The Diary of a Production

Long before the audience arrives members of the group are planning and working towards a new production. The process starts several months before when the committee agrees a particular title with the director. In making a decision, the committee will look at how popular the play will be with mdg’s audience, whether the play will be performed as a conventional proscenium arch production, in the round or some other format. At this point it is important to have some idea of the details of the staging and any special requirements e.g. video projection so that a budget can be agreed.

Once these people are in place a production meeting will be held to discuss the set design and construction and what demands these place on lighting, sound and special effects. Now things start to get under way. The director will also be thinking about blocking out the various positions and moves the actors will make during the play. The director’s assistant will organise rehearsal and set building schedules. The lighting and sound folk will complain that they don’t have a enough time to rig and focus lights and produce special effects. The director will be blocking out the various moves. The cast will be holding read throughs and rehearsals 2 or 3 times a week. The early rehearsals will always be with books but a few weeks before the show opens the director will be urging the actors to learn the lines.

what it takes to put on a play

Once the cast have got rehearsals underway the set designer will be working up the final design for the set while agreeing practicalities with the stage manager who is responsible for building the set. The lighting designer will also be involved over any lighting issues.

Once the design is finalised construction begins using a willing band of volunteers. This will often take several weeks for a complicated set and requires many practical skills and often quite a bit of engineering know how. The set bulders generally make a day of it with a hearty communal lunch.

Once the set is constructed those with an artistic bent will be called on as painters and decorators. While this job calls for some of the same skills as home decorating often needs the skills of an artist to make the result look lived in or well used otherwise know as ‘distressed'

While set construction is underway the lighting team will be planning the design of the lighting plot and agonising over when they can start rigging and focussing lights. This is quite a complicated task which starts as a paper exercise to choose which lights to use, where they are to be hung, type of coloured gel and which dimmer channels will be used. For the actual rigging they need a clear stage and the working lights to do this so it doesn’t mix well with actors rehearsing, set builders hammering or artists painting. Finally there is a lengthy session with the director to plot out all the various cue states.

At the same time as the lighting team is working to ensure the show is seen the sound effects folk are putting together sound and other special effects. Sometimes only some theme music will be required but frequently skills are tested when either special audio or visual effects are needed. Nowadays many sound effects are available as pre-recorded CDs or online but frequently multimedia are employed such as in our recent production of Animal Farm when video footage and offstage sound clips were used

Most plays require a wealth of properties ranging from a pictures and ornaments, through the personal effects used by the cast to suites of furniture or even mock weapons. The properties team will often be found begging and borrowing from friends and members as well as visiting car boot sales or second hand shops to obtain suitable items which are in keeping with the genre and period of the play. Sometimes a visit to one of the property hire firms is called for but that can often prove expensive for an amateur group. In the production of Animal Farm extensive use was made of masks to represent the various species of animal on the farm. Each mask was hand made, a task which took considerable time and expertise.

In some productions the cast can use their own clothes but most plays will require the services of the wardrobe department. Needlework and tailoring skills are vital here to let out or take in that dress or jacket for a period piece such as A Stroll in the Park or running up the more unusual costumes or those unusual wigs which sometimes appear.

The objective of stage makeup is to alter the actors natural appearance to that of the character in the script. If the character is happy or miserable, fat or thin, young or old his own features have to be changed to match this. Sometimes the actors own features can be accentuated or altered by the addition of shadows or highlights. In effect this uses the actors own features to alter his looks by showing and hiding things that are already there. The makeup can differ depending on what kind of stage the play is being performed on. For example on a small stage the makeup should be very subtle but for the large stage it can look really grotesque at close quarters but completely fit the bill on stage.

Clearly all the foregoing areas would not be of much use if there was no audience to see the show. This is where another set of skills come in to use. Posters and fliers are produced to advertise the play. Patrons on the regular mailing list are contacted and programmes and tickets are printed. Mdg is lucky to have the support of local traders who hold tickets for purchase and of course, this web site is also important in publicising what we do.

Now the opening night is drawing near and so it is time to ensure all the various activities dovetail together. Sometimes where there are complicated sound, lighting or special effects a dedicated technical rehearsal will be held before the final dress rehearsal. The Dress rehearsal itself will take place just a day or two before the show opens. By this time the cast must know the lines and moves, the lighting, sound and properties must have all finished their preparations. The show is now under the control of the stage manager, who will be feeling quite harassed, while the director will also be doing a bit of nail biting. Often dress rehearsals are performed in front of a few invited friends or members, not otherwise involved, so that some atmosphere is generated. The Dress rehearsal is the final check that everything is in place before opening night. It generally is! The Live Performances The audience start to arrive about half an hour before curtain up. The house manager and her staff are busy selling programmes, showing patrons to seats and dealing with any last minute problems. Nothing can go wrong during the actual performance can it? Well most performances appear to go very well but there are occasions when an actor dries up and the prompt has to quickly whisper the next line, or an actor may miss an entrance, the lights may not change. Thankfully because of all the hard work put in prior to the show opening these little hiccups generally go unnoticed by the audience. Probably the worst thing which has happened though, was a 3 hour power cut which started during the interval. The show went on however with a combination of powerful hand and gas lamps. The show was set during wartime and one line was especially memorable –“Put that LIGHT out!”