Hell Week….
July 1st, 2008
Not sure how Tech week got the moniker Hell week, but it can be pretty much spot on as a description of what it can be like. There are literally thousands of details that have to do with mounting a show. The obvious ones are lights, costumes, sound, props, set, etc. These are no small task in and of themselves, especially when resources are tight as in the case of a new theatre company like the Mountain Shakespeare Festival.
The less obvious tasks and details involve the building of the shows and that final push to get ready for performance. This “invisible” work happens in living rooms, fields of sage and showers up and down the mountain, and now in Los Angeles and Bakersfield as well, as actors run their lines in what can be a somewhat desperate charge to the finish line.
At least in our modern world actors are now joined by millions on their blue tooth devices as those who walk around “talking to themselves.”
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4 Comments Add your own
1. Shannon Norris | July 2nd, 2008 at 10:54 pm
I can’t blog, I have to learn my lines…..
2. Julie Jordan Scott | July 3rd, 2008 at 8:47 am
I always like to think of Tech Week as Breakthrough Week… somehow, thinking of it that way (rather than Hell Week) makes it easier for me.
I am looking forward to seeing both shows….
3. poipau | July 5th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
I’ve got the home game.
We open 5 shows, rep style, in the next two weeks. You guys break a leg
4. David Stenstrom | July 9th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
The process of putting a show together is different for each actor. Here in Pine Mountain and the ‘Mountainshakes.org’, we are surrounded by mountains, Jeffrey pines, streams and quiet glens. Though there is much wildlife up here in Pine Mountain, I have, on occasion, seen the elusive, inward looking, yet entertaining Thespian, traipsing the hills and valleys, talking and gesticulating to him/herself with brows knitted and eyes fiery in concentration. The process of learning of a character’s reactions and finding the ins and outs of that character are wonderful, tedious, frightening and illuminating with the discovery of commonalities betwee character and actor so interesting and enlightening as to be otherworldly. I am entranced by the whole thing but, I wonder what the squirrels are saying about all of this?
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