Few days are as daunting as tech, which went well, all things considered. The concerns of our monologues are different than a traditional play, though much of the vocabulary is the same, and ART staff did a fantastic job rising to the challenge--it was a very smooth experience, and I'm really excited about some of the visions we've been able to realize.
Some of the key differences between teching the monologues and traditional plays:
•A traditional play has much more movement in space than the monologues, so you have to light the space, not the floor. The monologues have only one fixed point for lighting, and so the choices become much more sculptural--for a lot of the space, you really are lighting according to how the light hangs in the space, as you know what needs to be lit for visibility.
•A traditional play isn't concerned with video and audio recording, as a normal play doesn't have an ever-changing text to keep track of.
•A traditional play uses lines to call cues--none of our cues trigger on lines, but instead on physical motions in the space that I use to signal when a scene is ready for a shift.
•A traditional play has a set; we endeavor to make our "set" look selected and chosen, but ultimately mirror the real table and chair that they are. In the end I feel like we spend a lot of care and time on our version of the table and chair choices, pouring over every detail--when there isn't much to look at, the audience sees everything intensely. Even the water glass matters.
•A traditional play has a full rehearsal, but we don't rehearse without an audience as there's no story to tell without an audience--so we do cue-to-cues, work the timings and strategies, and the real test is the first performance tomorrow.
Crossposted to the ART blog
11:18 PM
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