Pippin – Week 5
This is the end of week 5 of the Pippin Production, and it’s been a really tough one.
Missing MDs
Rachel and I were both unavailable during Monday and Sunday as we were attending Stuart Morley’s International MD symposium. Well I was attending on Zoom, but still the event lasted a full 2 days. The director had a heads up on this and I tried to make sure that she’d be able to use the time productively given that they hadn’t done a whole lot of acting rehearsals, and that there were piano accompaniment tracks or audio references at least for every music cue in the show. Despite this, it seems as though they struggled to stay productive during these days. From Tuesday Rachel was able to be back in the room with them though and so was covering piano, although by this time there were a few other cast members having to isolate because of either positive COVID results or a ‘close contact’ ping.
Zooming Rehearsals
Another of the production shows currently in rehearsal has been struck by COVID too, and their director in fact was isolating. From day 1 of isolation he was running full-day rehearsals from online. All of their isolating cast members were involved too and the rehearsals by all account were still very effective.
In the Pippin camp, our team were unable to get Zoom up and running until day three of this week, and even then rehearsals were very segmented and somewhat disorganised. This was disappointing, although Rachel had the MD base covered.
Missing Sitzprobe
Isolating also meant that I missed the Siztprobe. This felt horrible, although it was broadcast through zoom because many of the cast members were isolating too. I met with Rachel (via Zoom) a couple of days prior so that I could talk her through how I’ve been conducting the Act 2 numbers, and when the session came around she did a really good job of running the show. I was just upset that I had another 8-hour Zoom session to focus on in stead of being able to join them all in the room. I did however try to take notes on how Rachel was conducting the Act 1 numbers so that I could get to work on practising those.
Sound Check
I was out of isolation yesterday and so was able to make it to the Sound Check with the band. It was great to be back behind the keyboard again and I was able to run a couple of the tunes that I wanted to clean up following what I heard in the Sitzprobe. We had our Avioms set up were starting to get levels. No MainStage setup yet though, or even Keys 2 (it’s still an upright piano at this point. The band were sounding good though and seemed to have a good idea of what they were doing.
Back In Rehearsals
Today was another day of rehearsals, and I found it a bit odd that we were re-doing some choreo that we’ve previously covered. I think that some lines had been changed or added in my absence and so perhaps decisions had been made about choreo too, but it seemed strange that we were re-doing parts prior to having covered every part of the show. I know that the other productions have been running their shows for a week or so now, and I’m worried that there are still parts that we seem to have not even looked at, especially given that we are into tech rehearsals next week.
I think this might be because of the creative approach that the team are taking – it seems a little disorganised and takes an awful long time. Perhaps though it leads to better results.