Message on my inbox…
You are invited to A Sneak Peek of CLOSER THAN EVER
Attend a working rehearsal with director, Leigh Barrett and cast members from CLOSER THAN EVER. Get an exclusive look at the production and engage with the cast and director in a brief Q&A session.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27 AT 6:30PM
ARSENAL CENTER FOR THE ARTS
3RD FLOOR REHEARSAL HALL
This sounds like a cool idea. The email invitation says:
About CLOSER THAN EVER
Each song is a story in Richard Maltby, Jr. and David Shire's CLOSER THAN EVER, winner of the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical. Twenty-four wise and witty "songs of experience," based largely on true stories, intertwine insightful tales about love, security, happiness, and self-definition in an ever-changing world. Universal experiences and truths are uncovered through charming melodies and smartly-crafted lyrics. Called "one of the half-dozen finest American theater scores of the last decade" by The New York Times.
I’m not a fan of musicals but this looks like a good deal.
About INSIDER EXPERIENCES
New Rep invites our audience members to go behind the scenes as we develop our productions. Our INSIDER EXPERIENCES allow unique glimpses into the rehearsal, design, and technical processes. Attendees become familiar with the New Rep staff, each production's company of actors, director, and designers, and learn about the theatrical process with fellow theatre enthusiasts. All are welcome.
So this is how they make the sausage. By the time I climb to the third floor at 6:30 PM, it feels like I’m in the factory. No AC and the space at the top of the building is stuffy and overheated. We’re sitting in three long rows of chairs behind 8-foot floor to ceiling glass panels opening into a long rectangular rehearsal room. The only way to hear what’s going on inside is through the two doors at each end of the room, maybe 30 feet apart. The upside is that if you’re sitting near one of the doors at each end of the room, an invisible wave of air-conditioned air cools a small area next to it. Most of us are too far away to get relief. But we’re interested.
We literally have a backstage view of the production. The four actors are sitting at a table together with their backs to us are facing in the direction of what will be an audience in two weeks.
Bridget O’Leary, Associate Artistic Director of the New Rep Theatre, welcomes us warmly. “People are hungry for this kind of experience.” She says. “When we first offered, about ten people responded. As we continued, we’ve had as many as 45 people at these sneak peeks.” Theaters are pro-actively wooing their audiences. Post show talks with actors and directors are becoming common. Now The New Rep is offering “sneak peeks” at pre-production activities.
A few feet away in the rehearsal room, the cast, attired in shorts, T-shirts, jeans, is rehearsing a few of the 24 songs in the production. This is the second of what will be three weeks of rehearsal.
Leigh Barrett, one of the four actors and the show’s director steps out of the rehearsal room. “We’ve been rehearsing a week. We’re working on 13 songs, how to stage them, what the actor’s movements are going to be, and practicing delivering the lyrics.”
As the actors sing their songs, Leigh, back inside, watches while wearing her Director’s hat. During one of the show’s big songs, “Dating Again,” Leigh asks the other three actors to try different ways to present their songs (“Can you try singing that note a little higher at the end?”) The piano player, who will be on stage, is a few feet from us on his side of the partition, replays the song, Leigh and actors go back and forth as the song gets shaped.
A few minutes later, a couple rehearses an intense song about the trials of marriage, one that anyone who’s been in a relationship can relate to. “May I suggest something about your timing with this song, can we have more of this note,” Leigh asks one of the two and scribbles notes to herself.
The actors, including Leigh, work the Dating Again scene several times to refine the choreography, standing, sitting, singing to each other in pairs. Some have memorized their songs, others glance at their songbooks. I can feel a camaraderie beginning to gel as they concentrate on tiny details of pitch, harmony, and timing and talk between themselves. I notice I’m tapping my feet now.
At one end of the rehearsal room, the stage manager and assistant stage manager sit at a table crammed with markers, coffee, snacks, Kleenex, and crackers. They’re are typing notes on laptops and taking videos.
The cast will rehearse on stage next week. They’ll take about ten hours of “tech” time to set up lights and microphones, costumes, shoes (they begin wearing them right away, break them in before the show, Bridget tells us). Photos for press will be taken at that point.
Our allotted thirty minutes flies by. Bridget escorts us down to the Mosessian Theater to finish the experience with a brief Q and A. By coincidence, the two men in charge of building the set have just begun to build it. I’ll bet a “sneak peek” at the set building process would be a draw to many theater-goers.
By 7:30 PM, Bridget, who’s answered questions ranging from production budgets to artistic vision, thanks us for being theater advocates and wishes us good night.
Interesting factoid from this session: once the show has begun, the director can no longer change an actor’s lines. If a director wants to do that, he/she must write a note to stage manager, who gives it to the actor, who can follow or decline. (Facts like this are terrific insights, just the kind of information I hoped to learn tonight.)
Notes to Bridget: The sneak peak concept is great. Here are a few suggestions for the first 30 minutes outside the rehearsal room from a grateful member of that audience of about 20 people.
Your comments are nuggets that give us a framework to understand what we’re witnessing. It was nearly impossible for me to hear you unless you were standing at my end of the rows. Sound is muffled in that space and if you speak too loudly it will pass through one of those two doors at each end and interfere with the actors at work. It was frustrating to miss a bunch of what you or Leigh said when you spoke from the other end of the rows of chairs. Please find a better way for us to hear what you and directors/actors say to us as we sit outside the rehearsal room. And please figure out a way for us on the other side of the partition to hear what’s going on inside the rehearsal room.
This would make the sneak peak a smashing and informative theater experience.
Closer Than Ever
Presented by The New Rep Theatre
The Charles Mosesian Theater
Arsenal Street, Watertown, MA
September 6 – September 28, 2014
Music by David Shire
Lyrics by Richard Maltby Jr.
Directed by Leigh Barrett
Musical Direction by Jim Rice
Photo by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. with permission of New Rep
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