Omelets and Clocks

So, continuing on. 

After my blog post, rehearsals continued as scheduled. Then, at exactly the halfway point between first rehearsal and final performance, the stage manager had to step down from the production for health reasons.

That was stressful. It was especially difficult because I liked the stage manager so much, had been happy to be learning from her, and was worried about her. 

There were four rehearsal days where we didn't have an official stage manager, during which time I tried to be both stage manager and assistant stage manager. I continued to take blocking notes, set the space up for rehearsal, and prepare myself for when I'd be backstage during the production. I also wrote up the schedules, sent tons of emails, and started the rehearsal, called breaks, and started the rehearsal again. This is stuff I've done in the past, but it was the first time I'd been unexpectedly thrown into it. I was relieved when the new stage manager arrived at the beginning of tech week.

Kristin McCollum was the new SM, and she was wonderful too, in a very different way from the previous SM. In some ways, it's hard to know the exact differences between them because tech and show week are so different from standard rehearsals. It's also actually not uncommon to have a rehearsal stage manager and a production stage manager.

Tech week was crazy. I was in the theatre for sixty hours that week. I was tired, to be sure, but I also knew one thing that kept me going: I would rather work long hours in the theatre day after day, then spend one more hour working in a shoe store. It was long, to be sure, but it was a pretty smooth tech week all things considered. I did my part, taping out a props table, setting spike tape, labelling dressing rooms, and light walking. Then in the evenings, we had our various rehearsals.

In the first opera, Bizet's Le Docteur Miracle, there were four singers, two non-speaking extras (or "supers"), and three ballet dancers. There were probably upwards of twenty props, and about six or seven quick changes. During the overture alone, the set doors probably opened and closed twenty times. Backstage was a flurry of activity, that had to disappear every time a door was opened.

The set for both operas was a wall, approximately twelve feet high and thirty feet wide, with double doors in the centre, and another door on either side of the double doors. Sight lines were a bit of a nightmare. Especially during the first opera, when we had nine performers backstage and two ASMs. Not to mention the size of the costumes! The girls' skirts were very wide, as the design of Docteur was eighteenth century. The costumes were borrowed from Stratford, and they were beautiful. The singers all wore wigs, too. Our soprano lead wore a wig that was made to look like her own hair. Instead of having to style her hair every night, the wig and make up ladies (excuse me, the wonderful wig and make up ladies) could just stick the wig on her head, and voila! Hairstyle.

Allow me to summarize Le Docteur Miracle. Laurette is the daughter of the mayor, or Le Podestat, and she is in love with Captain Silvio. Le Podestat will absolutely not allow his daughter to marry a soldier, and he despises Silvio. Silvio, banished from Laurette's house, hatches a plan to win her hand. He poses as a servant in Le Podestat's household. He prepares an omelet for Le Podestat. When Le Podestat and his wife, Veronique, leave for an after breakfast walk, Silvio reveals himself to Laurette. Of course, Le Podestat discovers them and chases Silvio from the house once more. Veronique enters with a letter from Silvio, in which he claims to have poisoned the omelet so recently eaten by Le Podestat. Enter le Docteur. Early on in the opera, we are made aware of Docteur Miracle's presence as a traveling charlatan, selling remedies for what ails ya. He tells Le Podestat that his death is imminent, and demands a ridiculous amount of money for the cure. When Le Podestat is hesitant to pay, Miracle says that in lieu of pay, he will instead take the hand of Laurette in marriage. Le Podestat agrees, since Miracle isn't a soldier. Miracle gives the remedy, and exits quickly with Laurette. The remedy reads, "You are now cured by your son-in-law, Captain Silvio, who never poisoned you." Le Docteur, of course, was Silvio the whole time. Laurette and Silvio enter once more, and are forgiven and blessed by Laurette's parents.

So, if you can imagine the singer who played Silvio, changing to a servant, changing to le Docteur, changing back to Silvio, you can begin to imagine how busy it was backstage. Silvio had a coat and a hat, the servant had an apron, a vest, an eye patch and a hat. Le Docteur had a coat, a hat, and glasses. And he was wearing a pony tailed wig.

The second opera, Ravel's L'heure espagnole, was a complete breeze by comparison. For L'heure we had five singers and five or ten props. We had the same wall with three doors, but whereas for Docteur the doors were magical (people would exit stage left and immediately enter stage right), for L'heure they were set. Stage right was the entrance from the street, center stage went into the rest of the house, stage left went to the clockmaker's tool shop. The stage itself was the clockmaker's shop. There were three large clocks onstage. Two were upright and one was prone and was used as a seat. The design for L'heure was 1950s, and it was beautiful. The clocks, which in the original script were grandfather clocks, were gigantic alarm clocks.

To summarize L'heure espagnole, it's about a woman whose husband, the clockmaker, is not particularly interested in sex. Every Thursday, he tends to the municipal clocks, and she has an hour to spend with her lover. However, this week a client, a muleteer, arrives at the clockmaker's shop before he leaves, and the muleteer stays to wait for the clockmaker. The clockmaker's wife, Concepcion, has to figure out a way to get rid of the muleteer, Ramiro, before her lover arrives. She asks him to take a clock up to her bedroom. He exits with the clock as the lover, Gonzalve, enters.  Concepcion realizes her plan is flawed, as Ramiro will return once he's done. She convinces Gonzalve to get into a clock, and when Ramiro returns she tells him she changed her mind, and she now wants this clock taken to her bedroom. While he goes to get the clock he just took out, Don Inigo Gomez, a banker, enters the shop. He hits on Concepcion and she rejects his advances. Ramiro re-enters with the first clock, and then takes the clock containing Gonzalve out, Concepcion follows. On his own in the clock shop, Don Inigo decides to get into a clock and wait for Concepcion to come back. Instead, Ramiro comes back to watch the shop. Soon after, Concepcion re-enters and claims that the clock is going backwards, and she simply can't have that. Ramiro exits to get the clock containing Gonzalve. The real reason Concepcion is trying to get rid of Gonzalve is because he keeps composing poetry, rather than getting on with it. Don Inigo reveals himself to Concepcion, and at first she thinks he's crazy for being in the clock, and just wishes he would go away. Then the things he says start to hit close to home for Concepcion, as Don Inigo says that young, poetical lovers are often inexperienced. Ramiro comes back with Gonzalve in the clock, and asks if he should bring the clock containing Don Inigo up to the room. Concepcion agrees, and Ramiro unwittingly takes Don Inigo to her room. Concepcion asks Gonzalve to leave, but he doesn't. She goes up to Don Inigo. Ramiro enters again, and shortly after Concepcion follows, again unhappy with the clock. Don Inigo was stuck in it. Ramiro fetches Don Inigo and the clock down again. Concepcion suddenly realizes how sexy Ramiro is, and she invites him up to her room, without any clock. The clockmaker returns to find two men in his shop, one of whom is stuck in a clock. The clockmaker sells his clocks to Don Inigo and Gonzalve, who don't want the clockmaker to realize their real reason for being there. Concepcion and Ramiro enter together, and the clockmaker apologizes to his wife since she doesn't have a clock for her room. Luckily, Ramiro passes by every day, regular as clockwork, so he will tell her the time. 

The challenge for this opera was obviously the clocks. They had to be light enough for one person to carry, and big and strong enough to enclose a person. They had false backs that went up against trap doors hidden in the walls, so that the singers could escape to backstage, and re-enter the clocks from backstage. The clocks had large doors on the sides for the singers to get in and out of onstage too, of course. There were also little circular doors where the number 12 was, so that while the singers were in the clocks, they could open this small door to see what was going on and to sing, of course. So, while L'heure espagnole was much easier than Le Docteur Miracle, I had to help singers get in and out of trap door/clocks, and move the clocks about backstage. 

So, that was it. My first apprenticeship credit, and my first time ever working on an opera. It was a really fantastic experience, with great people all around. 

It's been a week and a half since the final performance, and I think I finally have the music out of my head.