The Production Analysis Part 1: Intro and Layout

(Music)

Good evening and welcome back to But I

Digress, Adventures

in Educational Theater.

I'm Jennifer Dooley.

I'm the founder and executive director of

Emmons and County Drama, which is a

theater program, a K-12 theater program

in the wilds of Kentucky.

And with me as always is Brent Norris,

the highest paid technical director at

Emmons and County Drama, which makes him

technically a director.

Yeah, one of the drama kids is like, "I

listened to it and then I was snorting,

and no one could tell why I was laughing

so hard, so I had to stop."

I was like, "Okay."

So today's episode continues our

exploration of how to start or take over

an educational theater program based on

my decades of experience

through trial and error.

So maybe this will be easier for you than

it was for me in the beginning.

And this week we're going to talk about

the prep work that you need to do before

you host auditions for your production.

Because I am always, even now, ready to

be like, "Well, let's audition right now,

but if I don't do the legwork beforehand,

it's going to make a lot

more work on the back end."

But before we talk about that, let's talk

about our current production

at Emmons and County Drama.

So I posted the cast and crew list last

night for Tracy Wells the Con.

I try to post the cast list at night so

that students can view it at their

leisure and they don't have to be in

front of a bunch of other kids when they

see it, so they can have whatever

feelings they're going to have.

And I tell them ahead of time, you know,

not everybody's going to

get the part that they want.

Not everybody gets to be the lead.

So not everybody gets to

be the star of the show.

So if you are not, if you're happy with

the part you got, that's great.

If you're not, you've got some time to

kind of sit with that and

deal with your feelings.

But then at the end of the

day, you get to be in a play.

Like we cast everybody that shows up.

There's nobody gets cast to the wayside.

Everybody gets to be in this play.

And so regardless of what part you got,

you get to be in a play.

And that for me was always the thing.

I'd be sad for a hot minute, but then

mostly I stage managed, frankly, and I

got really good at it, which I think is

partly why I'm good at this now.

So I appreciate those opportunities.

Before there was internet and we could

not send the list out to the kids, I

would post them all over the building.

Like the theater has

four sets of entrances.

So I'd post them all over the building so

kids could see them when they wanted to.

They could look up the list when no one

else was around maybe and deal with that

before they had to come back to class.

Also, I know that they have group chats

and they send memes and yell about the

group chats, but I am not a part of that.

So most everybody seemed to be happy with

their parts this morning.

I did something different this year where

when I sent out the cast and crew list on

Google classroom, they also sent out a

contract, which was much like the

contract they signed on their syllabus.

And it basically said, you know, you're

committing to these after school

rehearsals, you're committing to

memorizing your lines because we did

something very different this year.

There are 27 speaking roles in this show

and we only had we only have 21 actors or

students in the class.

Usually our light and sound crew are not

on stage, but because they really wanted

everybody wanted to be in the show, it's

a really funny script.

We have made parts for them.

So we're going to have to switch out

people in the box to

run lines, sound cues.

It's possible our technical director will

have to run light and sound cues at the

end of the show if our lighting designer

happens to be on the stage in the last

scene and that curtain call.

So it'll be fine.

But they could ask me questions when they

filled out that document or say anything

they want to say about the show.

And only one kid was like, I think I got

cast as the wrong part.

And that never happens.

I have never missed cast to play.

I used to date a guy who was

a lifeguard and he was an EMT.

And he told me that

nobody dies in an ambulance.

Either the person they're going to treat

is dead when they get there and they

don't treat them or they keep treating

them until they get to the hospital and a

doctor clares somebody dead.

And I feel the same way about plays.

I've never missed cast to play because if

I go back and start second guessing

myself today, that's not

going to do anybody any good.

So I was like, no, you

are right for this part.

And here is why I thought it was ironic.

Her physicality is ironic

for this character's part.

And she'll be great.

She's a good actor.

So, yeah, I always do the right thing.

I never make mistakes when

it comes to casting a play.

Otherwise I would be

second guessing myself.

Okay.

So is there anything you want to add

about what we're doing, Brent?

No.

I mean, we started blocking today.

We did.

And so a lot of the babies are trying to

understand what that is.

And it was an odd thing

to try and block as well.

So there was everybody's on

stage in the first pretty much.

And it's in front of the curtain.

Like you've said before, we have a

smaller class and we're trying to make it

look like we have a lot more people.

So there was some smart stuff we had to

do there, but everybody seemed on board.

Nobody really was like, wait, I don't

want to do this or anything.

Well, I mean, they've

already set up for drama.

So hopefully at this

point we get those kids out.

One thing we forgot to tell them this

morning, which we should tomorrow, is to

write down their blocking.

We did not tell the

littles to write it down.

So we need to make sure we do that.

Of course, we have an amazing stage

manager who writes everything down and

then erases it four times

because I changed my mind.

But no, I'm very happy with how we got

started and the kids have great ideas.

Like I wanted to put a set piece in the

middle of the stage and the set designer

said, I think if we put it over here on

stage left, it'll work better.

And I was like, oh, yes, you are right.

There are some directors who are like,

no, it's my way or the highway.

And I don't feel that way.

There are some things I feel very

strongly about and someone might have an

idea and I say, yeah,

that's not what I want to happen.

Mostly I'm very open to

what the kids want to do.

And this is a play where they can add a

lot of themselves into.

So I'm super excited about that.

And we'll let you know as that goes on.

Also, my youngest son is doing his first

college production now.

So I'm excited about that show as well.

So much theater.

All right.

So we are talking about

pre-production activities today.

And this might turn into two episodes

because there's a lot of stuff that has

to get done, even though you're chomping

at the pit to cast a play.

So I am assuming at this point that the

new directors I'm talking to have been

doing the improv

stuff with their students.

We talked about like two episodes ago and

now they feel comfortable enough that

they want to put on a play.

Or maybe you're doing this as an after

school activity and you don't have to

have a class that you

filled up with activities.

You just want to do an extracurricular

production with your students.

So most of my information I will tell you

right now, or at least list of

activities, is coming from a book I think

we mentioned and maybe linked to on a

different episode,

but willing to it again.

The Stage and the School by Harry H.

Shankar and Catherine Ann Amanani.

And it's published by Glen Co.

The edition I have is 2005.

I know that the original

edition is like from the 1920s.

So it's been a really great resource.

I have an older edition that I think is

from the 80s that mostly has the same

information in terms of like ding and

this kind of prep up we're talking about.

It has different information about tech,

of course, that's changed.

There's surely there's

new edition, but it's great.

And my copy is all

written on and post it noted.

And I didn't have a teacher edition.

I just have a student edition that I've

been writing on for 20

some odd years or whatever.

So in the list we're working on, if you

have that edition is on page 345.

It's called the Master

Production Schedule Checklist.

So I love this book.

I've got lots of great ideas for this

book, but I will tell you the very first

thing they tell you do on the checklist

is to come up with a budget

before you do anything else.

And that is not something that we ever do

because making theaters

like Stone Soup, right?

It just everybody

brings the stuff they have.

And in some cases, that's money.

In some cases, that's supplies.

In some cases, that's talent.

And you dump it on a pile and this magic

happens because the first

show we did, we had no money.

We had no funding from the school.

We had not fundraised at all.

And our town, of

course, is very cheap to do.

So we had some parents

that built a couple of items.

I think we built a set of stairs maybe

and somebody drew a stained glass window.

And then we had a lot of stuff that was

already in the building, like podiums and

things like that and chairs.

We just took from other

places in the building.

And then we sourced the costumes mostly

from Goodwill's neck.

And I think a lot of kids brought in

their own costumes are made of 90s church

where seems to fit in for a good chunk of

historical pieces in America in the 18,

19 hundreds with the

length of the dresses.

And of course, men's button down shirts

and pants have not changed significantly.

So that was a really

easy show to costume.

And then we made we made some money off

of that show, but not

enough to fund another show.

We because we only charged $5 and we

still 20 years later only charged $5 for

all the performances, but the musical.

But the musical, they also get dinner and

we split the proceeds from the dinner

with an organization like the soccer, the

voice soccer team or the academic team or

something like that.

So we don't do any kind of fundraising.

And I just always assume

that we don't have any money.

I assume we have about $1,000 somewhere

that I can get a hold of.

But I'm lucky because I do have an

account with the school so I can put

money into that when we do make when we

do collect ticket money.

But also that account only has to be in

the black at the end of the school year.

So if I overdraw this because we need a

lot of like super hero costumes and that

kind of thing for the con.

If I overdraw that

account now, it doesn't.

I'm not going to get in trouble.

And that musical will happen at the end

of the year and we will make thousands of

dollars off that musical because we've

got so many more students that K through

12 and the parents of elementary school

kids will come every time we do the show.

They will pay to come every time.

High school students.

We have some very supportive parents and

then we have some kids whose parents I

wouldn't know if I saw them on the street

because they've never

come to a production.

So we just assume at the end of the year

the musical which costs more

royalties or more for musicals.

We have more people to costume.

We have more.

We have bigger and more impressive sets.

But we also make so much more money and

we have a lot of parents who are willing

to donate to that operation as well

because the only fundraiser like I said

we do is the so and every there's never

been a year we didn't

come out in the black.

And so we're very lucky because I said we

do have people who say here's five

hundred dollars do what you need to with

it or I will make dinner for the entire

cast on the dress rehearsal night.

And so it's definitely

a community activity.

We could not.

You can't do theater in a vacuum and we

can't do it without these

parents and community members.

We have parents whose students are no

longer in school with us.

We have one parent

who brings fresh fruit.

She buys cases of fresh fruit to bring to

the rehearsals for all the

musical kids and her kids not.

He's graduated.

But she was so pleased with his with with

what he got to do in the program that she

still wants to help us.

And she will call me every spring and

say, you know, when are you starting?

And she will go to the

grocery and bring us.

She's ordered from the grocery store

cases of bananas and apples and stuff.

And that's that's great.

We've built a lot of

community goodwill in that area.

And we also have Uncle Kevin, who is not

the kids who's calling that he's been my

best friend since we were five.

And he is a doctor who would like to be

philanthropic and he chooses our

organization to help.

So we are very lucky

to have people like him.

So you may need to establish a budget.

I just let the spirit move us.

It all works out of me

and we've never had a year.

We ended up in the red.

So I'm very lucky.

So yeah, get a budget

if you think you need to.

But I would say a thousand dollars is

more than reasonable to do a straight

play, which is anything

that's on a musical basically.

So after you've got your mythological

budget, I guess, if you want to do that

is you got to pick a show.

And we talked a little bit

about this in the first episode.

So you want to think,

what is my talent pool like?

What are they capable of?

We picked harder shows last year, more

challenging shows like Trap than we did

this year or the year before, because I

had just a ridiculous amount of talent

that worked with the program for at least

four years, several of them and several

longer because the musicals who I knew

could could deal with with harder roles

with stuff that was more suspenseful or

stuff that was, you know,

big Shakespeare and monologues.

Right now, it's a rebuilding year.

We don't have as many

seasoned veterans in the program.

And so I don't want to give them, you

know, Hamlet the first of the year.

And because Hamlet like Hamlet himself is

the largest speaking role

in the Shakespeare play.

I don't have a kid that

can run Hamlet right now.

And I don't want a kid in a position

where they're going to be unsuccessful.

So I was like, what can we do?

I was thinking about how we have a kid

who makes lots of really cool weapons and

I wanted to use those weapons.

So this is the best show that I found.

And it's got a lot of little short

vignettes and a very easy set.

Most of the set is like folding tables

and chairs for the most

part, a couple of podiums.

We're going to make a bunch of signs.

But I thought these kids could handle

that because there's no massive parts.

It's also a one act.

So it's only an hour long.

They don't have to memorize, you know,

hours and hours of dialogue.

Also, it works for our audience.

Our audience likes to have fun.

I think this is a show we

can show to the middle school.

It doesn't have anything that they might

find inappropriate over there.

So that'll give us an opportunity to show

three times instead of twice.

And it's a great way to start the year.

So we might try something more

challenging after this and show ideas

come all over the place.

Like I will see a show and

think, oh, I can recreate that.

Or a kid will say, here is a show and

we'll talk about it.

I'll think that kid

has a really good idea.

I will let them go with that.

That's why we did acts of murder.

A kid brought me that and was like, no, I

know how to do this.

And then he did.

And it was fantastical.

That show had 140 light cues in it.

It was wild.

We always try to do a Shakespeare because

that's what I want to do.

So I do plays that I want to do.

And I do stuff that I think my kids can

handle that my audience wants to see.

And so you have to make a decision and

what and like, this is a

fairly conservative area.

So I'm not going to do stuff.

I'm not going to pick a fight about

pushing buttons with a show that I think

are just going to make people in the

community upset with us.

I just don't know that that's a fight I'm

willing to have right there.

We do have all kinds

of kids in our shows.

And we don't try to hide

anybody's authentic identity.

We do our shows, but I'm

not doing angels in America.

I'm not doing Putnam County spelling bee.

I'm not doing things that have gloves

profanity maybe or nudity or

like super hot button issues.

They're going to make people angry.

I don't think that's useful for what I'm

trying to do for these kids.

Those are maybe experiences they can do

other places, but I

don't want to fight with.

I've been very lucky.

I do not have to clear my

productions with anybody.

I don't have.

There's not a group at the school or the

Board of Education who

checks with what I'm doing.

We pretty much do whatever we want to do.

There have been a couple of times when

after the fact someone came back and

said, you know, we really don't think

this was appropriate,

like mostly like a line.

It's not been like a

whole show or even the scene.

But by the time someone told me it wasn't

appropriate or they didn't think it was

appropriate, that show was over.

So it's better to ask

for some permission.

And the ship had sailed

and that kind of blew over.

So you want to think about

what works for your people.

And then if you are worried about money,

you know, you don't want to pick a show

where you need projections or, you know,

rolling set pieces or drops or whatever.

You want to pick things, especially at

the beginning, that are pretty simple

where you can focus on the

acting and stuff like that.

Like our town.

I cannot stress our town.

So you've picked your play and they

suggest that you have a lot of people

suggest you have production meetings.

Ahead of time.

But I really don't, except for the

musical, because my program is run

primarily by students and they don't

decide what they want to do to auditions.

So students are doing lighting and sound

and props and costumes and hair and

makeup and publicity.

So I don't have production.

I have production

meetings first with the musical.

I do have a musical director and a couple

of other assistant directors that we work

with because that's such a much bigger

animal and a choreographer.

We do.

Well, for this show, though, we do have a

student choreography because I want this

to be a student led as possible.

So I don't really have production

meetings ahead of time.

I might chat with some kids who I know

have already been

heavily involved in tech.

Like I've had the same

lighting designer for two years.

I had the same stage

manager for at least three.

Those the stage manager is graduating.

So she's trained somebody else.

But I mean, she said, I want to do this.

I know she's solid.

To me, the stage manager is the most

important person in the production.

So if you can get a kid who's already

good at that and wants to

go, I'm going to let them.

So there are some people I talk to ahead

of time, but I don't have

big production meetings.

You've got to order your scripts and

you've got to order get the royalties.

The royalties.

If it's less than 100 years old, you have

to pay somebody for

permission to do that show.

So you pay based on the size of your

space or what you

think you're going to sell.

We have like a 350 seat auditorium.

We are not going to sell that out unless

we're doing the musical and the schools

are bringing their students in.

And like I said, it's based

on how much you're charging.

Like I said, we're charging five bucks a

pop and how many times

you're going to do it.

So I want to say the royalties for this

show were like three or four hundred

dollars because it's a shorter play.

It's a one act play.

And it's not super well known.

Like if you do The Little Mermaid, you're

going to pay thousands of dollars to do

something with that kind of name

recognition with the idea being that

you're going to make that money back.

Like Erica Cassidy talked about when she

was on the podcast a few episodes ago.

But we are generally not doing things

that cost that kind of money.

You want to order your scripts as soon as

you've made a decision because more so

than ever, there's fewer and fewer

companies that own the rights to shows

and they have bought

up smaller companies.

And it seems to me like when they did

that, they did not keep the staff on for

those other companies.

So we have a hard time getting a hold of

people and getting our stuff processed in

a timely fashion and dealing with things

like because we are a school, we can't

pay any taxes and they have to see your

taxes information,

all those other things.

So it's becoming harder

and harder to buy scripts.

So you want to do that as early as you

can and get enough scripts for all of

your all of your babies.

So everybody has one, which is part of

your royalty agreement.

You have to buy a

certain group of scripts.

OK, so the next thing I do after that,

and we're going to put a link about this

on the show notes, is to make a

production analysis.

And this may have other names, but this

is like the Bible that everybody uses on

production so we can stay together.

And basically, it's a spreadsheet.

And this is the thing, if you were lucky

enough to have other people that you

trust to do this legwork for you, then I

applaud that you go do that.

But I started this basically by myself

and Brent does help immensely, but this

isn't the kind of stuff Brent does.

Brent does a lot of stuff after we start.

Mostly, I just bounce

ideas off of him at this point.

And I don't really have I mean, nobody's

getting paid because I'm

getting paid a little bit now.

I wasn't for a long time, but nobody else getting paid for this.

Everybody is busy, and I don't really

have anybody who is

interested in doing this work.

But also, I love this stuff.

I love it.

I think it's a lot of fun to go through

and annotate a script.

So at this point, I have read the script

all the way through once, and I know a

script is what I want.

And most of these scripts you can read

most of, if not all of online for free.

They might not show you the variant

because they want you to buy the thing

and not steal it,

which makes sense to me.

But if I'm five pages into a script and I

can't see the play in my head, like see

the set or see the blocking, it's not

connected with me and I don't like it.

So but this show I was

like, oh, look at that.

I can see that some head.

What about this one with this?

And I was writing down blocking or other

gimmicks we could put in or

how we can costume people.

And so I was like, oh,

this is a great show.

So I've read all the way through once.

I kind of have a feel for it.

And then I go back and make this

production analysis.

So I have the page numbers on the left

and then across the top, I have the

characters with their traits.

I have costume ideas for characters.

Some might be specific in the script and

some might be things

that pop into my head.

I have hair and makeup ideas.

That's a column.

I have set descriptions at like maybe

even where the things go and what I want

to see on the stage.

Props, which are anything that characters

move on and off the stage.

Like cues, I go ahead and number them

like like you want like you to.

And then with the like use, I put what

causes like you to happen.

Was it sound here like you six transition

to the center of the D&D

table at sound cue three.

And then if you look over the next column

with sound cues, sound cue three D&D

music at Jordan when

Jordan says but not quite.

So I kind of I linked the center like use

if I can because I've got two people in

the back working on that in the box.

And then if we have any video or curtain

things happening, that's a line.

If we have any other weird stuff

happening specials, we call them like for

the specials for this one, I have things

like find the sign holder

in the back of the house.

Should we can we get local sponsors to

sponsor our t-shirts?

So just notes that are coming to me don't

fit anywhere else go in there.

And then we have a legend and

the legends all color coded.

And so each of these things is in a box.

So the like you the first like you on

page one is in a box and so forth.

So it's a spreadsheet.

And then if you look to the far left of

the spreadsheet, it says things like if a

box is in red, that means we decided we

weren't going to do that thing like we

weren't using that proper whatever.

If it's yellow, that means that the thing

that's in the building need to go find.

If it's blue, we have to buy it.

If it's green, it means that proper that

costume or that whatever

that light is ready to go.

If it's purple, it means we have to

borrow from somebody.

If it's orange, it means it's Brent

Norris's problem, which is

generally a tech problem.

If it's brown, it means we

have to build that thing.

If it's teal, it means that either myself

or the student working on it doesn't know

what is being asked of them.

And we have to have a chat.

If it's light blue, it

means it's at my house.

I have to go find it.

We take a lot of things from my own home

like furniture, costume pieces.

My husband often when he comes to the

shows, but he isn't really involved in

the very end most times.

And he'll be like, "Is

that guy wearing my suit?"

I'm like, "What?

I don't know."

So everything is game at my house.

And then if it's there's another color,

like a burgundy color that my stage

manager uses to indicate that she has got

the scripts in her prompt book.

The stage manager has gone ahead.

There's a bunch of signage in the show.

And she's gone ahead and made a list of

all the signs that we need

and where they need to go.

And we've worked together for so long

that when I saw that last column today, I

thought, "Oh, did I make that call about

signs and posters because

it sounds like my writing."

But it wasn't me.

It was the stage manager because we've a

she's one of the best

stage managers ever had.

Her name is Mikayla.

I'm going to really miss her.

And please, she has to train somebody by

the end of this year to take her place.

So we'll put it up.

And that can take several days to make

that list because you're reading and

you're stopping and saying, "Oh, okay."

So when this kid comes in,

he has to have on a suit.

And he has to be carrying a briefcase.

And that briefcase has to be exactly the

same as the other briefcase.

And so you're stopping.

So I like to go, if I

can, to sit in a coffee shop.

I prefer Spencer's Coffee in downtown

Bowling Green and get me

something to eat and just sit.

They have nice seats at Spencer's on a

counter where you can space a brick wall

so you're not distracted.

And I can sit there for a couple of hours

and do a large chunk of work on this

production analysis.

What did Charlie say

the other day, though?

Not sponsored? Not sponsored,

yeah.

So in that document, once you get the

play cast, you can send it out to all of

your cast and crew kids because our cast

kids are the crew kids.

All the kids that are in

the show are on a crew.

We try to pick kids with smaller parts to

be in crews or be the heads of crews.

Although one of the

leads is the set designer.

That's fine.

It's fine.

I have him as a study.

Well, he's in theater tech.

So he has extra time outside of our

theater class to work on these things.

And then also you could take the

information you wrote down with the

characters and you can just take that one

call and copy it off and send it out to

your students when

you go to do auditions.

So it might say things like if their

physicality is important or if they have

to be able to talk in a voice like a

Batman voice or a

British voice or whatever.

And these are things you

can look at in your audition.

This show is great because almost none of

the characters are gendered.

They have like their names are like

Jordan and Charlie and Avery and names

that can be non gendered or like we have

a character to be a grandma

or grandpa doesn't matter.

So that makes casting wide open.

I mean, like physicality.

We have some students and you will in

your program to who look older than they

are and some younger.

So we have a character named Skyler

supposed to be a little kid.

So we pick someone to play Skyler who

looks very young and

then somebody else to be a.

Security guard and he's a he's a big guy.

You know, you're not going to pick a tiny

little kid that looks like you know, you

could pick him up with one

arm to be your security guard.

And we did lots of things with

voice like a seven auditions.

So that column is helpful on its own.

So and everybody can pull from their

column and decide what they need to do.

And then they also can see based on the

left hand side of the document.

If I say the security guards need

security shirts, they can look on page

one and see if there's more information

about what the shirts that

have on them, that kind of thing.

So that's your production analysis.

And that's I love that stuff I love.

And if there's stuff in the show, like

maybe not for this show, but maybe a

Shakespeare play or we did we did

Pygmalion, which is an

older show two years ago.

So if there's vocabulary in the show, you

can the kids might not know or you don't

know, or if there are references to

things, historical events.

Shakespeare was talking to an audience

who had different pop

culture dollars than we do.

So if there's things like that in there,

then I'll indicate that on the production

analysis so the kids can see it like, oh,

this thing on page seven is about this

other thing that we didn't already know.

But this show was modern.

So I don't have a

problem as far as that goes.

So, yeah, that's you do that.

What else do you have to do?

I did a scenic breakdown of the actors

and we'll post that as well.

So what I did for

that was I made a column.

I took that column from the production

analysis with the characters and their

traits, made a different spreadsheet,

see the characters and

raised on the left hand side.

And then all the pay every little column

next to that is a page number, in our

case, like one through nine

stars, page nine through sixty.

OK.

And there, because I had twenty seven

characters and twenty actors, I put on

there every page a

character has to appear.

And so because I would

have double up, right.

And if you're having to double up your

characters for an actor, you don't want a

kid to have to be on stage with

themselves or a kid who's

got thirty seconds to change.

You have to find a way around that, like

Cinderella, the King and I, Frozen.

Those are all shows that famously have a

quick change that to happen on stage.

But if you can avoid that, you want to

because we we had an instance several

years ago where a

girl had a quick change.

She had a minute.

She was supposed to go behind the stage

and have a dresser

help her change clothes.

And the dresser was sitting in the

dressing room on their

phone and didn't show up.

And so that kid came on stage and she had

taken off the shirt she was wearing.

And she was supposed to be wearing

another shirt with a little tiny shrug,

like a cut off sweater over top of it.

But she didn't have time.

So she just threw on the sweater and not

the rest of the shirt.

And so she just came on stage holding

herself, holding her arms over her chest

so that her little sweater without a button on it wouldn't come open.

We had another boy that same year who got

just excited and he was supposed to go

off stage, drop the pants he had on.

He had on tights underneath them.

And then the other pair of pants, the

tights of these were shorts.

It was for Shakespeare Bridge.

He just had to step into

the shorts and pull them up.

They were ready.

His dresser was there.

But he got so scared that he ran off the

stage one direction and came back on the

other way without the

pants, any pants on at all.

He just dropped the first pair of pants

and didn't put on the other pair of pants.

But he was wearing very thick tights.

So we did not have to stop the show.

But the stage

manager, she was quite upset.

Luckily, he was on

stage for like a minute.

He could run off again.

And then the girl grabs him

and made him put pants on.

We also had a show.

We did The Odyssey and it was a chill

inspection of The Odyssey.

And everybody was wearing togas.

And we made all of our

togas out of flat bedsheets.

So we had some, you know,

solid color bedsheets, you

know, navy and white or whatever.

And then we also had something that had

like Spider-Man on them

and teddy bears and clouds.

Just I bring my flat sheets down here.

And there's a really easy way to make it

toga stay on you from a YouTube video.

I felt like 10 years ago that doesn't

involve pins or whatever.

But my lead who is playing

Odysseus, who was on stage.

Ninety eight percent of that show decided

he was too cool for that because he was a

senior because the rules don't apply.

And he decided to not do the

toga the way I showed him how.

He also decided to not wear any

undergarments under his toga.

And so he's on stage and I'm in the back

of the house and his toga begins to slip

in inappropriate ways.

And it looks OK from the house right now,

but from backstage, my stage managers are

saying he's going to lose that toga.

What are we going to do?

And I knew he had like a 30 second span

of time where he was

off stage for some reason.

So they got the costume mistress.

We have a box of safety pins.

We keep backstage.

The stage managers have tackle boxes and

they keep safety pins in their tackle

boxes by their stage manager booths.

And so it was Ali was this

was the costume designer.

I feel like Aaron was

involved in that show, too.

When everything went south, it was always

Aaron and the boy on

stage was named Mason.

And so I ran backstage and he ran off and

we just started pinning it.

We didn't have time to fix it properly.

We started pinning the every part of the

the sheet together that we could.

And he was like, you're

putting this through my skin.

I was like, you've made bad life choices.

I don't care.

So we pinned it to his body physically.

He went back out there and did the show.

He did not bleed to death.

So it was fun.

Yeah.

So make sure your students have on

thunder pants all the time.

One time we had a fire drill and kids

were only partly in costume.

It was Shakespeare bridge to gang.

We did.

We've done the show four times and those

boys did not have all their pants on, but

they were in those nice tights.

So they went all the way outside.

It was just a drill,

but they could not wait.

They just held their shirts down over

their butts and they walked outside.

I was like, no, you

had time to get pants.

This was not an actual emergency.

So we have talked about

that and we get into costumes.

Like if the alarm goes off, if we think

it's a drill, just put on some pants.

So I don't know.

I don't know how I got over there.

We have so many

costume like look at that.

Did I digress?

Yeah.

All right.

What was there?

Oh, so you make that list of all the

pages that characters are on and then

also, and like I said, we'll copy this

out so you can copy yourself.

There is a column on that list where I

just put a one under every page with that

kid appears in pages, your characters and

pages, 10 through 15.

I put a one under all of those page

numbers and then there's a column where

I've set up a formula so it adds them up.

So you can see, well, this

character is on five pages.

This character is on 41 pages.

So after I've done that further, there's

nothing I would go to Spencer's and sit

and do so I would not be

bothered by other things.

Then I can sort that sheet in order of

how many scenes or what page, you know,

how many pages a kid

is on or characters on.

And then I can say,

well, this kid's on 40 pages.

I'm not going to be able to double up

that character with somebody else.

But this kid's only on five pages.

And here's another character on five

pages, 10 pages later

that can be the same actor.

And so that's been

very helpful on this show.

What else did we do that for?

Election maybe?

Yeah.

We did a show kind of like this called

the election and there were a lot more

characters and actors in that show.

And so we had several people like there

was a girl who her only job in the scene

was to hold up a loaf of

French bread menacingly.

But she came back

later as a fake girlfriend.

So so you want to give those kids the

space where they have time to change

clothes or whatever.

So you don't have a cost of emergency.

If you're doing like a Shakespeare play

or a very well known play, that

information is

generally available online.

So there's lots of websites where we'll

show you like in like how many lines or

scenes that character in, you know,

Macbeth or much do or something is in.

But for a newer show,

you can do yourself.

And since this is a one

act, it's not a big deal.

Oh, also rehearsal schedule.

I like to go ahead and have a rehearsal

schedule, which we

will give you a sample of.

There's going to be a lot of documents

that you can make copies of

and steal whatever you want.

Most of this I've made from whole cloth,

but I've been

perfecting it for like 20 years.

So it works for me.

I make a rehearsal schedule.

And once you've made one, they get easier

because the first one that I made online,

it's mostly during class rehearsals.

So I know the times on

those about 45 minutes I have.

I know kind of I want to do about two

weeks of our school rehearsals.

I go through and I make all the

rehearsals that I want to make.

So you have auditions.

I like to take three days for auditions.

I'd rather have more days than not.

So when I make the rehearsal schedule

originally, it's the Mary

Poppins rehearsal schedule.

So I have infinite time.

No one has other commitments.

No one plays sports.

No one's in band.

School is always open.

The auditorium is never booked.

And I just so I don't pick dates yet.

I put what I want to do.

So three days of auditions.

I try to block one page because blocking

I learned a long time ago from a student

that if you take a long time in your

blocking rehearsals,

everything else is easier later.

So I schedule five pages of blocking for

a whole class period because that's about

10 minutes for every page.

Some pages take longer.

Some days they just take less.

And so we kind of end up at the end of

the day where we need to be at the end of

the week where we need to be today.

Today we did not, but it

was our first day blocking.

So that's always harder.

But I think it'll go faster

tomorrow on the first day.

We're going to block pages

9 through 13 or whatever.

And then the next day we're going to

block pages 14 through

19 and then 19 through 22.

So I go put all those things in.

Then there's a big fight after that.

So we have a fight call day.

So I make all these days and then I go

back and look at because I've got the

same time periods to

rehearse it as I did last year.

I don't have to change a lot.

I can leave auditions.

I can leave the, you know,

it's 8 to 8 40 or whatever.

And then I can just change the numbers

for the blocking of the pages based on

what they are in the scene.

And we may not block five whole pages in

a day because if there's a scene that

ends right in the middle of

that chunk, I want to block.

If it's one page more or

less, I'll just stop there.

Or maybe one scene ends on page 22 and

the next scene starts at page 22.

Then we'll just start.

We'll do 19 through 22 and then 22

through 27 the next day.

So I just work where there's natural

breaks in the script if I can.

So we do all the blocking rehearsals and

then if we haven't had a fight call

because only one fight in the show.

So we'll have the

fight call during blocking.

Then we'll have a day and then we'll have

a dance call and curtain call.

I like to do a dance at the end for with

the curtain call if I

can, especially in a comedy.

I wouldn't do it if I were doing a

tragedy probably, but I like to do a

dance the curtain call if we can.

That seems to be a lot of fun for the

kids and for our audience.

And then I have run throughs and for a

show this short, I can do a run through

with blocking in two days, right?

Because I've already got the blocking

scripts on stage and then I'll have

another fight call and

they'll have a dance call.

And then we go into prompting and

prompting is when everybody should know

where they're supposed to be and what

they're supposed to be

doing at the rehearsal.

They've written the scripts and they've

memorized their lines.

But with prompting the

stage manager, she sits.

It's almost always a sheet because our,

we just have so many more

women than men in the program.

People sit at the foot

of the stage on the floor.

Um, usually it's where she wants to sit.

And whenever an actor gets stuck, either

they just, they know they don't know the

line and they say line and the stage

manager reads it to them or kids jump a

bunch of lines or get really jumbled up

in a way that it's difficult for other

people to figure out what's going on.

And the stage manager will stop them and

say, no, no, let's go back to this.

You start with this. This is works really well teamed up with

peer pressure because if you have to call

a line every single time, it's your turn.

And everybody is waiting on you.

The other kids get really

annoyed and you get embarrassed.

And a lot of cases that will cause kids

to get it together and get their stuff

memorized or other kids

will say, let me help you.

Can I help you when you're not, when

you're not on stage anymore?

Or can I help you after school and we'll

work or we can I call you or FaceTime you

or whatever and we'll work on your lines.

So that's how we get them memorize their

lines for the most part.

And if you don't, we occasionally have a

kid who says, yeah,

I'm not going to do that.

And then we replace them and that kid

gets a bunch of alternative assignments

to do if they're not going to be in the

play, but they very seldom do it.

And that kid really does not, does not

earn a good grade for the class and does

not generally come back.

But for nine, nine percent

of the time that works fine.

So if we do the prompting, we do the run

through with prompting and then we start

into after school rehearsal.

So we have costume parade.

That's where everybody comes out in

costume and hair and makeup.

And we have some of that during the day

and some of that for school, depending on

how complicated your costume is.

Then we have dry tech rehearsals and that

depends on how long the show is.

And we'll do day and

night rehearsals for that.

Dry tech is when only your tech crew

comes and they run it the whole show, but

they only do the technical things like

they make sure all the light cues and the

sound cues work on time.

We make sure that scene changes happen

properly because they have to be

choreographed the same way

the rest of the show does.

We make sure that there's any props that

we have to break or that that works the

way it's supposed to.

Or, you know, do we have

the right kind of food?

Like there's a bunch

of food in this show.

And so it's very specific with food.

It's like hamburgers and hot dogs and

fries and, and sponge cakes, spongebobs,

we're paying sponge cake even.

And so we're looking for ways to make

that food in a way that is edible because

the kids have to eat it.

I don't want them to be, you know,

grossed out by the

food, but also shelf stable.

So like we can't have burgers, right?

They can't sit on a prop table.

But if we have cosmic brownies and some

buns and call the sliders, that's fine.

If we use veggie straws

for fries, that's fine.

If you do have a lot of food, pro tip,

you might want to have one of your prop

people specifically be on food to make

sure that food is set for every rehearsal

and to keep the actors from eating it

because they will sneak backstage and

they will eat all

your cucumber sandwiches.

So yeah, I'll make sure your

actors don't have allergies.

I don't think we tried to use things in

the theater that don't have allergies.

So we have costume brain.

We have dry tech with all

the just the tech crew people.

And then we have wet tech and wet tech is

what some programs call hell week.

But I don't call it that because first of

all, we in practice at a reasonable hour,

like six o'clock at the latest, we're not

staying till 11 o'clock at night because

I mean, when I started this program, had

very small children.

That's not feasible.

And that's not there's only so long you

can work with a group of students and

have them productive.

So if you work more than two, two and a

half hours, you have to have a break

where there's food and

then you might get come back.

But after like we do 236, that's going to

be it was going to be dead.

But that's how we're done.

So wet tech, it means that you start the

top of the show and you do every single

bit of the show, all the lights, all the

sounds, all the props, all the costume,

all the hair and makeup.

And anytime something doesn't go right,

you stop and you do it again.

So with the light cues, not matching the

sound cues or an actor comes in too late,

there's a fight scene where no somebody's

not where they're

supposed to be to get hit.

Then you stop and you do that again.

So there's a lot of sitting

and waiting during that time.

Some of them do homework.

Some of them read occasionally one knits

mostly they're on their phones.

So we're going to we're going to have at

least two days of wet

tech in the afternoon.

And we'll also work on that during the school day as we can.

But we only have that, like I said, like

40 minutes of class.

The mornings if you have if you're on

block scheduling, which is terrible for

lots of reasons, but it's good for

theater for rehearsals.

Then you would get those kids for a much

longer chunk of time.

So we do the wet techs.

Then we go into dress rehearsals like to

have three if I can have them.

We do those in the afternoon.

We spend the mornings address rehearsal

days doing like crisis work.

Like we the dance is not working right or

this one scene still isn't look right.

So if there's something that's a big

problem, we just make a

note and call that a crisis.

And then we have the show and we do up to

three shows on a show day.

We might do a morning show for the high

school and afternoon show for the middle

school and then a night

show for our families.

When we do the musicals, we do six shows.

So we do three on

Thursday, three on Friday.

So we wear those kids out,

but they sleep really well.

And the parents seem to like that.

So so I make all this magical rehearsal

schedule and then I look at my calendar

and I've got access to all the events in

the building, all the sporting events

that are happening, all the band events,

like any other organization that I can

think of that might

conflict with what we're doing.

Then I try to make sure there's not like,

like I'm not going to have the show the

night of homecoming, right?

That would be ridiculous.

There's too many kids

involved that activity.

Now sometimes it cannot be helped as long

as a kid has to make a decision.

Am I going to play in

this basketball game?

We're going to be in this play.

But almost all the organizations in my

county and here in the boondockles work

with us because we have such a small

student body that if you only do one

thing, you only play softball or you only

in band, you only do theater, then you're

losing on lots of opportunities.

So usually that it's only one or two

weeks after school

and not even every day.

I try to get these kids all the time.

Worst case scenario, if there's like a

big game or event cheerleading

competition on Saturday, I get them the

first half of practice and then they go

to cheerleading for the second half.

So we kind of switch it out and we try to

work with people we can once in a while.

We have no organization or a coach who's

like, no, we will not.

We will not work with you, but that's

very seldom that happens.

So I and I appreciate that because we

want, you know, we want

kids to write lots of things.

They're 15 years old.

They don't know what they want to do.

They don't know what they're good at.

So it's too young to pigeonhole them.

All right. So I've looked at that and then I put

down all the events that my

conflict of my rehearsals.

So for example, I know that picture day

is going to be the 22nd and they do

picture day on my stage during my class.

So I'm going to move that rehearsal to

the library because I'm librarian.

So I have access to that space.

I know that I have jury duty one day on

the on the 3rd of September.

I have jury duty.

I can't be here, but I know that Brent

can be here and I know that my stage

manager can, because she is so well

trained, she can run a dance call and

we've got choreographers.

We've got student choreographers.

So we just will have an adult in the room

and they can do their job as far enough

in where I don't have

to be in charge of stuff.

In fact, after blocking rehearsals, I

don't sit and watch

rehearsals until the end.

I do other things I'm circling around and

so we make a, so then I have to like skip

days where we aren't having rehearsal.

There's a random Friday.

We're out of school

during a rehearsal period.

So I don't put in a rehearsal on that day

or there's something where no one's going

to have class like Veterans

Day assembly is a big deal.

They have assembly in our

gym and in our auditorium.

So we're probably not going to be able to

rehearse that day if they're getting

ready for Veterans Day in there.

And then I just keep going down, down,

down until I've gone through other

rehearsals and I get to a show day.

And traditionally, unless something crazy

happens, we try to have show days on

Fridays, just to give, Thursdays and

Fridays at this big show to give the kids

and myself, frankly, time to recover.

So what I found this time was what I

found, I went all the way

to my Mary Poppins date.

It was going to interfere with another

big event we have in the county, which is

called the, we used to be called the

Christmas Tea, but now it's, I don't know

what it's called, the

gifted and talented show.

I don't know, but they have lots of

performances in the auditorium and they

have lots of art the kids

have produced in the library.

And it's a big deal.

And I can't have a giant set up while

they're trying to do that.

So in our set, the one we're building is

currently going to

take up part of the stage.

So they want the whole stage.

And it's hard to take those curtains up

and down to cut off part of the stage.

So I had to back up a week from when I

wanted to, I would have wanted to have

the show in Mary Poppins land.

And then I just backtracked from there

and see if I can finagle some rehearsals.

Can we put something after school?

Can I combine two rehearsals?

Do we really need to

have that many dance calls?

And then I back it up and so that

everything sort of matches in the middle.

And that takes some time.

I was spending a lot of time in coffee

shops working on this when I can.

I, that's not ideal.

So I can't do it during school.

I can't do it while I'm having, I'm

helping students, but I do it while I'm

sitting in my car waiting for one of my

kids to get off work or I worked on their

night because I was in a hotel room the

night before my son got married.

And so I was working on it then after we

go to the rehearsal and stuff.

So I just, whenever I'm sitting around

and I have some time, I will work on it

in little chunks like that if I can.

And this, I will say this rehearsal

schedule, I didn't really have to cut.

I only had to cut

three or four rehearsals.

I was pretty pleased with myself.

I also would then go back in and check

and see what weekend days I have free.

And we will have optional rehearsals

where we always have show shop day.

And that's the day that kids really like.

And this is on the calendar as well.

Like this is the date by which we have to

have all the costume prop, hair and

makeup set by lists, like stuff that we

don't have in the auditorium.

We don't already own.

We have to go get, and then we'll come

to, this is not a school sponsored event.

The kids come to my house.

I have a massive minivan.

We get in the van, we go

to town, we go to Spencer's.

I'm obsessed with Spencer's.

And then we go to like.

Sponsored.

Not sponsored, but we should be because

I, I take the kids down

there and get them addicted too.

So it's, it's a local coffee shop and,

and I've been going there since they

opened and then we go to like Goodwill

and secondhand stores and vintage stores

and things like that.

And the kids split up and they know what

they're looking for.

Like we need a black dress.

It's a size nine or we need a pair of

size 13 black men's dress shoes.

We need a red tie for Clark Kent to be

confused with Clark Kent and they split

And then also we find other things that

we didn't know we needed.

We found a shirt one time with Abraham

Lincoln driving a NASCAR car.

So we had to buy that

because it was there.

We bought a giant sloth head once and

we've used that actually several times.

So sometimes items that

the Goodwill speak to us.

Kids have found their prom dresses there,

their taxes for prom.

You never know which going to find a good

at a good Goodwill and

stuff just speaks to you.

So, and the kids have a lot of fun.

They get to work together.

We're doing something useful, but also

they're, they're bonding.

You know, drama is a, it's a culture.

It's a family and they can talk about

these trips that they made.

So a lot of the same kids, once they get

going, like my costume mistresses and my

hair and makeup, uh, chiefs usually come,

but then other assorted children come and

a lot of times they keep going until

after they graduate.

And sometimes after they graduate, uh,

sometimes we go in multiple cars and just

meet places, but

that's always a lot of fun.

So that's a Saturday.

Um, ours is actually the end of this

month at the end of September.

Uh, and then we might schedule a couple

of other days if the auditorium is free

and I am free where we'll just go in

there and maybe clean out a space in the

auditorium, some boxes, the prop hall,

the dressing room, whatever.

We know theater in the

world has enough storage.

So you're constantly having to decide

what can I part with and

what, am I going to use again?

And Brent is better than me about saying,

we're never going to use this.

You have to get rid of it.

It takes up too much room.

I really did like that jail.

It was a good jail.

Oh my God.

We got rid of that.

And then we also got rid of the world's

like, terrible list, terrible.

Rolling rack.

It was, it was like made out of the like

aluminum can level aluminum metal.

Like that's how thick it

was a free clothing rack.

You don't turn away free things.

Literally had four pieces broke that

you'd had welding put back together.

It was more welding than

it was actual original.

So I gave the students an opportunity to

do something useful.

Yes.

You gave them an opportunity job for the

to weld on trash because then finally I

just took it and threw it in the trash.

We bought really nice,

like really nice Z racks.

You could never have enough clothing.

Like really nice Z racks.

And then she kept hanging stuff on this

rack and it kept falling over and

breaking and like kids would try and move

it somewhere and like the

wheels would fall off of it.

And finally I just, I grabbed it and I

threw it in the dumpster because that's

where it needed to go.

I think it's funny.

You can trust it curse words.

We want to describe this.

Yeah.

It was a good rack.

Don't throw away anything.

It was not in fact, a good rack.

It did.

It served its purpose for many a moon.

So we might schedule a couple of those

days and then we go on.

Now we use an app called team reach,

which I am a big fan of.

Of course, Kentucky.

Now they've passed a law saying that

teachers cannot have correct contact with

students online for fear of evil or

whatever, but that's

neither here nor there.

But the way this app works, there is a,

an aspect of it where you can have direct

communication, but I

have locked all that down.

So I can still use this in our

announcements to all

of the drama students.

And I can also, there's a really nice

calendar feature on there.

And when you, if you are a participant,

you can go to the bottom scroll to the

bottom of the calendar

and you can subscribe to it.

So it'll download all the calendar

information onto your like Google

calendar or whatever.

And then if we have to change rehearsals

in real time, like last year, we missed a

couple of days during rehearsal because

there was no water, like the town, the

water in the town, there was a massive

line break and we couldn't have school

because there wasn't water.

Well, we had to cancel those rehearsals

and move them so I can move those things

in real time and students can get the

information and they get notifications if

they want when I do make

changes to the calendar.

And because if I send them a static

calendar, like I used to do,

there's, I don't think I've ever done a

rehearsal process where that calendar end

up being exactly what we

did because things happen.

People get sick or we

can't have the space.

People schedule in there or like I said,

the water just stops

working in the county or COVID.

But COVID actually

shut down a whole show.

We were, we were out of the rehearsal

process in the middle of the production

when we got shut down for COVID.

And that is the saddest

thing that ever happened.

But that's the story for a different day.

So that's why, that's

how I make the calendar.

And I want to do it before we start

rehearsal because on the audition form, I

say to the kids, okay, here are the two

weeks we're going to

have after school rehearsal.

What major conflicts do you have?

And if a kid says to me, you know, we're

going to California for that week and I

can't possibly come back.

Well, then they can't

appear in that show, right?

And we will give them other work to do,

but mostly that doesn't get

done, but it is an opportunity.

They, if they, if they

want to pass the class, still.

So that gives them an idea.

And also you want to get that as soon as

possible as a parent.

And up until this year, I was a parent of

a student in the program and I was

scheduling around soccer and academic

team and all manner of other things.

You want to be able to put those things

in the calendar as soon as possible.

So you're not scheduling orthodontist

appointments or things like that when

they need to be at rehearsals.

So that's why we have a

calendar and it's fabulous.

And I will attach a, or Brent, well,

clearly I don't know how to do that.

Brent will attach a copy of our latest

rehearsal calendar and you can steal that

spreadsheet, that format.

I mean, all of this, I want you to have

it because I didn't have it.

Also, when I started doing this, we

didn't have the internet in this way.

So I could have made spreadsheets, I

guess, but I did, I did not do that.

Okay.

So that's all the pearls of wisdom that

we can think of to

give you for this episode.

We appreciate you joining us.

And if you have any questions, confuses,

or concerns, please contact us at our

email address, which will be under the,

so many things, the notes today at

hippychick101 at Gmail.

That's H-I-P-P-Y-C-H-I-C-1-0-1 at Gmail.

Because I feel like at this point we've

recorded what happened in episodes and I

want to find out if we're, if we're

giving people what they need.

So if you have questions about theater or

topics you want us to cover or confusions

or concerns or haikus you'd like to send

us, then please email us at that address

and we will try to get back to you and

try to incorporate your ideas because we

want, we want more people to do theater.

So thank you.

(Music)