Which isn’t to say that I’ve had an unpleasant time at The Arden, not at all—just that, well, this apprenticeship has been a real (and ultimately rewarding) challenge. Over the past nine months I’ve learned: I’m not particularly good with a copier, I’m kind of dangerous when driving in a city, basic Microsoft Office programs like Word and Excel are extremely challenging, I might have a dog allergy, sometimes I simultaneously “talk too fast” and “stammer”—which, I guess makes me hard to understand, find multitasking a touch difficult because I think each individual task will get jealous of the others, and, when I’m nervous, get the neck sweats. However, every so often a seemingly insurmountable problem was laid in front of me, and I was able to conquer it. Last week, such a problem was presented to me.

Around lunch time, I was sitting in the green room (that’s showbiz talk for “break room”) eating my daily ration of Ramen when Bryan— fellow APA and Assistant Stage Manager for The Flea and the Professor—burst through the door.

“Harry, welcome to the exciting world of theatre,” Bryan said as he quickly unwrapped the cords of a microphone headset.

“What do you mean?” I asked as little bits of Ramen fell from my mouth onto the table.

“Keighty’s sick, and you have to operate the follow spot right now.”

“That’s really funny, Bryan.”

“Nope. I mean it. You really have to go up to the catwalks and get on the follow spot. Let’s go,” he said sternly as he handed me the mic pack.

“That’s super funny?”

This exchange went on for a while until Bryan got kind of upset. I then dashed up to the catwalks, high above the audience, sat down behind the light, and proceeded to get the neck sweats.

The Flea and the Professor is the last show that will grace the Otto Haas stage this season. It’s a kinetic musical comedy, reminiscent of the most madcap and sophisticated Warner Brother’s cartoons. I really adore the show, and feel like it’s a joyous way to end the season. Technically, the show is extremely complicated, and requires a large crew of sound technicians, stage assistants, and spot light operators (or follow spots.) These professional stage crew members are essential to the show—so essential in fact, that during the run of the show, apprentices shadow them multiple times. Basically, we have a number of training sessions with crew members to learn what functions they perform so that we can fill in if they were to become unavailable. I was assigned to shadow both of the follow spot operators— far more capable and intelligent people than I named Keighty and Ashley. As a follow spot (I’m italicizing it so you know that it’s an important vocabulary word that will totally show up on the exam. Totally won’t be on the exam.), it’s their job to operate a spot light. Keighty and Ashley light and follow various actors throughout the show, and execute several complex movements to achieve special lighting effects. It’s a difficult job—hats off to Keighty and Ashley, guys. Before the aforementioned episode, I had a couple of training sessions with the two of them—they showed me some basic elements of the lighting instruments, and took me through their responsibilities, light cue by light cue.

These preliminary training sessions were interesting, and certainly helpful. They did not, however, make me feel as though I were a skilled spot light operator.

Bryan asked me to jump on the follow spot a few days after my training sessions with Keighty and Ashley. Of course I didn’t feel ready or capable to operate a spot light—a crucial instrument in the creation of Flea and the Professor’s aesthetic.

I perched behind Keighty’s spotlight (see scary photo–this was my P.O.V from Keighty’s spotlight. Isn’t it a strange angle?), desperately tried to read her cue list, and listen to commands given to me by the stage manager over headset—all in an effort to execute Keighty’s lighting effects. And I, much to my and I’m sure the entire crew’s surprise, was able to execute said effects pretty gracefully. Now Keighty, being the trooper that she is, was able to complete the bulk of her duties as follow spot that day. I only had to fill in for a terrifying moment or two. Still, I will remember my follow spot adventure as a critical moment that encapsulated my experience as an apprentice. After crouching in the darkness of the catwalks, behind a searing hot light encased in a metal cocoon, executing lighting effects (an act which was totally foreign to me a matter of days before), and staying relatively calm while doing so, I felt pretty proud. I don’t often have that feeling (I usually confuse it with nausea) so when I do, I know something exceptional has just happened. I saw operating the spot light as an insurmountable task; I saw the lighting instrument as a machine with which I would be wholly incompetent. And yet, (with the help of a fantastic team of very smart people) I was able to execute all necessary lighting cues. The light didn’t fall from the ceiling, I didn’t fall from the ceiling, and the show didn’t fall apart. Therein lies the heart of the APA Program’s potential: at its very best, the program has the ability to endow the apprentices with a confidence and skill set that they would never dream of having.

I ran a real live spot light during a real live show. Who’d of thought?

STAND BY FOR intrinsic IMPACT

By: Tara Demmy, Arden Professional Apprentice

You may have attended A Moon for the Misbegotten and found a survey stuck to the back of your chair with blue tape. You may have attended and asked to stay after the show for a 30 minute interview. These two elements are both part of the Arden’s participation in a national study of theatre audiences aiming to understand more about the intrinsic impacts of live theatre. We are one of 18 theatres involved in The Intrinsic Impact project, which was commissioned from WolfBrown by Theatre Bay Area and underwritten by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

What does intrinsic impact mean exactly? It took me some time to figure it all out. Basically it’s easy to look at charts and quantify how many people come to see a show and how much money a show makes…but it’s a lot more difficult to try to study how those people felt about a theatrical experience. Companies have been keen to focus on the financial, but money does not necessarily dictate a theatre’s success.

Theatre Bay responds: “But financial data tells only a fraction of the story. A theatre company may be financially sound, but is it really moving and exciting its audience? Is it connecting to its audience in a fundamental (i.e., intrinsic) way? And can that connection be deepened? How can artistic staff understand the impact of their programming decisions, and what, if anything, can they do about it? We have come to see that the theatre field lacks a generally accepted and widely used metric or “outcome rubric” for what matters most: the intrinsic value of the theatre experience.”

How do we measure the immeasurable? Have you ever had an indescribable emotional response to a moment in a production? Live theatre has the power to move us in unexpected ways. Yes, we are entertained, but how are we affected? The Arden received the opportunity to select the questions in our take-home surveys. These questions reflect what we want answered by our audiences. Questions that ask our patrons to assess the artistic style of the production, to evaluate if they were emotionally moved, to see if they felt connected to their fellow audience members and to find out if they are more/less likely in the future to follow the work of the playwright. This information will help us to understand not how many tickets we sold but how patrons are responding to the art. This will help the Arden to continue to provide great stories and be on the forefront of artistic progress in the country. To always connect to the Philadelphia community and continue to challenge our patrons with new ideas and stories.

Post-Performance Interviews: Our in-person interviews cover the same topics mentioned above, just in a discussion based format. Engaging in these interviews with Leigh Goldenberg, Arden Theatre Company’s Marketing and Public Relations Manager has been amazing. To hear how people connected to A Moon for the Misbegotten in different ways has been a truly unique experience. Many have a quite a bit of knowledge of O’Neill, and give much historical information with their reactions, while others who are less familiar focus on intense production moments. Intense bonds were formed between audience members and the character of Josie, in her strength, compassion and heartache. Even now it is difficult for me to summarize the feelings expressed by those individuals in the interviews, which emphasizes the main difficulty in trying to gather information on unquantifiable, personal reactions. This difficulty is what makes theatre a strong artistic form; its ever-fleeting, ephemeral nature gives it the power to present unforgettable, poignant moments that stay with us.

I admire the Arden’s participation in this survey and Theatre Bay’s dedication in attempting to get a better idea of how theatre can have a lasting, emotive impact on society. We are continuing interviews and surveys for Superior Donuts and Wanamaker’s Pursuit. Thank you for your support!

For more information, please visit Theatre Bay Area.

How to Manage a Stage

By Harry Watermeier, Arden Professional Apprentice

Okay, listen, I don’t actually know how to manage a stage—it’s only day one. But, I’ve learned a few basic things about stage management, and I’ve been prepping for my Assistant Stage Management gig for about a week. My fellow apprentices have already written some pretty nifty blogs about Assistant Stage Managing (check them out!), and now it’s my turn to give you my initial impressions of this exciting process.

Predictably, I’m a little worried about my A.S.M. gig. My worries come from…well, the chemical imbalance in my brain, and the fact that “stage management” doesn’t really come naturally to me. It seems that a good stage manager possesses skills that are a little foreign to me like: organization, multitasking, a rich understanding of literary text, general responsibility, and basic motor skills. But! I’m doing my very best, and I’m thrilled to be so intimately involved with the rehearsal and production of an Arden show.

Already, after only one day of rehearsal, I’ve gained a tremendous amount of respect for stage managers. Before this gig, I’ve only stepped on stage as an actor, director, or playwright. I’ve never been involved with (or concerned with, really) with the nuts, bolts, gears, and other machine metaphors of a production. I’ve always approached plays artistically, and worked with broad stokes that focused on ideas, feelings, meanings, and atmospheres. Things like prop placement and lighting cues have always been taken care of for me—by (I now realize) remarkable stage managers.

To me, it seems that while actors, directors, technical designers, etc. must be concerned with the microcosms of their respective departments, a stage manager must always keep the macrocosm of a production in mind. From rehearsal schedules to blocking notes, a stage manager must organize, track, record, and communicate a tremendous amount of information for multiple departments to ensure a smooth rehearsal process and production.

I’ll be assistant stage managing Arden’s next main-stage production, Superior Donuts—a complex, subtle character study that is often viciously funny, and always casually profound. I adore this play and I’m a huge admirer of its author: Tracy Letts. I feel like I’ve won the lottery with this assignment. I can’t imagine another play with which I’d like to spend more time.

To prepare for assistant stage managing (…actually, you should know that in the official Superior Donuts contact sheet, I’m listed as “Assistant to the Stage Manager.” Also, someone’s been putting my office supplies in Jell-O.) I’ve completed two major projects. I’ve made a prompt book and taped out the floor. Okay, that sentence sounds pretty nonsensical, but I’m going to explain everything.

What’s a prompt book? I’m glad you asked! A prompt book is a

Clearly made by someone who knows what he's doing.

tool with which I will keep track of all props—their placement, their movements—for the show. A prompt book contains a copy of the play’s text set opposite a diagram of the set. I will mark where and how props move on the diagram, and mark the same movements on the corresponding lines of dialogue or stage directions on the text. This allows me to have both a visual/spatial note as to where and how props move, set alongside a verbal cue. I’ll make these notes during rehearsal—this requires tremendous focus because prop movements change constantly. Props tracking will be one of my main responsibilities with Superior Donuts which, judging by the play’s title is pretty sweet news. Sweet. Get it. ‘Cause of the donuts. It’s a joke because donuts are sweet. I’m going to eat a bunch of donuts backstage that’s all I’m saying.

I’ve also helped “tape out” the rehearsal hall floor.

This is the rehearsal set--complete with furniture, set dressings, and props that simulate the real set.

Essentially, the Stage Manager and A.S.M. create a simulation of the borders of the stage using multi-colored rolls of tape. The image “taped out” is based on an architectural schematic of the set. These taped borders give the actors and director an idea of their blocking choices and limitations when the actual set for the show is not yet available.

So, prep week and Day One of Assistant Stage Managing went well. Today I kept my brow furrowed for about six hours, took copious notes, and paid really close attention to everything. I just have to keep that up for like two months. I think I’m off to a pretty solid start. I absolutely love the show; I’ll be working with a terrific Stage Manager, and I’ll gain knowledge and skills that will be invaluable to me in my future as a theatre practitioner.

Here a little snippet of Superior Donuts:

Arthur: It’s easy to underrate that now, but there’s nothing wrong with comfort, you know? You’re lying in a bed in the city of Chicago and you have your arms wrapped around a person who’s made the decision to move through the world with you. That may be comfort and not much more, but it may be love, too…

Isn’t that something?

The Art (and Entertainment) of the Quick Change

By Rob Heller, Arden Professional Apprentice

I am currently Assistant Stage Managing the Arden’s Production of A Moon for the Misbegotten. I have done a little bit of stage managing in the past and have been at least mildly experienced at most of the duties. However, one day during tech week it came time for the “quick-change.”

The leading (and only) lady in the show Josie (played by Grace Gonglewski) has a transition in Act I where the time of day changes from day to night and time has to have elapsed. The transition needs to show her father Phil Hogan (Michael H. Walls) and their landlord Jim Tyrone (Eric Hissom) going to the bar at the inn and Josie setting the scene for a moonlight date with Jim. The transition has 4 sections.

First, the men exit stage and Josie takes down the laundry line, the clothes on it, and moves the table from the porch onto the front lawn.

Next, the men return to stage and exit en route to the inn while Josie brings the struck items into the house and takes off the working dress leaving her in just her slip while the Assistant Stage Manager (that’s me) strikes the dress and turns on the lantern.

She returns to stage with flowers for the table and goes to the well to wash.

Finally, she returns to the house and with the help of her Assistant Stage Manager (that’s me again) dives into her evening dress, gets zipped, velcroed and snapped, peeks out the window, puts on stockings and shoes and exits the house with lantern in hand to start the next scene.

The kicker is that anything we do inside the house (ie. the quick-change itself) occurs while there is NO action on stage. So, it is crucial that do the change as quickly as possible.

We experimented with a lot of approaches to the change and I became more and more adept at helping Grace. Eventually, with a collaboration between myself, Grace and Alison Roberts (costume designer) we found a method that works for all of us and can be done in the allotted time.

My history is as a director and I never thought so much about quick-changes as I have in the past week. So, in the spirit of connecting with the theater as a whole, I did a little research into quick-change as it exists in the theater today:

First, I wondered how long a quick-change generally takes. I quickly found a recent example from the popular musical Wicked:

In an interview with Wicked Wardrobe Supervisor Gillian Kadish on SHNSF.com, she says that “the fastest change we have in the show is when Elphaba goes from her Shiz costume into the Defying Gravity dress, which is 19 seconds.”

Wow, 19 seconds! Perhaps I am not yet in the elite company of quick-change professionals. I wanted to see if this was particularly quick or if other shows were different. I had to venture no further than another staple of the musical theater realm; Hairspray.

Megan Bowers (Tracy Turnblatt’s dresser) in an article on Playbill.com explains the quick change for both Tracy and Edna (her mother) in the opening number: For Edna, the process takes about 45 seconds. Tracy’s change is quicker than Edna’s, taking only 25 to 30 seconds(she doesn’t have to change her wig like Edna does).

Alright, so generally a change takes under a minute and there seems to be a very clear craft and technique. Now, I wanted to hear about the “funny” mishaps as I (knock on wood) pray will not happen with us. I read a variety on Broadwayspace.com called “Crazy Costume Stories” that involve cutting people out of $30,000 dresses, returning to stage half-dressed, and wearing boots instead of crystal-covered heels for a kick-line. Give them a read yourself for some entertainment!

After examining a bit of the professional world of quick-change I feel very much at ease that the skill is learned and practiced and that it is maybe essential to earning one’s stripes to partake of the quick-change.

Arden for All – Adventures in Eddystone

By Shanna Tedeschi, Arden Professional Apprentice

Greetings friends! Shanna here–an Arden Professional Apprentice and Teaching Artist.

Did you know that every year over 2,500 excited kids in Philadelphia, Ridley Park and Camden get free books, free classes and free show tickets to our Children’s Theatre productions? All this magic is possible through a program called Arden for All.

As a Teaching Artist, I was sent to bring some enchantment to the 3rd and 4th graders of Eddystone Elementary. What ensued were moments of imagination, hilarity and discovery–watch this slideshow to see for yourself!