Patience

It's now almost two weeks since we closed, and funny to think that until then Patience was taking up many of my waking hours.

On Halloween we put in the set, ie. built a castle.

We began at the set shop at 9am, and spent an hour and a half or so loading things into the truck: 14 heavy platforms (we had far more than 14 last time because the stage setup was distinctly different), many flats for the background and a large assortment of other items. We walked over to the student centre and spent another hour or so unloading the truck and carrying all the same items into our space. I then joined Team Kelsey to put together the platforms (a few heavy, but mostly smaller and hence lighter), to make the bulk of the stage. Around lunchtime the larger platforms were complete, so immediately after lunch we turned them upside down (well, turned them right side up because we had been working on them upside down because that is how we can attach them together and attach the legs) and put them in position to form our stage. There is a great feeling of achievement in this part of the job: as lunch finished, there was no stage, then in ten minutes there was a stage!

It was then time to put up the walls (I'm not describing all jobs, just those in which I participated). John H and I and whoever happened to be around and could help (Arkajit, Rachel, John D…) put up the walls around the round towers. That took quite some effort: we had a thin, flexible piece of wood and had to bend it to form part of the curved surface of a cylinder. We stapled it to the floor of the top of the tower (which I guess is the same thing as the roof of the bottom of the tower, although underneath the tower is not visible and is full of wood to brace the towers so they are safe to stand on - one will be stood frequently during the show, the other is just decorative), lined it up so that it was vertical, though with a curved shape in the horizontal direction, stapled the bottom to some blocks and screwed them to the floor, positioned appropriately. This took quite some time, but it turned out very nicely. Where the pieces joined was not exactly rounded as we might have liked, but it was certainly close enough for our purposes.

This and some taping of joins took us approximately to 5pm, at which time the cast (well, those who turned up at 9am) was released. For The Mikado, I left at this point, but last time and this time I decided to hang around. I had no other plans for the evening and I like working on the set. It is a large change from my usual activities, and very pleasant to be working with others to achieve such a tangible goal. I worked with various others (Kelsey, Dan, John H…) on the back walls, which are nice and flat. Note that flat means planar, not that their plane is perpendicular to the viewing direction! A couple were perpendicular along the back wall, but others were not. This actually caused a problem, because the plans for the set included a right angled triangle with sides of 3, 3 and 5 feet. If you're feeling sharp, you'll notice that if a right angled triangle has one side 3 feet long and a hypotenuse of 5 feet, the other side is not 3 feet long! We got around this by making the upstage left corner, which was meant to be perpendicular to the viewing direction, come forward on the outside. Some more finesse was needed for the upstage end of the stage left wall, but in the end they fit together nicely (we ended up subtracting a piece). We spent quite some time using oddly angled dexion twerps to fix oddly angled and very tall (our performance space takes up two stories, and although they were not literally touching the ceiling they were brushing things hanging from the ceiling) flats to each other so that they would stay solid.

This done, things were winding down, so Kelsey and I helped Ethan, who was working on the poster. We put that up in the student centre, and it was time to head home, around midnight.

Prod week went quite well. By the time it was ending, I felt that we had reached the stage of too many rehearsals and losing energy, rather than too few and forgetting bits and pieces. It was nice to be in costume: as a dragoon, I had a tall helmet with a tail, and it did tend to move around a bit until I straightened it out (though the director sort of liked the way it was getting in front of my character's face).

Opening night came and I had a great time and thought we put on a good show. Unfortunately I thought the level of excitement in the crowd was a little short of what I hoped for. As I mentioned to Mum on Skype after I arrived home, it felt like we were having much more fun than our audience. Fortunately the audience was distinctly better the next two days.

Thursday evening was free for MIT students, and we did have many of them: a much larger turnout than usual. That was good, as it also took the Thursday performance from one of our smallest crowds to one of the largest. They were the most responsive crowd we've ever had.

There is a very funny scene between Bunthorne (an aesthetic poet, somewhat like Oscar Wilde) and Patience (the village milkmaid, who he loves even though she's the only woman in the village not in love with him). He is just so obviously offputting, and she is rather quiet and scared. Our actors did it very well, and it got laughs all through, almost to the point where they were disrupting the flow, and applause when Bunthorne exited. Grosvenor (a more appealing aesthetic poet)'s entrance and interaction with Patience also got a lot of response.

If anything, the second act was even better. A little over halfway through, I (as the Major) enter with two of my fellow dragoons, dressed up as poets in an effort to impress the ladies. Our entrance in rather unusual costumes always got some laughs. During the song, we made aesthetic poses, and on this occasion they received enough laughs to make it hard to hear the orchestra and stay in time and in tune. That was very pleasing, and I think that though that trio might have been one of the musically weaker spots of the show, it was one of the comedic strengths and so averaged to a highlight.

Our dialogue following that was also popular. I had been struggling for a while trying to work out an effective way of saying "I wonder what the inner brotherhood recommend for cramp?", but I think I hit on it then and got substantial laughs from that point on. I think things actually got better from there, but you'll have to wait for the DVD...

Friday and Saturday had almost as good crowds. After the second weekend, I began to feel that although each of my G&S shows has been more fun than the list, I really don't see how I could top Patience!

Strike went extremely quickly: we finished slightly after 9, rather than slightly after 12 as is more usual. The party didn't start for a while (even in an optimistic mood, the producer hadn't booked the room until 11!), but it was good fun and we gave our producer, directors and stage manager their gifts (some blue and white pottery and books of poetry, relevant to the play, and a llama dressed up as a dragoon, because when someone is absent from a rehearsal they are represented by a drama llama made by someone else's hand).

And on Sunday, we rested!