The Production Analysis Part 2: Utilization and Casting

(Upbeat Music)

Editor Brent here.

I just wanna tell you guys that this is

the second half of our conversation about

pre-production for a show.

It also gets into how we cast some stuff

and what we do with props and costumes

and pieces that we find for a show and

how we manage them a little bit as well.

But also, I would like to mention that

we're terrible at PR for

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And so if you have somebody in your life

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program or that you think would benefit

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Jennifer's producing.

Thanks.

And now back to Jennifer

talking about pre-production.

So, all right, you've got a production

analysis, you've got a calendar, you've

doubled up on characters if you need to,

and you've sent that information and the

descriptions of the characters out to

your students and you've

sent out an audition form.

And we can also send you or link to you a

copy of an additional form.

I use Google Classroom for this.

It is a magical, magical thing if you're

not currently on there.

And I make a form like a quiz and it has

very basic questions like the kid's name,

their grownups name, emergency contact

number, because it'll be faster to have

it on a spreadsheet than to get onto the

computer if there is an

emergency during practice.

We've only had a couple of those.

One involved a slap bracelet.

And we did have a contact experience very

quickly and call EMTs, but everyone is

fine and that kid can

feel most of his finger.

So, you should outlaw slap bracelets in

your program and in your building and in

the world, because who knew?

Who knew they could do so much damage?

What else?

You asked them to list what characters

they might like, one or two, so you kind

of get a feel for, do

they want a larger part?

Do they feel

comfortable with smaller part?

Is there a part they're just really,

they're really feeling?

And then they can come in later if they

want to auditions and do a prepared piece

from that character if they want to.

And then there's a question where you can

click boxes for what tech crew you'd like

to be part of, costumes, props, set,

hair, makeup, publicity,

light, sound, et cetera, et cetera.

If you'd like to be a crew chief, that's

one of the questions on there.

Do you want to be in charge or do you not

feel comfortable doing that yet?

There's a question about, are you

interested in, would you be willing to

dye your hair or cut your

hair, depending on a character?

Are you willing to

kiss somebody on stage?

This particular show,

there is no kissing,

but we did Midsummer Night's Dream last

year and there's what,

three couples that get together?

Well, there's four, but that fourth

couple doesn't, five, but one couple

doesn't last the whole show.

Unless you saw the ballet version at

Shakespeare in the Park in Louisville

this summer, and then

they did see the entire show.

And I kind of liked it that way and I

wish I'd done that, but I ship a sail.

Like I'm not doing that show right now.

And what I have found is that the boys

are primarily, yes, I will kiss anybody.

And the girls are like, I

don't know, man, it depends.

So we have to work through that.

I'm not going to put a cap for a major

role when kissing is important.

The romantic chemistry is important if

they've made it very clear that they're

not, they're not doing that thing.

One of the questions are

on there, the conflicts.

And then if they want to upload something

to show me something else, some of their

information, that they like, sometimes

kids have sent me set designs that

they've done on paper.

They've got a bunch of, they've got a

Pinterest page they've made about the

costumes, or here's some hair and makeup

ideas for your villain

characters in a show or whatever.

And so they can do that as a supplemental

as here or a video of

themselves doing something.

We've gotten those sometimes.

When we do the musical, because those

kids aren't all in my school and I don't

know them, I more often get videos of

younger kids performing in other venues

where I haven't seen them.

And that's helpful just to kind of get a

read on people, especially this early in

the year, because I don't know all of

these students that well.

And some of them I will never learn their

names because I'm so bad with names.

Or I will never spell

them properly, that's okay.

And then I send that out and then you

give the kids a couple

of days to get that done.

And once they've filled that out, you can

make it into a spreadsheet.

So you can sort that however you want.

You can sort it by, here are

the people that want the lead.

Here are the people

that want to do costumes.

Here are the people that

want to be tech crew chiefs.

And you can look at that

information very quickly.

And then I print that out and make notes

and it's like in the thing.

Now, does everybody get what they said

they wanted on the audition form?

No.

Do some people get put into positions of

authority or become crew chiefs that

maybe didn't ask for that?

No.

But I will go and talk to that kid and

tell them, I know you can do this.

I need you to do this.

And nine times out of

10, they do deliver.

They get it together and

they do what I need them to do.

It's really amazing to me, all these

years that I've said to kids, I think you

can do this when maybe they thought they

could not do it and then they did it.

And they did it better, whatever they

did, their onstage part or their crew

part or whatever they were doing, their

student directing, better than I thought

they'd be able to do it at the end.

But I never told them that.

I just said, you can

go and you can do this.

And then they do.

And that's, I mean, magic.

I think I've said that in every episode,

like this is all magic.

And they're so impressed themselves.

And then they can go on.

Sometimes they literally go on to do

other things they were too scared to do

before because we told them

that they could and they did.

So we don't wanna say,

"A" but it for failure.

I'm not gonna put it in a position where

I think they can't do it.

Do they sometimes not

live up to their potential?

Sometimes.

But mostly, I would say 95% of the time.

I think that's a fair number that they

live up to their potential.

That's probably really true.

I mean, we have a lot of kids that will,

well, we have our kids that are gonna not

live up to their potential.

You know it, but also like sometimes they

can not live up to their potential right

up until the day before the show.

And then you're like, listen, if you

don't get this together, like we're gonna

put a kid up there with a script or

whatever and then for the most part, they

tend to get it together.

We've had a handful of kids that you're

just literally like, no, you

cannot be on the stage, goodbye.

And one of the kids that was, he was such

a great kid, he got bounced out of the

show and then showed up to watch the show

and was just like praising

everybody and loving the show.

And like, man, this is so great.

You know what man?

That was a surprise.

You could have been in this.

Yeah, the before the show, he was like,

no, I cannot physically

do this, I cannot do this.

And it wasn't his first rodeo either.

And so we put a kid on stage, he did a

good job with the script on stage.

We have had some students who in 24 hours

have been off book and in the show.

I'm going all the way

back to the crucible,

Romeo and Juliet, we had a kid get

arrested that was in Romeo and Juliet the

very first time we did it.

And I saw a kid in the

hall, his name was DJ.

And I was like, hey, what

are you doing first block?

And he's going to be on block then.

He said, I have social studies.

So I would do a social studies teacher

and I was like, can I have this kid for

like a week so he could

be a Romeo and Juliet?

And the teacher said, yeah,

he's making an A, he's fine.

So he went to my class for like a week

and he was the, Parris, he was the guy

that Juliet's parents wanted to marry.

And that boy was off

book like in 24 hours.

He did get stabbed in the eye during one

of the shows when he has to fight Romeo

in the tomb, but he

survived, he's doing quite well now.

He's one of my favorites because they're

all my favorites, right?

The crucial, we had a kid that he was one

of the, he ended up

having to be one of the judges.

And he came in and just like

shuffle the judges paperwork.

One year we had a girl who I knew and had

brain surgery the year before, but she

showed up for drama and she seemed fine.

And she had to take on, she was in one

show that she learned all the lines for.

A girl quit, like quit school and took

off the week of the other show.

And she was a director.

So she had a script she

could play with sometimes.

And this girl, I can see her face,

Brooke, her name is Brooke.

Brooke Davis.

It was Brooke Davis.

Well, it was Brooke Davis.

I think she's

different less than I am now.

I think she's married now.

And she came in and did the whole other

part and it was great.

And then I got a message from the office

saying that that kid based on her IEP

could not be asked to memorize things.

And I was like, well,

the ship has sailed.

And she was amazing.

And she said, you believed in me.

And so I did it.

And she did, she was great.

And she's so great.

She has the best smile.

So if you believe, I believe, I believe

until they're like, they

physically aren't there.

And once while we're throwing out, but

mostly it's because they physically go

away for some reason.

I think we've had two kids arrested.

One of them was in the box.

He was the sound guy for

a show that got arrested.

But that's been a long time.

Because we were still, yeah, that's been

a long time ago since that happened.

It was like the second or third year.

That was Ms.

Nelson is missing.

With the show where I gave myself a

concussion and cut my head open.

But I'm fine now, really.

All right, so we've

got the audition form.

And then the last thing you do before you

go to auditions, since you have this list

of what you want the characters to have,

the kids know what it is, whatever, is

you wanna come in with some sides.

And I don't know why they're called

sides, but it's just a scene from the

script that you want the kids to read.

So all my kids have their own scripts,

but a lot of times in other programs,

they make photocopies.

And they don't give out the sides and

they don't give out scripts

until after the show is cast.

But since I know everyone's gonna be in

the play, I go ahead and give everybody a

script as soon as I get them.

And it's like Christmas morning.

They're just hysterical.

And they're wearing their names on it,

looking through stuff and whatever.

So you would pick scenes from the show

that you want to have them read.

So you wanna pick scenes where people

have to do something uncomfortable, like

talk in a weird voice or move in a way

that is not how average people move.

Or you have to check chemistry.

People are supposed to be best friends or

romantically involved or arch nemeses or

a parent and a child

or brothers or whatever.

Like how do they play

to each other physically?

And then Thomas talked last week about

doing improv and auditions, which I

thought about doing and then

forgot about it for this show.

But I may be able to remember to do it

for next time because

that's a great idea.

Oh, and one more thing about before

auditions that is not,

I don't think most people do, but I did

hear this somewhere.

So I didn't make it up myself is you, I

don't wait and do the read through when

the show is happening.

I do it beforehand, which I think we

talked about a little bit last week.

And then you just go around a circle and

everybody reads a line.

So everybody gets to hear themselves and

they get to play with the script a little

bit and ask questions, start thinking,

oh, I know how to make the posters they

need for this player.

Oh, I know how to costume this character.

Oh, I want to be this girl because she

does this thing and I can do that.

And then you go audition.

And the first day you let

them bring what they have.

So if kids have memorized pieces,

sometimes they have a buddy and they get

on stage, they do a scene, you let them

do that until you run out.

And then I do cattle call.

I will say like this year because she had

jury duty, we had a day

where I was just kind of,

I wasn't really auditioning the kids.

They just had scripts and I was kind of

running them through

almost like a mock audition.

So we started on that day, the particular

script that we have has a line in it and

people talking in the line.

And so I just lined everybody up in a

giant line and just- Like

a physical line.

Yeah, like a physical-

Where they say lines.

Yeah, it's so meta.

And so I lined everybody up and just had

them start doing the lines.

And basically we made the line out of

everyone that felt like they were this

one character were on the left side and

everyone that felt like they were this

other character were on the right side.

And so the two characters met in the

middle, we would run lines with those two

people and then they would go to the ends

of the line and then there would be two

new people and they

would just work that way.

So we went through everybody that way.

So everybody had practiced

the line and worked with it.

And I gave them plenty of time.

And then I sent them all back in the

audience and I said, because we'd already

done the circle read

through at that point.

And I just told them, I said, if there's

any character in this play that you feel

like speaks to you, like that you

identify with, or you feel like you

understand, or you feel like you have

some idea about how they should move or

talk or whatever, go on

stage with your script.

And then I just called one of them and

said, okay, tell me what character you

feel like is you or that you wanna,

I guess it's an audition, but it wasn't

really an audition because I wasn't

taking any notes and I wasn't making any

marks about it or anything like that.

But it gave them a chance to sort of,

like to work that character a little bit.

And then when I told them, when the class

was over, I said, listen, tomorrow she's

gonna ask you if you wanna get up and do

something related to

any of these characters.

And now you already have had a chance to

be in their skin for just a minute, go

home and think about it a little bit more

and work on it a little bit more.

When you come in tomorrow,

you'll have an opportunity to do it.

And I felt like, and I think you even

said something to me about the fact that

we had a lot more participation for kids

being like, yes, no, I

have an idea of this.

I like, it's just-

Something's good to never

audition for anything before.

I think that was

probably helpful for them.

Yeah, cause I mean, again, we're sort of

beating this into the ground, but we have

a very, very young class.

So I felt like that was a good way to

sort of break the seal a little bit

because we have a lot of kids that are

very personable and like outgoing and

stuff like that, but they're just all

like, well, I don't know if this is okay

or I don't like, I don't know.

I don't trust myself to make this voice

or I don't trust

myself to read this line.

And so just having them go up there and

go through it once, I really do feel like

it sort of broke it up a little bit.

And it was a day we were gonna lose

anyway because I'm not

authorized to cast a play on my own.

Do you want to cast a play?

No, it's fun.

Not authorized, you can do it.

She says that she always cast the play

correctly, but I know that if I cast the

play that I would definitely cast it

incorrectly according to her.

I would not say anything.

There would be facial expressions and

noises probably of

displeasure, but that's okay.

You're good at other

things I don't know how to do.

So it works out just fine.

But I do feel like, like I said, that

wasn't a day that we really lost.

So I felt like it was a good use of our

time to sort of break this,

like I said, to break the seal.

Did you do any side coaching?

There were a couple of the kids that when

they got up there, I was like, okay, I

see what you're doing, but like, what

about if you, what about if

you did this a little bit?

Or, hey, you're interested in this part.

So like, there's this part in the script

it's not maybe necessarily even where

you're reading where

this character does this.

So, you know, I mean,

we did, I don't know.

I didn't spend a ton of

time on each one of them.

I had also did help that several of them

wanted to do scenes where there was

somebody else in the scene.

So we would drag somebody else back up

and then they would

kind of work together.

That was actually where I saw a lot of

the stuff that a couple of the different

kids could do because they just sort of

got like, okay,

you're this character now.

And they had to sort of make that up on

the spot and they didn't do bad at it.

And I mean, a little bit, we talked about

it when they were in line, like, you

know, and stuff like that.

So I don't know, it was a little bit of

an audition for auditions maybe or

something like that.

A pre-audition, audition.

I like it.

So let me the cold call and then I do, or

the not the cold reads, let

them do their prepared reads.

And then I cattle call.

And that's where I might say, everybody

who's interested in playing a male

character or a female character, or

anybody who's interested in kissing

somebody or whatever, get on stage.

But because this show is so wide open and

there's gender is not important, the show

in a way would be in like, I don't know,

a rom-com or something, or like as you

like it, where you have a girl pertain to

be a boy, pertain to be a girl who would

have been played by a boy.

But that's a different podcast.

Then I would say everybody get up.

And then I would look at these

characters, I look at these actors and

think, I mean, people tell you that

appearance doesn't matter.

It does.

When you're doing theater, what you

physically look like matters.

It makes you suited for

some parts more than others.

When I was doing shows like in high

school or whatever, but not in

college, I always was the mom.

Like I always got cast as a mom, even

when I was like, when I was 13, I got

cast in the mall as one of the moms in

our town because I looked

like I was much older than I was.

Some kids skew older,

some kids skew younger.

And like I said earlier, there's a kid in

this show that's

supposed to be very, very young.

So if you are six and a half feet tall

and you have a beard,

you're not gonna play that part.

I mean, there is a part for everybody,

but not everybody is for every part.

And I'm all for genderblind casting, but

I think, especially when you're dealing

with audiences who aren't necessarily the

kind of people that go to theater all the

time with all the theater that they get,

and more so in like Shakespeare plays and

more serious plays

like the one about Alice.

I can't remember, where

they killed Jacob Bolton.

That play was very serious or thank you

for flushing my head in the toilet and

other real-use expressions.

That one's pretty serious and really

good, but I don't wanna do it again

because it was so good.

Where you wanna give the audience as many

visual cues as possible.

So if I'm supposed to believe these

people are kin to each other, they look

vaguely similar somehow.

We did a show called "Oddly Puddle" is

from outer space or

inner space, one of the two.

And it was about a kid on the spectrum

who was nonverbal.

And the way the show was set up,

the first half took place when he was

like 11 and it was him and all the

neighbor kids and a

tutor that worked with him.

And then the second half after an

omission was all the same

characters, but they were like 17.

So we had to cast two sets of kids that

you could tell that some of them were

older versions of the other one.

Cause my kid was so little, he

played one of the little kids.

And the other kid that played him had to

be like six and a half feet tall because

my kid was already so tall as a freshman.

So your visuals do matter.

So I'll look at these kids in this group

and say, which of these kids would I

believe is bat guys one of

the characters of the show?

And I just tell him, I said, you can try

to figure out what I'm thinking.

I don't think it'll do you any good, but

if you wanna do that, that's fine.

And because I ask you to sit down,

doesn't mean I don't like you.

It means that this is not a part I wanna

see you for or I've

already got a part for you.

I don't need to see you anymore.

So I don't wanna take it as some kind of

like disrespect or I don't like them or

they're not a good actor.

That's just not what

I'm physically looking at.

And so we might do

three or four cattle calls.

So I can look at all the, there was a

grandparent character and this little kid

character and there's this giant security

guy and there's Batman and the clown and

who's clearly supposed to be the joker.

So I just wanna physically look at them

and then we'll have kids do cold reads

from that where it's like, well, here's a

scene from Batman with

Batman or Bat Guy and the clown.

So we'll put all the kids I think might

be Bat Guy over on stage right and all

the kids I think might be the clown on

stage left and then they just

pair up and come to the scene.

And sometimes when that's happening, I'll

have them switch and they go, "Oh, well

maybe that kid could

be the clown instead."

So I don't know, I'm just taking notes

and I try to take notes online, but it is

much easier for me to write things down.

Although frankly, I can't read about a

third of it when I get done running it

down, but make notes and highlight things

and put stars by things.

And so we do that the first day, maybe

the second day and then after the second

day of auditions, I go

home and I precast the show.

Like I think, okay, if this is the last

day of auditions, what did I

like, what I think would work?

I give everybody a job and I double check

to make sure I haven't skipped a kid

because that's happened a couple of times

and that is terrible for that child

because I think I forgot about them, but

I'm just really bad with names.

And then I'll make this list and then the

last day, I'll come back and say,

"Listen, if there's anything else you

wanna show us, and then I will look at

these kids who I think belong in these

parts and see how they work together with

other kids in those parts."

And I think this time I

maybe switched four kids around.

I've read at the precast, I think I

switched four kids around.

So it was pretty much what I wanted it to

be after that second day.

And that's how I do it.

So do it.

I also think it's funny that she said

that sometimes your body has to make you

a certain thing when one time she cast a

five tube kid as the twin

of a five 11 or six foot kid.

And they're like, it was great because we

just sort of dressed them the same and

everybody was just like,

"Ah, yes, they're twins."

And also because those two boys spent so

much time together, their

physicality was very similar.

I'm talking about Sarah and Fresno.

That was also fun.

It was totally fun.

No, it wasn't Fresno because Fresno was

the girl that Ian was hitting on.

It was Sarah and Key.

Oh.

There was one time where

it was Sarah and Fresno.

I don't remember what it was.

That was in the show

that was in Comedy Bears.

I don't know.

I mean, I believe that's a thing.

Was it a show where Sarah didn't play

evil because Sarah always played evil or

chaotic neutral at best?

Right.

So yeah, I mean, sometimes, and also

like, you know, the play we're working on

right now, there's a person, we're

basically gonna have a

person be She-Hulk probably.

So you don't wanna cast a five one

She-Hulk unless it's funny.

We just a really tall dwarf.

Because then if it's funny.

Yeah.

Like if it's clear that you've made this,

you've gone against type on purpose.

Are She-Hulk's gonna look a lot like

She-Hulk though, I think.

I don't know if she can do

that because she's gotta be,

we may have to do something else with

that because that kid's gotta

be, she's on the movie panel.

And I don't know if we can change the

makeup up that fast.

So I don't know.

Maybe we can do that for some other time.

I don't know if she can

do that for Halloween.

That kid would make a

good She-Hulk though.

I found out today I taught her mom.

I don't think she looks like

her mom, but I know her mom was.

Tell that out today.

That was cool.

All right, so that's how we auditioned.

And then we, like I said, we cast that

play and put it online the night before.

And we started blocking today and it was,

nobody was hysterical in tears.

So winner, winner, chicken dinner.

And also one of the things you're gonna

learn in the world is how

to deal with disappointment.

And I understand being up sectioning and

casting a play, but

also, you gotta move on.

So we gotta teach resilience, right?

So the premise sort of of this episode

was the idea of all the work that you do

before you cast a show.

So how often, once you start making the

production document, do you feel like you

have to go back and do

large scale revisions to it?

So with like the props and the costumes.

So there is a, one of the colors on there

for the blocking is it says, we don't

want to do this anymore.

Forget this idea.

And that is a live document.

So all the kids have access to it.

So like I said to Kyle today, we need

this, this is a clipboard with a paper, a

bunch of paper she can shuffle through,

add that to the thing.

I know Mikayla, the stage manager's added

several things to it already.

She's added all the

posters and stuff when needed.

So that's a little bit of a document.

One thing our stage manager did really

quickly after she gained access to the

document was she triaged all the,

whose problem this is, like really fast.

Cause like you released it and then she

was just going through it.

And you're like, cause like, as you were

talking about it, you're like, wait, what

are some of these colors?

And they were colors that she had added

that were like Mikayla's problem,

costuming from, like she had

triaged a lot of the tasks.

Yeah, she's great.

I think that she's going, this is

something that she might

like to do as a career.

She's looking to go to

college to major in this.

And I really want to help her do that

because if you want to be a professional

in theater, I think, and this is from my

own personal experience and my own

children and just looking around, that

tech is the way to go.

Because listen, I love actors for the day

as long, but they're a dime a dozen.

But if you've got somebody, because when

my tech kid, they've got to be competent.

You can't, I don't have time to sit and

hold their hands and be like,

did you put that like you in?

Do you have that prop?

They have to have it done.

Or they have a crew they can delegate to

and say, okay, you're in

charge of all the food.

Or there's a big scene with a

whole bunch of craft projects.

There's going to be a prop kid who just

takes care of all that craft stuff.

Because we have to keep, every time we do

the show, we have to keep making that

craft over and over again.

So we have to have lots of different sets

of those in different

levels of production.

And we have to cut somebody's hair.

So we need to find a bunch of hair and

then figure out how to glue it onto

styrofoam, which will be fine.

Because that's a prop kid's problem.

It's not my problem anymore.

That's the great thing.

I write these things on the production

document or on the production analysis.

And then I'm like, well,

wash my hands of that.

A child will figure out how to do it.

And they do.

If you just let them go, if you trust

these kids, then they really just come up

with the best ideas.

And then I don't have to stress about it.

There's 40,000 different boxes on this

production analysis.

How will I get all these costumes and

properties together?

And I'm here to help.

And Brent helps.

And Brent's wife, Pauline,

makes these amazing costumes.

And we have Mr.

Christian, the art department director,

who he makes beautiful things for us.

And his students make

beautiful things for us.

He made a cake last year that a kid could

jump out of to sing a song.

I mean, a massive three-tiered cake on

wheels because all set

pieces should be on wheels.

It was just so much

cooler than I could have made.

I don't know how to do that, right?

So I just love to be

like, goodbye, little problem.

I will also, I will say like-- You will

say that everything should be on wheels.

No, this is the part of the production

that stresses me out

more than anything else.

I've worked with Jennifer long enough

that I know that she's good about

breaking these things all into little

pieces and then farming them out.

And oftentimes a lot of the work gets

done and then she triages the

stuff that doesn't get done.

And then there's a list of like, over

time through the production,

there are times when she comes to me and

she goes, "Okay, we

have to do this right now."

And then that's when I go

and like figure that part out.

Although I try to think about things

ahead of time, but the thing that she's

talking about with the 40,000 boxes and

everything has to be this way and we need

all these things and

how are we gonna do this?

Like, that's the part of

it that I can't deal with.

Like, I don't enjoy that.

I don't even tolerate it well, honestly.

Like, I don't look at

the production analysis.

I don't know that maybe he ever even

looked at one, honestly.

It causes panic attacks for me.

Why?

Because everything's in a little box.

So instead of saying, "We have to costume

all the actors," it says, "We need a

Batman costume for this guy."

I understand that it works for you, but

it does not work for me.

What would work better for you?

Which is okay though, because she's the

one doing this, just like this podcast,

she's the one that's doing the majority

of the lifting and I just do the things

that are technically complicated or

physically complicated or,

you know, like in this production, we're

gonna put a kid through a table.

It's gonna be my kid.

He's gonna go through a table.

I'm so excited.

He's pretty much, I think he might be as

excited about the idea of

doing it as she is just now.

But, you know, I've been thinking about

that for like two weeks probably, but I

have literally no idea how we're gonna do

the craft project thing that she was just

talking about and the idea that we have

to have a bunch of those ready to go for

three shows, like I literally broke out

into a sweat when she said that because I

don't wanna have to deal with that.

But you don't.

I know, but that's what I'm talking about

is that like, this is an aspect of this,

earlier when I said this is an aspect of

the production of these shows that I

don't really have a lot to do with.

It's because I don't enjoy having this

giant pile of stuff in front of me.

Like I enjoy, I don't wanna enjoy is the

right word, but I tolerate better the

idea of like, okay, this is the goal that

we have for today and I need to do this,

and this is the goal that we have for

this and I need to do this, and this is

the goal that we have to accomplish here.

How are we gonna do it?

You know, like that's much more than--

One crisis at a time.

That's much more the way that I work.

Like I've said my whole life mostly to my

mother who may or may

not listen to this podcast.

Like I don't do well when it's like, I

need you to clean all this up.

Like it's too much.

I don't, I can't, I will work on

something nonstop, but when I see a giant

pile of things like

that, it's hard for me to do.

So like I said, like I tend to work on

whatever the thing is that she's blocking

at that moment or whatever the thing is

that's the next thing we need or

sometimes I just get real stumpy when

she's like telling me like, oh, we have

to have a thing there right now, but it's

not the thing that I was working on.

So I like to--

Make this noise.

Yeah, I like to act out for the kids

where she's like, we have to have that

door up right now and I'll go grab a

giant sledgehammer and literally hammer a

nail in with a giant sledgehammer just so

it makes as much noise as possible.

And the kids were like,

we don't know how to feel.

Right.

Sometimes you just have to keep people on

their toes a little bit.

Oh my Lord.

But that like, so that's why I do have a

lot less to say about the production

analysis because it's not a thing that I

really like dipping my toes in and I'm

glad that it works for her and Michaela

and stuff like that because

it makes the show way better.

Well, that's the thing.

The kids are like

responsible for our columns.

So Thomas is responsible for props and

Josie and Kieran doing hair and making

costumes and Hayden's gonna do lights and

Max is gonna do sound.

So the kids don't have to worry about the

entire thing either, it's just a nice

place where I can see then whenever a box

turns green, I know

that problem is solved.

And this is a big problem I have seen

with other people who are new to theater

productions or who maybe want to be the

star of the show and not actually the

producer director is they wanna take on

everything themselves.

I made all these costumes, I did all of

this set and that to me is exhausting.

For number one, this isn't about me and

number two, I do not have that kind of

talent or that many hours in a day.

So the more I can farm out and give

people responsibility which is the point

of this operation, the easier my life is,

the happier they are, the

faster we can get stuff done.

It just works out incredibly well.

So you cannot do everything yourself.

And that means that you have to let go of

control and that some things are not

gonna come out exactly

the way you want them to.

They might come out

different, they might come out better.

If it's bad, you can say, no, this is not

what we're looking for, we can fix it

because this is in service of the show,

not about your ego or my ego.

But sometimes things happen and I think,

well, that wasn't what I thought it was

gonna be but I'm not mad.

Like we're trying to make a poster of one

of the comic book characters that's in

the show and she has a fin that doesn't

know where it needs to come out of her

body and we cannot get that fixed.

So I decided maybe today that since this

is supposed to be taking place at a Comic

Con that's not like the fancy one out in

LA, it's like one that might be held in a

smaller city like Bowling Green or

something, that maybe it's okay that her

fin, it does not make sense where it

comes out of her body.

(Laughs)

And that might just be the thing.

And so when kids see those posters, it's

just be one of our posters in the halls

for the show, they will stop and look at

it and be like, where

does that fin come from?

(Laughs)

And that's okay because educational

theater, this is not

Broadway, that's not what we're doing.

So sometimes, and also the great thing

about live theater is at some point you

have to let it go because the show is

tomorrow and it is what it is.

And not all the gags and bits that we're

talking about now are gonna come to

fruition, they just aren't.

And that's okay.

We definitely had to have conversations

about that before, like a day before the

show where it's like no Jennifer, this

thing is just not, it's

not gonna be able to go.

Like we can't pull the trigger on this.

Like, I mean, I have a lot of ideas about

how to do this table

thing, hopefully they work out.

But could you put wheels on it?

Why?

The last thing you want is for the table

to slide off from underneath them.

I guess that's true.

Maybe the wheels are retractable.

Yeah.

I don't know, we've had very rare

instances where it's like, no, we just

literally can't do that.

Which is wild when you consider the fact

that we have no heavy equipment, we have

no ability to lift things, we have no

ability to, you know, like you see

theater companies that have things that

fly on stage and fly off the stage.

That we don't know if fly is phased, or have a different job.

Have giant, like massive physical space

that wrote like spin on stage and stuff

like that, you know, or whatever.

We can spin a house.

Yeah, we can spin a house.

We do have a massive two-point house that

can spin as two stories tall.

So, you know, it's kind of

cool, the amount of stuff.

I'm always kind of perplexed by how

sometimes we are able to do the things

that we are able to do in a small theater

that sort of got randomly put in the

middle of our high school, in a town that

probably shouldn't have a theater as big

as it is, and with little to no support

from really anybody.

Yeah, they didn't really ask anybody who

was doing theater when they put the space

in, like what would be useful for us.

I had just moved here, so I was not in a

position to give advice to anybody.

But I don't know if

that's part of the fun, right?

Oh yeah, no.

We're scrappy underdogs,

and it's freaking magic.

Yeah, it definitely is too, because, you

know, I mean, one of the reasons that I

keep my daytime job that I have is

because a lot of days, I'm not doing the

same thing that I do the day before or

two days ago or whatever.

Sometimes, you know, I spend weeks just

rotating through various things until I

finally make it back to

the first thing or whatever.

And so that's one of the things that I

like about this too, though, is that, you

know, if she comes at me and says, "I

need a barrel that looks like it's on

fire, but the barrel has to be moved

around stage, so there can't be any

wires," then I have to sort of stretch a

little bit in the way that I think about

things to come up with a way to do that.

And so-- Like a giant wizard who talks.

Yeah,

you know, we've done stuff like that.

And it is actually kind of interesting

for me because it gets me out of

sometimes the ruts that I get into with

what I do on a day-to-day basis.

So you've talked about the production

analysis and how you

build that to some extent.

And, you know, you sort of decompose the

script into various

cells in a spreadsheet.

And then-- Decompose

interesting word to use there.

Yeah, well, I mean, that's kind of how I

feel like it is, is that you take this

whole thing and then you decompose it

down into its various parts.

Or deconstruct, that's a good word too.

Then like you have your PR team or

whatever, that they're

out-- Publicity people.

They're out making stuff.

How do you start ingesting this stuff

like that from them?

Like when a kid says, "Okay, I've made a

flyer "that we're gonna

print out and do this stuff."

Like how are they, you talked about

Google Classroom a little bit, like how

are you retrieving that stuff so that you

end up, where are you storing it?

How are you putting it together?

So that you end up with this collection

of materials so that you

can go back and find it or--

Oh, like from previous shows?

No, more like when this kid says, "I have

this and it's done,"

then what happens to it?

Well, then we print it out and we just

disseminate it out into the world, put it

on walls everywhere.

And we have big bulletin boards good for

us too, but yeah, we just put it out

wherever people have it.

Sometimes it gets out of

the community, sometimes not.

That's one thing

we're not very good about.

People say, "Oh, when's your show?"

And I'll say, "It's over."

And like, well, we didn't know.

So we are not doing a

great job right now with PR.

I would say that is a weakness in our

program, PR and

fundraising, but like I've said,

magic, we haven't had to fundraise.

But we do need to do a better job of

getting the

information out in the community.

Because right now we have the science at

school, we have a Facebook

page, and we have Word of mouth.

And oh, Instagram, we have Instagram.

So, okay, more physical things then.

So you send the kid

in to go find a walker.

They find that walker.

Now, what is your process for what you do

with this thing now that it has been

acquired and brought in?

Well, in Mary Poppins' land, the prop

master took it after rehearsal and put it

somewhere where they are

collecting all the props.

And I know he did come back in later.

So I'm very lucky that I have a couple of

students every period, because I'm a

librarian after I teach my

first period of theater class.

I'm a middle school, high school

librarian the rest of the day.

But I have independent study, technical

theater kids, who are pretty much the

crew chiefs, and they can work on theater

stuff during that class

period when they're with me.

So he was collecting props earlier today.

So I'm assuming he's got a space where

he's storing all those things.

And then ultimately we'll have a table

for those, but that's

not, that is far from today.

Okay, so what about you go show shopping

and you buy things that you see, then

what do you do with them?

How do you batch them together?

How do you-- So we come back with all of

our, with our spoils.

And usually a lot of the crew chiefs are

with me, but then they take their things.

Like every kid has a costume bag that's,

and this is on the schedule, what day the

costume bags are due.

On the schedule is also what days all the

measurements for the actors are due so we

can find what we need, what other

deadlines are there.

When you have to get your lines

memorized, but that's going to prompting.

I think there's maybe only two deadlines

like that, because there's the deadline

for props, costumes, hats, all the

buy-a-lifts to be done.

And then they can go just put the things

right in the kid's costume bag, except

they tried them on to

make sure they're good to go.

So the crew chiefs are

responsible for that.

And mostly that works out okay.

Sometimes we have problems with hair and

makeup, I think only because

those are very small things.

And like I said, no

one has enough storage.

I've been backstage in major theaters, in

New York, in London, and

in Germany, and nowhere.

Did I find a space where I thought, oh,

this is enough backside

storage for what you have.

No one has enough space.

There's always like, here's an idea of

where one thing's to go, but then stuff's

sort of like spilling out into sitting

around because we made this really cool

thing and we didn't

know what to do with it.

So here it sits, you know.

Well, and every space is

occupied by human beings.

Right.

Human beings predominantly are bad at

putting things back up.

It's really, you know, because chaos, you

know, everything spreads farther and

farther onto the world.

So we have to, our hair and makeup people

share their space with all of the hats

and with all the pieces of material.

It's amazing what you can do with the

piece of material if you can't afford to

build a whole thing.

It's amazing what a myriad of ills

material will cover that can be clothing

pieces, just straight pieces of material

or can cover set pieces

and look like wallpaper.

And a great thing about that is if you

need to switch a wall really fast, you

can Velcro that stuff and then yank it

down and have the other wall behind it or

just other piece of

things you can Velcro up.

And we've done that trick several times.

So there's, we have like a corner for

hair and makeup and part of a bathroom.

So, and that's an area that I don't know

that much about because I don't use a lot

of, well, any makeup products.

So that's something that is left more to

students than a lot of other things are

because I got nothing.

And those things are

small and hard to lose.

Every time we do a show, buy bobby pins,

buy bobby pins, buy duct

tape, buy baby wipes by the case.

Every time we do a show, you will use a

case of baby wipes to take off makeup, to

clean the floor, to

clean other random things.

Yes, anytime we do a show, I buy those

three things religiously.

Is that all the time?

I can't think of anything else.

Yeah, bobby pins, duct

tape, and baby wipes.

That's really what all shows are made of.

Safety pins, a lot of.

Safety pins, always buy those because

they're going to get missing.

You could buy 5,000

safety pins off of Amazon.

And by the time the show's over, you have

two safety pins and they're like the size

of your pinky nail, the only

useful size of safety pins.

So yeah.

Now you're talking about, so we've talked

about physical things.

We've talked about PR items, like where

now you're, one of your other things is

you got to have sounds.

And ideas about lights.

So you're starting to, you've broken your

production analysis down into sounds that

you need, and music that you need, and

types of music that you need.

And then how are you collecting those?

How are you gathering those artifacts to

then go into the systems?

Right, so we have a really nice light

board system and it's fabulous.

Everything is LED and you can change the

colors, the lights at the push of a

button, whereas we used to have to go up

and put gels in the lights that sometimes

people would leave on for days at a time

and they would burn holes in them.

And this lights, and the lights are much

smaller and I won't burn my

hands if I have to move them.

That is one thing kids don't do is they

don't get to move lights

because they're up in the ceiling.

We don't put kids up on

ladders, that's unsafe.

The sound cues, I have given my sound

designer a bunch of

ideas about what I need.

Some in case it's specific

sounds that I know I want.

The coolest sound cue I think we ever use

is we did a production of Beauty and the

Beast, not the Disney version.

And in this version, there was this arbor

made of roses and the

beast would go and talk to it.

And basically the arbor was like, yo,

you've got to find somebody who loves you

to marry you and you have a very limited

amount of time because if you don't do it

or if you do it, then we're gonna die.

Like the servants and

stuff had all become plants.

They weren't like bowls and

plates and pianos and things.

So, but they were all dying because he'd

been alone for so long in

the house when Beauty shows up.

And we rigged it, we rigged an arbor.

We actually took an arbor out of

someone's yard and washed it, got all the

mud off of it and then covered it.

Oh, fake plants.

You should buy those at Goodwill.

Anytime you can find fake shrubbery,

especially ficus trees or

roses or vines, buy them.

You will use them a million times or buy

giant sheets of shrubbery on Amazon.

You will use that stuff.

You will use it every single time.

It's amazing.

So we covered this arbor thing we had

bought, this trellis thing with roses

and, well, Christmas lights first and

then roses and then vines.

And then we just had somebody, because

this was before there were LED lights,

somebody backstage where when the roses

would start talking to him, they just

plugged in the lights.

And when they got done talking, they

unplugged the lights.

And that was a little bit.

But the roses, like only he can

understand that they're supposed to sing.

And I could not find a sound that was

appropriate for those roses to make this

sort of like haunting melody I wanted.

And finally, like two days before the

show, I decided to use the children's

chorus from Poltergeist.

And it was, I mean, out

of context, it was perfect.

It's a bunch of little

kids like, ahh, you like that?

And those kids were so young that they

didn't know what it was.

And a lot of the adults in either, like

people, my husband was like,

is that the Poltergeist song?

And I was like, no, that's roses singing.

But a lot of people didn't know what it

was, but I thought I was like, because

that was something that had nothing to do

with what we were doing, was not in the

same genre, was not a takeoff on some of

their, wasn't something we got from some

other versions of this play.

It was completely in the other realm.

But I was like, oh no, this is the thing.

So you never know when you

can repurpose it like that.

And they went really well, because I

really, I did not have the kind of faith

in that show that I should have.

It was brought to me by a student

director who I loved

and adored and trusted.

And she was gonna graduate,

and this was her last show.

And I trusted her, but I was like, I

don't, this whole story is just insane.

And I don't know.

And it really was, it was fantastic.

That show was really, really good in a

way that I thought it would not be.

And this is the first show we bought, a

bunch of different widows for that show,

because we covered all

the house and greenery.

And she had this big bed

with this big canopy on it.

It was really cool.

So I've given the sound designer, here's

all the cues when they have to happen.

Here's vague ideas about

what kind of music it is.

And here, and so go find these stuff.

So he'll make a playlist, and then you

will upload that to the computer in the

sound box, and then magic will happen.

Is that all that works?

I don't know, because I have to do this.

This is what you do.

I look at the direction analysis, and you

make the sound cues come on.

So is that how that works?

So that's been much

easier since the advent.

Because when we first started doing it,

we had it on a cassette tape, because

there was a cassette player in the back,

and then we moved to CDs, because there's

one of those in the

back, in the little corner.

And we started doing people's phones, but

then if they lost their service, or they

got a notification,

then that would happen.

Or we do it on Spotify, then a commercial

would come on or something.

So now it's, and we would do, we were

trying to use sound

cues off of YouTube videos.

We had to switch back and forth, we had

computers, and people's phones, and plug

different things in.

And then if there was a

video cue, it was like,

I don't even know how

we got that stuff done.

And we did it, but oh

my God, it was stressful.

It's much easier now.

So now we use a piece of

free software called Multiplay.

It's much easier for the sound designer

to, like it's more complex than maybe

hitting play on a Spotify playlist.

But it is much easier for the sound

designer to utilize in a production

system, because it has the go button that

takes you to the next cue, and you can

rearrange your cues, and

stage things, and fade things.

And also manipulate the

cues, in a way we could before.

So we did Trap last year, we did this

really weird noise that happened

sporically, and then got louder, and got

cacophonous, and that was, Brent said,

that's the worst part we ever had,

because he kept bringing me noises, and I

was like, no, that's not quite right.

But I couldn't make the

noise that I wanted to be.

I just knew what it was in my head,

because it was like, what do you want?

Yeah, imagine someone telling you they

need a weird noise, but not being able to

describe it, and every time you give them

a weird noise, they're like, no, that's

not the weird noise I need.

But then you got it, and it was great.

Yeah, and then also, I need a weird

noise, I don't know what the weird noise

sounds like, I just know

that that weird noise is wrong.

Also, I need that weird noise, I kinda

like that one, but I need you to make it

happen like 500 times, overlapping each

other in a weird pattern.

Oh wait, no, I hate it like that.

Yes.

So it was a real fun time.

But then you made it work,

and it was really creepy.

And so

using multi-play, we

actually can incorporate now

the sound system more as, it's actually a

lot easier for our sound designer to

understand because it sits opposite, in

the sound booth, the light system.

And so when a sound designer walks in,

the person that's been our light goddess,

as Jennifer says most of the time, can

actually sort of explain to them how cues

work in a system, because most people

don't really interact with a, okay, I

wanna line all these things up, and then

hit go and go and go and stop and go and

whatever like that, they

don't really understand it.

But our light designer is like, oh yeah,

no, you cue these things the way they

need to be, our stage manager's gonna

call them out when you need to cue them

off and stuff like that.

And so it's a more intuitive system for

the people that already

know how a cue system works.

And then Multiplay has now integrated the

ability to kick off videos as well.

So what's the most recent one?

Singing in the Rain.

Singing in the Rain, yes.

Yeah, we use it for that, where we kicked

off prerecorded videos, stuff like that.

So that was a new one for us as well.

And Multiplay is an open source program,

not funded by a giant company.

So every now and then there's a glitch in

it, and you gotta be like, oh wait, no,

that's not how that's supposed to work.

But it comes with a low, low price of

free, which is pretty nice for our way of

working with things.

Like Multiplay was just me in my spare

time being like, okay, there's gotta be a

way to do this better.

And some of the lighting effects that we

did in midsummer were me building-- And

the lights went out in the house.

Building controllers and stuff like that.

That was so cool.

It was like, okay, there has to be a way

to do this, but that's not an aspect that

Jennifer's really great at.

And I like to make weird

stuff so it works out, though.

And I see I feel the same way about that

stuff, the way you feel

about the direction analysis.

As I'm just like, so I said during

midsummer, I would like the lights in the

house to go off in rows

and go, dog, dog, dog, dog.

Like it's scary and terrifying and the

end of it, the dark at the end.

And it really wasn't.

The audience was looking around like

what's happening, when

it's already happening.

But I didn't know how

to make that happen.

I just made those noises at

Brent and he was like, okay.

And then he made that work.

So production analysis

is great and I love it.

It's my best friend.

But then these other things like the

sound stuff and whatever, I

don't have to worry about that.

And I wouldn't, I think we try more

technically advanced things because

that's something that you are better at

than me and I can just be like, here.

That's why you get your own color on the

production analysis.

Called orange, Brent's problem.

Oh, I like orange.

Good, because that's your color.

Michaela's head's over.

(Laughing)

I would know that if I overlooked that

the production analysis.

Too scary for you.

And like you said in the production

analysis, it turns up

green and that means it's done.

But then wait, where is it?

Where is that at?

Like where,

okay, we did that and it's somewhere.

But I'm so I know that at different times

we've made prop boxes and

we've collected props in those.

Like we've made prop tables.

We almost always have props here.

Right, and costume bags are good.

But then sometimes it's like, listen, I

just need to see every

different picnic hat or whatever.

And we pull that stuff out and we kind of

look at it and then we go,

okay, this is the one we want.

And then we try to

funnel it into a costume bag.

What is a picnic hat?

I was thinking the big,

floofy ones, like a shade hats.

Like a summer hat, like a straw hat.

But that's also it sometimes too.

Like the other day you told some of our

older kids, I need you to

go find me a pirate hat.

And they vanished off and came back with

a tricorner hat, which was not a pirate

hat, but could be a pirate hat.

It's a pirate hat they could fit.

And so sometimes it's not about what it

is, it's about what it feels like it is.

Or what you can convince

the audience that it is.

Right, exactly.

Is it a bed sheet or is it a tote?

Right.

And one thing that she was talking about,

you should buy a ghillie suit.

Yeah, those have been very useful.

Ghillie suits turn

into mossy covered rocks.

They turn into ways to hide places that

actors go in and out.

And there's not even the suits, like we

have a couple suits that we're used to,

but just the ghillie material, which is

the stuff that I didn't know, let's call

this, it's the stuff that like hunters

might use to cover over a blind, if

they're making a duck blind or something

like that or a deer stand.

So it kind of blends in with the shrub

where you said the

woodland creatures don't see them.

And that stuff is infinitely,

yeah, I mean, that's good money.

That was a good way to do it.

Any kind of greenery, man, you can just--

Well, because you can instantly make

something look like it's

been there for a long time.

Yeah.

You know, we've hyper-machayed a cave

onto the front of one

of our rolly houses.

Thumper did that, Thumper

came and helped us do that.

And then threw ghillie suit or ghillie

material over it and ta-da, a super old

cave that's been there forever.

Yeah.

So there's a lot of stuff like that.

But so having the staples, that's one of

the things that Jennifer's good at in the

production analysis is that when she

decomposes things down into their smaller

parts, she'll be like, "Oh, yeah, I can

make this out of that

because I know we have that."

And so there's a lot of stuff that when

the production analysis is being built,

she can just be like, "Yeah, that's

already done, that's already done, that's

already done, that's already done.

I know we have these chairs, I know we

have these tables, I know we have the

screen area, I know we have this thing."

And basically we just have to send the

kids in there and be like, "Hey, go find

these various things and--

Benches, we use those benches.

They're benches.

Yeah, yeah, you have to

be careful with that one.

But that's from 20

years of building up stuff.

So if you're just getting started, you're

gonna have to do a lot more

borrowing from other places.

But think about stairs, like we've had

the same, we've got two set

stairs that are as old as Ian.

And the tall set piece, the two-story one

and those two long walls, we've had those

for more than a decade.

So if you come into a space that

somebody's already started, you wanna

take time to go through

and inventory what they have.

Because there's no list on paper.

I know there are theater programs, I've

read about this, where they barcode

everything and catalog everything.

I don't know that would do me any good.

Because we still have to

figure out where the thing is.

So to go back, I think that is a thing

that Jennifer does really well, where she

is able to nudge the production analysis

into a direction because she knows, well,

these are things that we already have and

so I can use that and use

that to make this other thing.

And she's talking about, she was talking

about props and set pieces that we have

that have been around for 10

years, just as on the side.

Some of our set pieces,

if you took a knife and

scored the paint on them,

there's easily 10 to 15 to 20 to 30

layers of paint on the set.

Because everything gets repainted almost

every show if it's in a show.

No, here's a pro tip.

If you go to Lowe's, this may be true of

other home improvement places, but our

school has a, we can use purchase orders

at Lowe's so I shop there quite a bit.

And there's always a kid from drama who

works there, it seems like, or used to be

in drama, is they have a big shelf near

the paint section of paint that nobody,

that somebody ordered and decided they

didn't want or whatever.

And I mean, one time I

bought 20 gallons of white paint.

We've been using that stuff for years

because you can use it to

mix other things or whatever.

It was supposed to be like for Arkinlots,

I think, or whatever,

but it doesn't matter.

Like you can use, because you're like,

what kind of paint, what

kind of paint do you want?

If I have a color, like what is the

cheapest paint it will sell me?

Literally, the quality of

the paint is immaterial.

I will use this for two months and then I

will cover some of this.

But yeah, you're right.

Like those houses probably weigh a good

five pounds more than they did when we

built them because of the layers of paint

that are on them and the spinning walls.

Yeah, so when we have one of those

Saturday rehearsals that she was talking

about, there'll be six kids show up and

the first thing you tell them to do is go

put different clothes on and then you

hand them whatever paintbrush they can

hold and you just start going, make that

black, make that brown, turn that green.

And they, we had one kid that just

painted their hand every time, but also

they painted the set.

And you get drop cloths, all the drop

cloths, which are old flat sheets,

because flat sheets are not useful on

beds, but very useful in theater.

So we have a lot of that kind of stuff.

Five kids with three inch house brushes

just literally sitting there repainting a

set that was brown, that was black, that

was brown, that was black, that was

brown, that was black, but we

needed to be brown this time.

And it's okay because it has to be

theater and because we have a proscenium

stage, the audience is not

close to the action at all.

There's an apron in front of them and

then four spaced in audience.

So you can go look up close to our

theater set pieces and be like, ah, this

little sketchy bit from the audience.

It looks just fine.

Like we may not have the most money in

the world and we have the most talented

people we know, but I mean,

are we all going to Broadway?

Clearly not, but we hold ourselves to

professional standards as much as we can

in terms of, we want to give

our audience the best show ever.

Not like, well, we're a bunch of kids out

here in the middle of nowhere, so it

doesn't matter if

this is any good or not.

We are doing our best to provide quality

entertainment to people.

And I think, I mean, I don't know, we're

the best theater, we're the best

educational theater

program in Evans & County.

So, that we know of.

That we know of, but surely

if there was another education.

What if there was like an

even more rogue underdog?

What if there was an even more, you know,

behind the scenes, even underground

educational theater?

They performed in the cave.

Yeah, like, I mean, we

just did not know about it.

(Upbeat Music)

But I digress, is a, We Snatched.

Production.