Hi everyone – apologies for my absence from the blog, it’s been non-stop since I got to Chapel Hill at the beginning of October (I’ve now lived in NC longer than I’ve lived in NYC!), but I’ve finally got a few hours to write a little bit about my experience here so far – and it’s been a wonderful one!
I’ve been at Playmaker’s Rep in Chapel Hill NC for the past six weeks assisting on a production of NICHOLAS NICKLEBY – the epic piece, by David Edgar, is a 6.5 hour version of the 9 hour production David did with RSC – it’s split into two parts, has 25 actors, over 650 costume pieces, and is being co-directed by the fantastic Joe Haj (who’s also the artistic director of playmakers) and the equally fantastic Tom Quaintance.
When I first talked to Tom and Joe over the summer about the possibility of working on this with them, they made it very clear to me that they were to be true co-directors – neither of them would function as the primary or lead director, and they wouldn’t be dividing the piece (ie one person taking the two-handers while the other does all the big crowd scenes). And I have to say, now that we’re a week away from our marathon opening, the process has been truly co-directed – from our first rehearsal in the room, the relationship between the two of them has been incredibly fluid, the actors seem to honestly have two directors in the room they can go to with questions – and both Tom and Joe, as planned, have taken their own pass more or less through every scene of the play (in fact many of the scenes have only ever been rehearsed by both of them simultaneously, as they both bounce back and for between what’s happening in the foreground, and what’s in the background).
Joe and Tom were upfront about saying this production of Nicholas Nickleby wouldn’t look like Joe’s production – or like Tom’s production – but that hopefully their combined efforts would make for a better production than the one either of them could have directed on their own. Joe and Tom are certainly different directors, and they see different things / have different ideas and aesthetics – but as they say, and it’s proven to be true, they fundamentally agree on what good acting is. And with that as a base-line, it’s been a remarkably smooth process working for the two of them (I’m the only AD, so I work for both of them – and yes, that means a lot of running back and forth between directors and rehearsal rooms, and it means I sit between them, taking notes for both of them at the same time, which has certainly been a challenge!).
People have asked if I’ve felt like I’ve been torn between them / put in the middle ever – but both Tom and Joe have been incredibly conscious not only with me, but with the entire team, of avoiding contradictory notes and always checking in with one another to ensure that they continue to remain on the same page. (Joe’s mentioned that he’s done more prep on this, not only because of the size, but because he’s co-directing, than on almost any other production he’s ever directed). They also both really trust each other (they’ve been good friends and collaborators for many years) – and – something else, which I think is key – they both continue to learn from one another – and enjoy doing so – which has been remarkable to be with in the room.
The production is split into two parts, both of which are being simultaneously produced – the first week, we read through the play (it took two days), did table work, rewrites (more on that in a sec), and explored some staging ideas – the second week, we staged and ran all of part one (~ 140 pages) – the third week we staged and ran all of part two (~ 170 pages) – the third and fourth week we did work thru’s and run thru’s of both parts – we’ve just done a week of tech and previews for Part One – and then sat Part One down for the current week while we’re teching and previewing Part II!. (Both parts open this Saturday, back-to-back, in an all-day marathon event!).
Playmaker’s is on the UNC campus (the whole town of Chapel Hill, even the fire trucks, are UNC blue!), and also home to a graduate training program – and the 25 actors in NN come almost entirely from the Playmakers Company (there are grad/undergrad faculty in the production, local community actors, all of the 11 current grad school students, a few undergrads, and two out of town actors, including the lovely Justin Adams, who’s playing Nic).
One of the things that makes this production an especially mammoth undertaking is that Playmakers is a relatively small company – I’m the only AD, we only have two stage managers on the show (no asm’s and no pa’s, even when running rehearsals in two rooms simultaneously), the sound-designer/composer is also the sound engineer and entire sound crew, there’s only one ME – and backstage, the crew is more or less entirely made up of undergrad students (we have things like quick changes for 10 actors who all have roughly 30 seconds to make a full change, including wigs, with only 1 professional wardrobe person and four undergrads) – so the production has truly been a test for the entire community, forcing the theatre to really stretch and challenge itself. (And indeed, that’s one of the reasons Joe chose to program NN in the season).
As assistant director, my responsibilities have changed throughout the process - from note-taking to auditioning understudies, from filling in and running a rehearsal or two to helping assign (and reassign) all of the massive amounts of character-less narration in the play, from trying to cast crowd scenes based on who’s available (and who might already have appropriate clothes from other looks etc.) to communicating with other departments the various changes being made in the room (especially because there are so few of us), from trying to figure out how we stage 170 pages in a week with as little overlap between rooms as possible (ie trying to limit how often we’re calling the same actor to be in both rooms simultaneously) to filling in for the undergrad actors when they can’t be in rehearsal because of class! All along, Joe and Tom have been incredibly generous with me, really opening up their process to me – they’ve been very active in asking for my thoughts / what I’m seeing, and they listen – and they seem to actively avoid ever asking me for things like coffee / food runs (which actually really threw me when I first started working for them!).
I’ve only assisted a few times – but from the experiences I’ve had, I sort of believe that assisting and directing are two completely different things – I’ve realized that when I assist, I stop looking at work in the same way I would if I was directing it – it isn’t in my body in the same way as if I were making it. So when I’ve really been asked to make something as an assistant in the past, it’s actually been incredibly difficult – I have trouble giving myself permission to work from my impulses the way I can when it’s mine. However, I also get bored pretty easily – so I hate being in a room and not having anything to do – this process has been sort of the perfect balance – I’ve definitely been used, and kept busy, and in the ways I feel I can best, as AD, contribute to the process. And I’ve been able to meet a fantastic company who’s mission, and way of working, I really respect and enjoy – and I’ve gotten to see people working to put up big epic piece, which is definitely a passion of mine.
Here’s a sort of rough breakdown of the process / timeline up ‘til now:
WEEK ONE:
The first day I got in, having driven from NYC by way of lunch with Veronica Vorel (our sound designer for DirectorFest and a close friend of mine from YSD) in D.C.! I went straight to Joe’s house for drinks with Joe, Tom and David Edgar, to talk about the play and the plan for the first week. After that, I drove to the “actor house”, where I’ve been living since I got here – it’s a beautiful five bedroom house a fifteen minute walk from the theatre (a walk that takes me through the vine-ceilinged pathways of the campus arboretum), and a block off of Franklin Street, the main drag through Chapel Hill. For the first month, I was sharing the house with Justin, the actor playing Nic – now we’re also living with Tyler Micoleau and Annie Wiegand, our fantastic lighting designer and his lovely assistant. It’s wonderful – every morning I sit on the sun porch typing notes, drinking the free organic coffee we get from the theatre (Playmaker’s has a partnership with a great coffee roasting place, so we get free coffee every week), and watching the deer (there seem to be five deer who live in the neighborhood, and like to graze on our driveway).
The first week we split up the read through of the play over two afternoons, and then during afternoons for the rest of the week, we tabled through the show with the entire company and David Edgar. At night, we’d do exploratory staging work on some of the more challenging sections of the show, so Joe and Tom could get a chance to work options for different theatrical vocabularies with the actors on their feet – figuring out how to handle some of the massive sequences of narration in the play, some of the larger group scenes, what it meant to put some of the different worlds in the play on its feet. The combination of work on our feet and intensive table work seemed to be great (for David Edgar as well as the rest of us, for when he developed the show with RSC they never really as a company did that kind of really rigorous table work on the show b/c they were developing the material throughout the process). There definitely seemed to be a great balance between careful specific work and freeing exploration as early as day one, which I think allowed for a rehearsal process throughout that has remained incredibly calm and relaxed (especially given the scale of the project). (That first week, we also lost a few of our actors, including our Ralph and Kate Nickleby, because they were still in performances for the first PRC production of the season, OPUS – the first of many many scheduling challenges to come!).
The other big thing that first week, was having David Edgar in the room with us – and realizing how engaged he was with the material, decades late, and how invested he was in continuing to work on it – that week, we ended up working on several rewrites that he himself proposed – and it’s amazing to me that he was so generous with us / our production, was still so invested. Two of the biggest rewrites came about because we were doing a 6.5 hour version of what was originally a 9 hour play – so, essentially the second and third 3 hour plays had been cut together to make 1 three hour play. Part I and II in the 6.5 hour version are definitely very different plays – the first is much lighter, flashier – the second is much darker. One of the rewrites was to take an already existing scene and flesh it out as more of a party (for Nic, when he leaves the theatrical company he joins toward the end of part I), to create a bigger scene early on in Part II. And one of the others was to rework several scenes into something more streamlined, to accommodate the new two-part structure, eliminate some particularly rough costume changes, and streamline the plot. Both were great changes – (wow, what an opportunity to have David Edgar in the room with us! I still can’t believe it).
WEEKS TWO and THREE:
We staged ~140 pages in the first week – and ~170 pages the second week. (Or, roughly 40 pages a day for two weeks).
We were working more or less in two rooms simultaneously (sometimes having to stage things w/out all of the actors because they were called in both rooms). And then, for the last hour of every day, we’d all come back together to the bigger rehearsal room to run the sequence of scenes that had been staged that day. Figuring out the rehearsal schedule every day for those first few weeks was sometimes close to (a very exciting kind of) madness – trying to figure out what could be rehearsed against what, and what scenes could be rehearsed without which actors, so that everything could be accomplished – and trying to work off of breakdowns of scenes/actors that were constantly changing as narration was assigned and reassigned, as characters were taken out of scenes to accommodate quick changes, as others were added to beef up crowd scenes – and taking into account class schedules of the undergrads (I’ve done my fair share of standing in for missing actors over the past few weeks!) – and to accommodate fittings (our third week of rehearsals, there were 24 hours of fittings that had to be schedule into rehearsal time – there’s no ability to hold fittings before rehearsals since more or less everyone in the show and shop is in class until we go into rehearsals…). It sometimes felt close to chaos, trying to work off of paper work that couldn’t keep up with the amount of work being created each day b/c there were only two stage managers and myself running between the three rooms and noting everything – but – somehow – we did it – and on schedule – and with the exception of maybe one day during the staging of part II, we never actually seemed to be going so quickly that we couldn’t all keep up (the cast for this show was spectacularly prepared coming in, and everyone in the room, on both sides of the table, was able to work at more or less the same pace).
Also that week, I auditioned undergrads for potential understudies – now we’re fully understudied, and all 25 actors in the show are covered! Fingers crossed no one ever has to go on – it would be a massive undertaking for anyone to have to suddenly step in to the show! (Though we have some remarkably dedicated understudies!).
TECH FOR PART ONE:
Part one, which is actually the shorter play, received about five extra hours of tech than part two will… We began tech a week ago from last Friday night, had back-to-back 10 out of 12’s last Saturday and Sunday, had a few more hours of tech last Tuesday afternoon, an invited dress Tuesday night, and then Wednesday night we went into previews! We continued to have tech during the afternoons while in previews, but because the show is primarily crewed by undergrads, we have afternoon tech’s without full wardrobe crews etc. – so things like quick changes have to be figured out and perfected before we actually get into previews, because once we’re in previews we no longer actually have tech time with the wardrobe crew – and there are a LOT of EXTREMELY tight quick changes (actors exiting from one side of the building and returning from the opposite side, on a different level, seconds later, having made a full change of clothes and hair). It was very very fast – but we made it. And by the second preview, the company was really able to take full ownership over the piece. My favorite note from Joe and Tom was in response to the first preview, in preparation for the second: they told the cast that basically we were still working to size up to the room – but it wasn’t a question of volume – it wasn’t about reaching the back wall – it was about bringing the back wall closer. It was a great note – and sitting in the house for the second preview, I could really feel that shift in energy from the company.
TECH FOR PART TWO:
Well, Friday night we had our third preview for part one – and Saturday we started teching an entirely new 3 hour full length play with it’s own set of locations, characters and quick changes! Part Two is the longer play – and there’s less tech time. We’ll finish teching through Part II tomorrow (which includes some of the most difficult technical moments in the show, like the hanging of Ralph, and some of the most brutal quick changes in the 6.5 hours piece) – and then we’ll have our dress rehearsal tomorrow night! We’ve got afternoon tech / evening previews for Part Two on Wednesday and Thursday – Friday we’ll do a light run of Part One in the afternoon as a brush up, have our third preview of Part Two that night (which means I’ll have notes from two directors on 6.5 hours of theatre to type up and organize Friday night – YIKES!) – and then Saturday we open both parts back-to-back! I’ve two friends coming to see it (one of whom is Drama League summer alum Kate Pines!) – then we drive back to NYC the next day, by way of FULL CIRCLE at Woolly Mammoth, which Veronica Vorel sound designed… and then Monday and Tuesday I have auditions and callbacks for COUPLING!!! (This has been my first experience working with a casting director - I’m working with Cindi Rush and her wonderful assistant, Michele – and it’s been a great experience, feeling so taken care of in the casting process, and having to be responsible for articulating what you’re looking for, but not for necessarily knowing where/how to find it).
NN has certainly been a once-in-a-lifetime wild ride – and a major part of what’s made the experience invaluable is the community. The Playmaker’s family has been incredibly welcoming – I already had some friends here coming in (Sarah Pickett, the resident sound designer/composer at the theatre this year, who’s designing NN, is a close friend and collaborator from YSD – and the managing director of the theatre, Hannah Grannemann, was also a classmate of mine at Yale) – but really the entire community, from the staff to grad/undergrad students and faculty have been incredibly warm, open, and generous – and I’ve really felt welcomed as a part of the community, from dinners out and in, bar nights, and birthday celebrations to the spectacularly designed Playmakers annual ball and actors in NN helping me out with readings of my piece for DirectorFest!
Perhaps the most challenging part of this experience has been trying to balance the considerable amount of work for NN with my other projects (while here, I’ve been working on five productions I’m directing between December and late April). I’m not sure I’ve figured out the answer – and I’m certainly thankful to have the work – but if I assist again, I’ll have to continue to work on figuring out that balance.
Of course, no blog posting would be complete without a little bit on the food – and Chapel Hill is certainly a great place for food. On the Sunday nights of our ten out of twelves, community volunteers cook dinner for everyone at the theatre – the first week, they did a shepherd’s pie cook-off (the one with cheese on top won by a landslide, though there was also a pretty great one with lamb) – and yesterday, we had (my first) North Carolina BBQ (which is vinegar-based, I learned – I also had my first hush puppy). I’ve also learned that the State Fair (which was on while I was here, though I unfortunately didn’t have time to go) is a mecca of fried food (fried caramel-apples, for instance – they also do chocolate-covered bacon); I’ve been to Time Out, the 24-hour Southern fast food place for chicken-biscuits, mac’n cheese and fried okra – I’ve had the frozen mint juleps from Crooks Corner – the (bacon) cheese fries from Lindas (the local bar everyone at PRC goes to – they even stay open late on Sunday nights when we have ten out of twelves) – the birthday cake shot from Top of the Hill (I had my 27th birthday here – and Sarah Berk, one of the lovely undergrads in our show, bought me the shot, which she assured me is a birthday tradition in Chapel Hill, albeit for your 21st birthday…) – the big thing left on my list: the chicken-biscuit from the biscuit kitchen – I’m going on my last morning here, on the way out (so I can’t be tempted to go back again). I’ve learned there’s a war between flakey and fluffy biscuits – I haven’t yet sampled enough to weigh in – but perhaps after the biscuit kitchen this sunday, I’ll be able to ;)
So – that’s the news on this, my last day off in Chapel Hill – more to come soon on COUPLING HEURISTIC once I’m back in NYC! And if you haven’t already, get your tix to DirectorFest!!!
Performances are at the Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex at 312 W. 36th Street, on the following days / times:
Thursday Dec. 10th @ 7pm
Friday Dec. 11th @ 8pm
Saturday Dec. 12th @ 2pm / 8pm
Sunday Dec. 13th @ 3pm
For industry reservations, call: 212-252-2103
For general tix: www.smarttix.com, or 212-868-4444
Hope to see everyone there!
Cheers,
Mike
(And if you’re interested in reading more about NN, Playmakers has been keeping a FANTASTIC blog since last spring – you can see pics from dress rehearsals, videos of Joe Haj and the designers talking about the production, notes (and sketches etc.) from staff, designers, dramaturgs and actors during all stages of the process – it’s GREAT – so check it out!)
http://playmakersrep.blogspot.com/
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