DAY THIRTY THREE - Friday April 27

DAY THIRTY THREE - Friday April 27

The drugs seemed to help Patti's leg - she was feeling better and we worked big scenes with the full company.  

During a break, I learned that we will not be able to get any personnel for the onstage band – therefore the entire basis of the set design is kind of for naught. The central platform and stair unit was supposed to be for the band - a fake band - but a band nonetheless. See set rendering:

There are apparently no people left to play those four fake musicians - so I may have to re-conceive the staging for all of the epilogue and all of the prologue. The adjustment would be to make that platform the grand entrance into the cafe and to have people refer to the real orchestra as the house band. It could work - but it's a major overhaul.

After rehearsal, Patti and I were upset because we felt, not for the first time, that some of the chorus and second ballet group (remember, there are two casts in principals, chorus AND ballet corps) had a bad, or at least disrespectful, work ethic. Most of the people were paying attention when they were not on stage so they knew what to do when it was their turn - but others were paying NO attention, TEXTING, sitting in the hallway - spewing bored vibes and when it was their turn to get up on stage - had NO IDEA what they were doing. Therefore, we had to teach everything YET AGAIN - wasting our time and the time of those who WERE paying attention.  

There were further complications from the fact that we have no idea who of the 2 or 3 casts has done what scenes. Nor which of the two groups of chorus people have been staged – we rarely see the same faces twice in the same places. So we have no real way of tracking who has been in a rehearsal the first time we stage something and, therefore, should know what was done when we run it. Shouldn't that be the stage manager's job?  

Since there was a big show in the evening, I couldn’t have too many people to rehearse so I cut my losses and went to the opera house with Gugu (Irina Gugushina, one of our interpreters) to see the ballet – Giselle.

I found the ballet of moderate interest but the opera/ballet theatre was absolutely stunning.

 

 

 The main curtain was ancient and stunning.

 

We had front row seats, which was kind of great, but kind of not.  You could not see below the dancers ankles so you lost all sense of feet on the ground - and so much in ballet is the beauty of the foot, pointe or flat, right?

Also, they kept doing this weird tableau thing - they'd finish a scene, all would freeze as the curtain, slowly, pulled closed. Then it would open again, with them still frozen (or wobbling just a little), then close the curtain again and it would be intermission.

Here is a video of the curtain call.