The End

I cannot believe it's over. Just wow!

I am amazingly blown away by how well everything came together, here are my thoughts on the different nights;

Night One

As an Actor: 

things were hectic, we had had an actor fall ill and were rushing to have a replacement learn the lines. but other than that things went well, befor the curtain opened. Once the curtain opened we were fine, a couple of time actors forgot their lines, myself included, but we improvised and moved along, it was a good night to get out the jitters, as the theater was only half full.

As a Stage Manager: 

things were uncertain, we hadn't shown the lights to the directors yet and most of our crucial staff had never done that job before. but we just hoped for the best. As the show went on, things got better, though because the sound and lights were on the same circuit, the lights started to flicker and we recieved a slight static in the sound devices.  the night went well and we closed curtain like a charm.

Night Two:

As an Actor: 

again we had the same member sick, but his replacement from the night before was ready and we stayed play on. Right before the play began, I carried on my tradition of standing in the middle of the stage and saying "MacBeth". the curtain opened, no one forgot their lines and the night went awesomely. 

As a Stage Manager:

After my ritual of saying MacBeth on stage, we brought the lights up and the show began. We had worked out the light and sound issue from the previous night out and the night went swimmingly. It was perfect, we fluctuated lights with the music, used different colors to set the mood and most importantly, made the scenes transition perfectly.

All in all I'm happy we succeeded and that I was able to provide a key role. Next year should be even better!

Reflection, ZER0 H0UR

The final moment approaches. 3 days until final performance.

Personal:

Right now I am feeling a mixture of Dread and Excitment. The Dread that we arent prepared and all this work will go terribly wrong. And the Excitement that this will go amazingly and that we will finally perform. We have put so much time, effort and money into this project, i would be so sad if it went wrong. But in my experience of theater, no matter what happens on stage, the performance always ends with applause and smiles. I know on performance night I will be smiling and happy that this work and emotion has all come to a finish.

Proffessionally:

I am stressed. I do not believe we are anywhere near ready. We haven't done a single, continuous no stop, run through with full costume or makeup. This all seems very dependent on luck.
Lights, they haven't even arrived yet, which means i have one day to set up lights and make sure they work. I will finish the task, but i do not know if it will be up to my personal standards.
The cast is way behind on learning its lines...... as am I, but only time will tell if all our efforts are worth it.

Final Thought:

Where did the time go.....

Refleciton

Again I have fallen behind on my drama reflections. 

The play is coming along well, but a bit stressed. Yesterday I learned that the play last year had been done within a similar time frame, which raised my confidence slightly. Our Director, Collette has been working fantastically and so has Jessica and Malika. Other members of the group are starting to fall behind and I am beginning to feel that they are letting us down on their commitment.

Stage Manager Wise, I continue to conference with Mr. Lawrence about the technical aspect of the play (which makes me very happy, considering that is the aspect that interests me most about play productions at this time.). We have worked out basic set movement (how the set will be changed throughout the play) and some basics for the lighting. We have been given ten park end lights (which honestly is a terrible set of equipment but none the less a set of lights J ) and using those we will arrange thema round the stage so that different levels can create different textures and meanings. Also I have been participating in the blocking of the play (the stage movement) and am really excited about production day coming along, though I still hold the belief this will either go really well or really bad.

I am looking forward to the technical rehearsals coming up, and most of all looking forward to checking another item off of my to do list.

Reflection

Dream On, is no longer Dream On

We have changed the name of the show to, "That 70's Show"

This is inpart due to our 70's theme, as well as the fact that we have replaced almost every song with 70's hits and classics.
The main reason for this is our time constraint. the sad fact is that we do not have enough time to do a full production, so we have cut out almost all the singing and will be adlibing to the hits. Yes this does cut away fromt he actors glory, but improves the production on a whole, which is what I have to be worried about.

Stage Manager,
As stage manager I have started to mess aorund with the lighting and have created a rough draft of the lighting angles I will need to achieve. Tomorrow I will confer with mr lawrence and see what his opinion is. Also Me and Jed (props manager) have been working together to get a scroll prop together. Tomorrow i will go through the props list with him and double check everything is in place.

Hopefully soon I will be able to choreograph the tango scene, between theseus and hippolyta. But theseus is out of town for visa purposes. Hopefully he will be abck soon.

Now I feel a small measure of control over the play, and think we are heading in the right direction.

Dream On

As I have learned that documenting what I do during Dream On will help me prepare for future assignemtents, I will start recording day to day what I have done for Dream On.

So far I have been Helping Mr Espinosa with the blocking, as well as helping organise the actors and on top of all that, playing my role as Egeus.

As a Stage Manager, I am participating in my duties as an organizer of the cast ( making sure everyone is where they are supposed to be) brain storming with the director about stage ideas and props. As well as making sure actors are properly preparing for their roles.

Dream On Auditions, Day One

On Friday we had our first Dream On auditions. We will have the second and third installment Monday and Tuesday Respectively. Hopefully we will be able to receive all the candidates by then.
I personally had my doubts about filling our required roles, as the play requires about 35 different actors. But i was sorely mistaken when the line started to form outside.
The days before the auditions I created a series of posters to advertise the auditions, it seems they did soem good ( they are attached below).
Though we were only able to receive about 5-6 auditions, I think we have found our Helena, in an grade 10 student named Sam, she has that pretentious tone of Helena and that voice of authority. Perhaps we will find someone more suited later on.
I was very pleased with the auditions  and the enthusiasm candidates displayed. I am looking forward to the plays in the future.

As per ways we could improve the audition process, I must admit that there was a bt of a pile up at the end, but as long as people come earlier, that can be avoided. Also the audition process would smoothen alot if we had more copies of the trial script, I will make sure we have more today. I am excited for auditions and hope we find some awesome talent hiding in our school.

Some Notes For Lighting

I took the first seminar of my Lighting Course, on Saturday, 2nd of March 2013.

Being the amazing wizard I am, I left my notes on the course in the theater.
I talked to many of the course attendees and i asked about the role of stage manager and what it entails.
A general opinion was;
-Make's sure that actors are healthy, mentally and pyshically
-Make sure prop manager has everything they need
-Make sure really everyone has what they need
-Make sure actors have transportation
-Keep a buffer between the world and the director

This really redefines my expectations of a stage manager. In all the productions i had done before the director had done all of this. Well these roles are essential tot he smooth running fo the production and they seem well within my realm of ability.

We Found: Dream On

On Friday we were given a choice on doing a musical or a play. As a group we chose the musical, Dream On. It's an adaptation of Shakespeare's Midsummer Dream. The class has a number of backstage roles as well as on stage roles to fill. At the initial meeting I volunteered for the role of Stage Manager. I have not done that much backstage work and I am extremely interested in it. Hopefully I can take a stage roll as well. hopefully not a main singing role or a solo. Maybe one of the carpenters. I am vey excited by the play and am looking forward to it.