(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)