Hey ho, the Weather and the Rep (Part 2)

A blog from APT's Managing Director, Carrie Van Hallgren, as she experiences her inaugural summer at APT.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the weather and how it informs nearly all of our operations at APT. Anything created to be worn, sat on, fought with, opened, closed, read or eaten must be able to serve the same function in the hot sun, the rain, the wind and even snow.

Besides the weather, the rep is the other element at APT that makes it unlike many theatres, and it is, perhaps the most complicated part of doing business here. (The term 'rep' refers to our repertory, the fact that our plays are all running at the same time, alternating performances over a period of months and thereby sharing stages, technicians, and performers.) Our scenery will be built to withstand rain, but it will also be built so that it can be broken down, packed up, and put away in 60 minutes in order for another play's scenery to be brought out, unpacked and erected in the same amount of time. Last Saturday, perhaps the hottest day of the summer so far, our production assistants turned Windsor into Longbourn all between 6:00 and 7:30 pm.

[Note: Our stage rebuild project will improve the process of changing rep scenery. Check out this video to see how.]

Over the course of this season, APT will open nine plays. Eight of those plays will be performed in repertory. Our actors might be appearing in as many as three of those plays, all in different combinations. Jonathan Smoots, for example, is in A Streetcar Named Desire, The Merry Wives of Windsorand Seascape. Colleen Madden is in Pride and Prejudice, Merry Wivesand Othello. Just take a look at the casting grid on pages 66-67 of the program and it will give you an idea of the casting puzzle.

Now imagine trying to open five plays in two weeks with 31 actors all cast in two to three of the plays over the season in different combinations.

Here is a sketch of how it happens. The rehearsal week is six days long (Tuesday-Saturday) and most plays rehearse every day. Rehearsal hours are designated as primary, secondary or tertiary. Let's say that you are Tyne Rafaeli, director of Pride and Prejudice. If you have a primary rehearsal, it means that you can rehearse whatever you want with whomever and wherever you choose. You've essentially got first dibs on the actors. In primary rehearsals, you are going to want to work on the big scenes, the ones with many characters, like the Netherfield Ball scene.

Meanwhile, if Pride and Prejudice has primary rehearsals, Streetcar might have secondary. That means that director Bill Brown gets the second pick of the actors available. Whoever is not at the Netherfield Ball in Pride could be called for Streetcar. Bill could rehearse the Blanche and Mitch scene with Tracy Michelle Arnold (not in the Netherfield scene) and Tim Gittings (not in Pride and Prejudice), for example. But he couldn't work on a scene with Stella because Cristina Panfilio is dancing as Charlotte Lucas in a rehearsal up the Hill.

Being in tertiary rehearsals, The Merry Wives of Windsor would get the last pick for this block of time. Director Tim Ocel could take a look at the remaining actors, those not called for the other shows, and see if he could find some scenes to rehearse. Pickings will be slim. Tim might call the Windsor children, for example, to work on the music for this play.

The repertory nature of APT makes rehearsal schedules a delicate dance, and we try to address some of the anticipated difficulties with casting. For example, Marcus Truschinski and Kelsey Brennan (Darcy and Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice) were not cast in any other role in the first half of the season. This allowed Pride and Prejudice the opportunity to rehearse some critical scenes during its tertiary block.

The schedule gets a bit easier in the second half of the season, when the next three plays go into rehearsal. This time the balancing act is not with other rehearsals but with the plays in performance. Othello and Desdemona (Chike Johnson and Laura Rook) might be called to rehearsal opposite a performance of Streetcar, but Seascape is out of luck because three quarters of its cast are in that play.

Bottom line: Directors work very closely with their stage managers to break down their play into manageable scenes and to anticipate what days they can have their pick of the actors and what days they might have a very limited number.

And to keep things interesting, costume fittings for all of the plays must be scheduled during these rehearsal weeks, along with individual voice and text coaching sessions.

From time to time, the weather and the rep join forces to conspire against us, like when it pours rain in a final dress rehearsal Up the Hill. If we've done our job, planned ahead, and optimized our primary rehearsal time, we will open on schedule.