opening night post-mortem
Dec. 16th, 2005 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonOpening night for Winter Revels was just wonderful (and many thanks for the well-wishes yesterday!) There were a few little things here and there that we can tweak -- the kid's choir got excited and rushed one section of "Carol of the Bells" (which is actually a Ukraininan carol, didja know? Ours was done with adult and kid's choir and handbells, a beautiful arrangement), and they're going to get a note on that today, but I thought we handled it well. And we hit our planned run time (2 hours) within 4 minutes. Sweet. After the show we had the cast pictures, and the brass band stayed and entertained us with some great Dixieland to dance to, and after we finally got out of there, a number of us, still in makeup, wandered over to one of the local watering holes for a pint, some pumpkin-squash bisque and a piece of goat-cheese cheesecake with huckleberry sauce...bliss.
Personally, I had a blocking note for the wedding scene -- after dropping off the princess/soon-to-be-Czarina from the palanquin (actually a sedan chair) center stage, I have to very quickly scoot off stage right and drop the palanquin, then come back and cross in front of the wedding party to receive the groom/Fool's wedding crown from the boy bringing them in, then walk up the risers and and hold it over the groom's head for the ceremony (taking part of the role of a Russian Orthodox priest, which is kind of funny, all things considered). But...the only way to physically do that is to cross in front of the wedding party, which is both a visual distraction, and in point of fact, would never be done -- the disrespect of crossing in front of the Czar was cause for extreme punishment, if not outright death. So my only alternative is to sprint around backstage and re-enter stage left, and that's what I'll try tonight. There's very little time to execute this, so we'll see...
Building the palanquin to carry the princess was my idea and design, out of this past weekend's rehearsals -- as fun as it was to carry a lovely lithe dancer-type around the stage with a linked-arms human-chair carry, there's just no way that the bride in a royal wedding would have been allowed to be put in such a, well, indescreet and undignified position. One of the artistic directors suggested simply carrying her around in a chair, but besides being historically inaccurate for a royal Russian Orthodox wedding, I've been to enough Jewish weddings to know that waltzing around in such a manner you stand a small but not-insignificant chance of dumping the bride, or at least coming close enough to make everyone rather nervous at times. A palanquin is much more elegant, and also saves one's back a bit (though we've already gone through two different guys at the back of the palanquin -- even with skinny dancer-types, you really have to know how to lift with yer legs, or this kind of thing will just wreck yer back...) And by turning the chair 90 degrees to one side, so the princess can enter and exit from the side, we can make the whole process much more smooth, visually elegant and quick.
Anyway, it was a very good night. The house was somwhere between 3/4 and 7/8 full, which is very unusual for opening night on this show. Things went smoothly, even the very complex bits, and the Ukrainian dancers are completely spectacular, and quite the eye-candy for everyone to boot. And we got comments afterwards from long-time Revels attendees who were there that this was the best show they'd seen in 25+ years of attending, which, even if they were just being nice, is terrific to hear.
I hear pretty much all of the rest of the shows are sold-out, or very close to it. We got a big 3/4 page page above-the-fold article complete with pictures from rehearsals on the cover of the entertainment section of one of the local papers yesterday, so I expect any remaining seats for the last five shows will sell. Way more of that article than I am comfortable with was quotes from yours truly -- the reporter interviewed a whole flock of us, but for whatever reason, she largely stuck to my stuff. I'm guessing I'm of interest being totally new to the company, and besides being fresh and enthusiastic, perhaps as a writer, I give good quote ;> But while I'm aware that of course I had no control over what the reporter chose to include, I'm also acutely aware that others with a lot more history with the company would have made a better and more appropriate spokesperson, and I'm uncomfortable with that spotlight, because I don't feel like I've remotely earned it.
However, internal accolades are another matter entirely. My Lovely Housemate and myself, both of whom are new to the company (tho' she was involved with the summer production), which has a lot of very long-time members (5-20+ years), were told by several of them that we really fit right in, like we'd been there for years and years. And that, along with the terrific, warm and welcoming camaraderie of our colleagues in the group, really, really makes me happy. The whole company is composed of very talented performers who truly and deeply love what they're doing, and take enormous joy in it, and it's a pleasure and a delight to be counted among them.
Okay, I promised to include pics of my Georgian costume, and in particular, the totally over-the-top Caucasas hat. The makeup is rather stylized -- the effect they're looking for is part-way between an old wood-block print and those Russian nesting dolls, and while it looks a bit extreme under the fluorescents here, it actually works remarkably well from a distance and under stage lights. So anyway, here they are, some quick pics snapped on the fly last night. In some of them jewelry or other bits are askew, but you get the idea...
Here's the whole gallery
Individual pics:
Georgian Guy 1
Georgian Guy 2
Georgian Guy 3 - with Big Sheep Hat
Georgian Guy 4 - with Big Sheep Hat
Georgian Guy and Hungarian Woman
Georgian Guy 5 (old hat, rather pirate-y)
Personally, I had a blocking note for the wedding scene -- after dropping off the princess/soon-to-be-Czarina from the palanquin (actually a sedan chair) center stage, I have to very quickly scoot off stage right and drop the palanquin, then come back and cross in front of the wedding party to receive the groom/Fool's wedding crown from the boy bringing them in, then walk up the risers and and hold it over the groom's head for the ceremony (taking part of the role of a Russian Orthodox priest, which is kind of funny, all things considered). But...the only way to physically do that is to cross in front of the wedding party, which is both a visual distraction, and in point of fact, would never be done -- the disrespect of crossing in front of the Czar was cause for extreme punishment, if not outright death. So my only alternative is to sprint around backstage and re-enter stage left, and that's what I'll try tonight. There's very little time to execute this, so we'll see...
Building the palanquin to carry the princess was my idea and design, out of this past weekend's rehearsals -- as fun as it was to carry a lovely lithe dancer-type around the stage with a linked-arms human-chair carry, there's just no way that the bride in a royal wedding would have been allowed to be put in such a, well, indescreet and undignified position. One of the artistic directors suggested simply carrying her around in a chair, but besides being historically inaccurate for a royal Russian Orthodox wedding, I've been to enough Jewish weddings to know that waltzing around in such a manner you stand a small but not-insignificant chance of dumping the bride, or at least coming close enough to make everyone rather nervous at times. A palanquin is much more elegant, and also saves one's back a bit (though we've already gone through two different guys at the back of the palanquin -- even with skinny dancer-types, you really have to know how to lift with yer legs, or this kind of thing will just wreck yer back...) And by turning the chair 90 degrees to one side, so the princess can enter and exit from the side, we can make the whole process much more smooth, visually elegant and quick.
Anyway, it was a very good night. The house was somwhere between 3/4 and 7/8 full, which is very unusual for opening night on this show. Things went smoothly, even the very complex bits, and the Ukrainian dancers are completely spectacular, and quite the eye-candy for everyone to boot. And we got comments afterwards from long-time Revels attendees who were there that this was the best show they'd seen in 25+ years of attending, which, even if they were just being nice, is terrific to hear.
I hear pretty much all of the rest of the shows are sold-out, or very close to it. We got a big 3/4 page page above-the-fold article complete with pictures from rehearsals on the cover of the entertainment section of one of the local papers yesterday, so I expect any remaining seats for the last five shows will sell. Way more of that article than I am comfortable with was quotes from yours truly -- the reporter interviewed a whole flock of us, but for whatever reason, she largely stuck to my stuff. I'm guessing I'm of interest being totally new to the company, and besides being fresh and enthusiastic, perhaps as a writer, I give good quote ;> But while I'm aware that of course I had no control over what the reporter chose to include, I'm also acutely aware that others with a lot more history with the company would have made a better and more appropriate spokesperson, and I'm uncomfortable with that spotlight, because I don't feel like I've remotely earned it.
However, internal accolades are another matter entirely. My Lovely Housemate and myself, both of whom are new to the company (tho' she was involved with the summer production), which has a lot of very long-time members (5-20+ years), were told by several of them that we really fit right in, like we'd been there for years and years. And that, along with the terrific, warm and welcoming camaraderie of our colleagues in the group, really, really makes me happy. The whole company is composed of very talented performers who truly and deeply love what they're doing, and take enormous joy in it, and it's a pleasure and a delight to be counted among them.
Okay, I promised to include pics of my Georgian costume, and in particular, the totally over-the-top Caucasas hat. The makeup is rather stylized -- the effect they're looking for is part-way between an old wood-block print and those Russian nesting dolls, and while it looks a bit extreme under the fluorescents here, it actually works remarkably well from a distance and under stage lights. So anyway, here they are, some quick pics snapped on the fly last night. In some of them jewelry or other bits are askew, but you get the idea...
Here's the whole gallery
Individual pics:
Georgian Guy 1
Georgian Guy 2
Georgian Guy 3 - with Big Sheep Hat
Georgian Guy 4 - with Big Sheep Hat
Georgian Guy and Hungarian Woman
Georgian Guy 5 (old hat, rather pirate-y)
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 07:21 pm (UTC)Although I must ask: what are those things in your breast pocket that look like a row of applicator tampons?
no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 07:35 pm (UTC)That HeadSheep seems to brook no tepid response -- people seem to either love it, or hate it. Personally, I'm quite enamored of it. That's a hat with real presence. And heck, how often do you get to wear something like that out in public or on stage?
no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 07:37 pm (UTC)Many thanks to snakey for helping me spit the peppermint out of my mouth.
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Date: 2005-12-16 09:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 07:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 07:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 07:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 07:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 10:30 pm (UTC)