Thursday, February 21, 2008

The Play's the Thing

For the past several years I've been an active member of The Jackson County Stage Company, a community theater group that puts on about four plays a year. Until 2 years ago our digs were in a building owned by a local bank, who let us use it rent free for over 20 years. The building was old and in disrepair, and finally, after it literally began to come down over our heads, the bank was forced to "evict" us and have the building torn down.
Since then the Stage Co has been a wandering troupe, staging our plays in venues all over town, including a restaurant, a church, and a couple of schools. The play we're currently producing, Neil Simon's Chapter Two, is being staged at the Carbondale Community High School.

This is a shot of the stage setting for "Chapter Two". In the "audience" is director Craig Hinde, also a talented actor who has appeared in many other Stage Co productions. In addition Craig is the organization's current treasurer. In this group many of us wear several different hats. It's all a labor of love.









Because of having to move from place to place with limited time in each location for setting up the stage and doing on-site rehearsals, our plays the past 2 years have been carefully chosen by the Play Selection Committee for small casts and simplicity of sets and staging. That doesn't always translate into simplicity of props, however, which is what I'm working on for this production.

Chapter Two is Simon's semi-autobiographical play about his second marriage (to actress Marsha Mason), and all the action takes place on a set divided into two New York City apartments, "George's' and Jennie's". ("George" represents the Simon character, and "Jennie" is Marsha Mason's alter ego.) The other two characters are "Leo", George's brother, and "Faye", Jennie's friend. The play is a comedy and full of Simon's typically witty repartee. It's a two-act play, each act having a number of mostly short scenes. That often means not a lot of time to get props ready between scenes.

The theater has a language all its own. It's crucial for everyone in the cast and crew to understand clearly where everything is supposed to be at all times, including people, so directions are described from the point of view of an actor on center stage facing the audience. The part of the stage to the actor's right, is "stage right", and the offstage area on that side is "off right". To the actor's left, logically, is "stage left", and "off left". Stage locations are further designated by "downstage" (toward the audience) and "upstage" (toward the rear of the stage. )


(AUDIENCE)


DOWNSTAGE



OFF LEFT STAGE LEFT STAGE RIGHT OFF RIGHT

UPSTAGE

BACKSTAGE



(The props used for Chapter Two are divided on prop tables "off right", for the items used in Jennie's apartment, and "off left", for the items used in George's apartment. Sometimes an item goes back and forth between apartments, which makes things interesting. Fortunately for this play there are two of us working props, one for each side. My bailiwick is "off left", or the props for George's apartment.


This is a partial view of George's apartment, facing downstage left . Upstage left has a bookshelf, the "front" door, a small table and a coat tree. The white swinging doors go offstage left into George's "kitchen".




Jennies' apartment is back-to-back with George's. The green sofa and round white lamp shade are in her apartment.
















This is George's desk. (You can barely see the corner of it in the upper left of the picture above.) Quite a bit of prop changing has to do with the desk: add clutter, clean up clutter, put things in drawers where they can be found by the actor, put a note under the phone, etc. Even the position of the desk chair is crucial for one scene in particular.

At the end of each scene, the lights fade and the stage "blacks out" so the prop people (that's me) can come out like little elves and do our stuff. It's difficult to work in total darknees so the person handling the lights will try to give us a "dim glow" to work by. Sometimes he gets it right. Sometimes not. When I walk out onto the stage I never know if I'm going to be able to see what I'm doing or floundering around in the dark, trying to remove some props and add others. Factor in that some props are glasses and bottles of liquid and things get dicey.



This is the main off left prop table. Another smaller table is out of sight behind a flat (a piece of plywood used to make "walls" etc.) and holds specific items meant to be brought on stage from the apartment "kitchen". There are three on stage "doors" in George's apartment: one directly across from this table, one further downstage (that supposedly goes to the kitchen), and the far upstage "front door", which opens onto the backstage area. Quite a few props have to be placed backstage near the front door, so that the actors can carry them in as they "arrive" at the apartment.

On and under this table and the one in the "kitchen" are the props which must be placed onstage and removed at the proper times so the actors can depend on the props being where they expect them to be. It's the responsibility of the prop people to be sure this happens smoothly. In our theater group, the prop people, along with the actors, director and others actually provide all the items for the set, including furniture, rugs, props, and any item needed for the production. The little green stickers you see on the glasses indicate these glasses are clean and the actors can drink from them. (I take the stickers off before putting them in place, of course.) When I remove the glasses from the stage after a scene I quickly put on a red sticker (dirty) until I can wipe the glasses off and return them to my prop box. Every night after rehearsal I pack up the four dirty glasses (which are "low ball " glasses from my own china cabinet) and take them home to wash and bring back the next evening. I also provide clean water and tea (for club soda , vodka and scotch) which the actors drink and use for other onstage "business", which is the term describing facial expressions and small actions by the actors as they say their lines or react to the lines of others. (Thank goodness there's no actual food in this play. I've done props for plays with food and it's a nightmare!!!)



My prop table is my sacrosanct place while the play is being produced. Woe be unto the stage hand who leaves a roll of duct tape or a pair of wire cutters or his McDonald's soda cup on my tables! I know exactly where each item is set and have a typed list of what goes on stage where when. I don't have a complete script, just the tag lines at the end of each scene to alert me to get ready to do my thing. The stage manager, who is kind of an on-stage assistant director, provided me with a basic list of props and scene changes and I retyped it and adapted it so I could follow it better. I used a script to add in the end-of-scene lines so I'd know when it was time to leap into action.


This play has been in rehearsal all month, but I was out of town for the first part of the month. (see earlier posts) My first rehearsal was Monday night and I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off. I work with five different coats at one time or another, and I was having fits trying to figure out which coat went where when. Tuesday night was better. Last night even better, as far as the props went. (They were still having some glitches with the lighting, ringing phone cues, etc.) Tonight was supposed to be dress rehearsal, but guess what? Another ice storm is upon us! It started sleeting during the night and has continued off and on. It's now early afternoon, and the roads and sidewalks are sheets of ice with ice still falling. We knew this was coming, so Craig told us last night might be our final rehearsal before Friday night's opening performance.



Theater lore has it that a lousy dress rehearsal portends a fabulously successful opening night. Our first public performance tomorrow ought to be terrific! I just hope the ice stops coming down and the roads get cleared or we may be playing to only a paltry few intrepid souls willing to brave icy conditions to see the play. However, "the show must go on" and it will. This time I won't be taking any bows because all my work will have been backstage or only dimly witnessed onstage as I scurry around in my black clothes during a twilit scene change. That's OK. I've been in front of the lights before and it's fun, and it's great to get applause from the audience. But those of us who work backstage will know we've done our part and the actors and director appreciate our efforts.












No comments: