San Benito Stage Company offers a glimpse of what it’s like the
week before the curtain rises
”
…starting off Tech Week is always kinda crazy,
”
director Trisha Harvey says to her cast over the noise of set
construction and last-minute costume consultation. As she continues
to address the 14 cast members of San Benito Stage Company’s
”
Arsenic and Old Lace
”
before the Feb. 28 rehearsal, her audience smiles ruefully at
Harvey’s understatement.
San Benito Stage Company offers a glimpse of what it’s like the week before the curtain rises
“…starting off Tech Week is always kinda crazy,” director Trisha Harvey says to her cast over the noise of set construction and last-minute costume consultation. As she continues to address the 14 cast members of San Benito Stage Company’s “Arsenic and Old Lace” before the Feb. 28 rehearsal, her audience smiles ruefully at Harvey’s understatement.
Tech Week, also known as Hell Week to those who’ve lived through it, is the name for the final week of rehearsals before a production opens, and “kinda crazy” doesn’t begin to describe it.
Even with a relatively small cast, “Arsenic and Old Lace” saw its fair share of pre-production snafus. Rehearsals started late, advertising materials went missing, set pieces and stage parts had to be built and rebuilt, costumes and props were left at home, and everybody was making a frantic, last-ditch attempt at memorizing their lines. Practice ran long, tempers ran short, and, as always, everyone was hoping things would come out all right.
As always, they did.
But regardless of outcome, you’d think nobody would want to subject themselves to this. And yet, nearly all of the 14 cast members have “been through Hell” at least once before. Why?
“To watch the puzzle be completed,” says Toni Smith, longtime member of the Stage Company. “You know, seeing this piece and that piece come together. It really comes alive during Hell Week, and that’s my favorite part.”
Saturday/Sunday
A typical Hell Week for the troupe begins the weekend before opening night, with set construction. Actors, friends and family arrive at the performance location and spend the day assembling the set pieces needed for the production. Sometimes, the list of necessary set parts includes a stage.
“Of all the times that I’ve worked on a set crew,” Harvey recalls, “maybe three or four people showed up. But not this time; everybody came to help and we all had a lot of fun.”
To many this signifies the first stage of the shift from rehearsal to performance, and it definitely starts the week on a positive note for the cast.
Monday/Tuesday
On Monday, the cast really wakes up to the fact that the show is about to open. Rehearsals start early, and often the director and various crewmembers will spend entire days at the performance location to make sure everything is perfect. The long hours can cause problems: Just about every cast and crewmember has a “real job,” and struggles to find balance between the love of performing and mundane day-to-day duties.
It usually takes all of Monday and most of Tuesday to become accustomed to the new rehearsal location. Throw makeup, lighting, props and costumes into the mix and everybody’s a little out of sorts.
Rehearsals often start late because there is so much to do beforehand. Last-minute props and set pieces must be loaded in and placed, cast members all have questions for the director, boxes of food and props and costumes are everywhere, and many of the smaller details are still being attended to. For example, Sally Hail, a Stage Company board member who plays Elaine in the show, acknowledges she “only just found the right nylons, with a Cuban heel, on Tuesday, at the Boutique de Lingerie.”
She says she’s happy when she can support local businesses for her costumes, since the troupe is a local theater company.
While Monday and Tuesday rehearsals during Hell Week can run until 11 p.m. or later; the cast of “Arsenic” was allowed to leave at about 10. So far, so good.
Wednesday
After everybody’s become comfortable with the stage and the set is finished, the third rehearsal helps to iron out the kinks in the actors’ performances. This is really the last night to fix problems with dialogue, blocking (the actors’ movement and gestures), and characterization, and is often accompanied by a long list of notes and reminders for the cast.
Wednesday also is often the day that directors stop prompting actors with forgotten lines and tell them to just “have fun with it.”
“At this point, you probably ought to know what you need to know,” Harvey says, and adds, as an afterthought, “please don’t screw up.”
At first mistakes, both small and large, drag down the atmosphere of the rehearsal. But Harvey, a veteran director, knows how to fix the problem. She initiates a high-speed run-through of the script, called a speed-through, and after a side-splitting 20-minute performance the tension in the room has completely evaporated. Rehearsal ends at 10:30 p.m.
Thursday:
Although the night before opening is always nerve-racking, everybody’s feeling better after the successful speed-through on Wednesday. “The laughter helped,” Harvey says to her cast, “The show really came alive. And I thought, ‘this is it. This is what we play for.'”
Then Harvey, along with producer Carolyn Grover, asks the jittery actors to hold hands in a circle. They invite everyone to join – tech crew, video crew, costume and prop managers, even reporters. Everyone in the circle shares aloud their favorite memory of “Arsenic and Old Lace.” John Rachuy, who plays Teddy, says what everyone is thinking. “My favorite part of the show has been the camaraderie … we’re a family cast, and that shows.”
Steve Hodgkinson, who plays the hunchbacked Dr. Einstein in the play, mentions his gratitude that “my schedule at work changed, but nobody got mad. They all believed that I could do it, and it turns out that they were right.”
Others chime in with things for which they are grateful: patience, compromise, support, friendship.
“We really are like a family,” agrees Lizzy Grover, who plays two male corpses. “That’s why I love community theater.”
As is typical of “final dress” night, actual rehearsal starts at least two hours late because everybody has something to say. But the cast puts in a solid performance, leaving everyone confident that opening night will be a success. And then, at 10:30, Hell Week is over. Everyone says good night and leaves to get some sleep.
Nineteen hours go by. It’s Friday night, and it’s magic time. The audience takes their seats, the lights go up, and the actors step onto the stage. The audience begins to clap wildly.
And suddenly everything, even Hell Week, is worth it.
Tickets for Arsenic and Old Lace can be purchased online or at Ridgemark Country Club. Fore more information about the show, ticketing, or joining a future San Benito Stage Company production, check out www.sanbenitostage.org.
