Pippin – Week 7
After the 7th week of the Pippin Production process I’m feeling a little down about it. We just got out of our first dress and it didn’t go perfectly…
The Week In Rehearsals
We were back in rehearsals following the tech process last week. Rachel and I met on Tuesday morning for a recap on how we are cueing through each Act, so I was happy to get some tempos locked in and some more cues annotated on my score.
As for rehearsals with the cast, we’ve spent pretty much the whole week again looking at Act 1 dances and re-choreographing and blocking sections within the first half of the show. Although it was good for me to start playing Act 1 more and get familiar with the part, the cue lines and the tempos, I was a little worried that we are still not paying much attention to Act 2. I didn’t get a chance to clean up any of the vocals that I wanted to recap with the cast, and I ended up hacking up underscore sections because we left such little time at the end of one day to figure out the finale sequence and the bows.
It was the end of Thursday before we actually ran the whole show in its entirety, although I really benefitted from doing this. I got a feel for how tempos transition from one cue to the next, the pacing in between songs, and the latest cue lines and visual cues. The process highlighted all of the parts that I am still not yet comfortable with, so I’m glad I was able to spend some time working at those before the dress run.
Working on Spoken Voice – On Wednesday afternoon we had a session with an actor, Eddy, who came in to talk to us about some ways to better utilise the spoken voice – projection, resonance, articulation and whatnot. We did some exercises and I learned a few techniques that I can take away to incorporate into my rehearsals/teaching going forward. I found this session really useful.
Dress Rehearsal
Today has been a long one. We spent a few hours on tech stuff this morning, which mostly consisted of re-blocking and relighting one of the dances from Act 1. Rachel played for this process. Then I had an hour with the band to cover all of the cues that they haven’t yet played as well as the newly cut finale sequence, bows and exit music. It was at this point I realised that I hadn’t yet played any of the Act 1 cues with the band. Of course I had been practising my conducting and playing, but actually doing it in the room brings new challenges – nerves for one. There was also this weird ‘Chinese Whisper’ effect that came having my conducting annotations for the first act created solely from talking through with Rachel, without my actually trialling cues with the band. Although I stuck to the notes, it seemed that the musicians were not always expecting the cues I was giving.
There were no train wrecks in Dress Rehearsal, but there sure were a few ropey moments. Afterwards, I feel responsible for a lot of these moments, even though there are a lot of elements that went into making it tricky for me to succeed:
- Missing A Band Call – One of our 3-hour band calls was cancelled due to the COVID situation, which meant that we had a third less time to practise cues with the band. This meant that on the day of dress there were cues that the musicians still had never played. In stead, I had an hour right before today’s rehearsal to go through those cues as well as the cuts that had been made since the last time I saw the band…a month ago.
- Time Between Band Calls/Rehearsal – We have altered a lot of the show in the past month – tempos have been tweaked, cuts have been made (including whole songs), timings and lines have been added/taken away. It was tough to have only an hour to talk through that month’s worth of changes with the band, and it didn’t leave enough time to ‘road test’ or play through them all. In my opinion it would’ve been much more useful to have the band calls scheduled for later in the production process.
- Missing Cues – I tried my best to be super clear with cueing, but I realised that our violinist had only been in half of a single band call, and so she was not up to speed on watching out for pickups etc. The guitarist also had a bit of trouble with the cues that were dependent on him and there were a few cues that other musicians did not have written in too, but all of these are issues that could’ve been ironed out if we’d just had a chance to run all the cues with the band once prior to the rehearsal.
- Monitor Mix – We did not do any kind of sound check with the singers and band prior to starting the Dress Run, so I spent much of the opening number adjusting levels in order to hear cue lines that progress us through the song. There are still a few issues with a limiter feature on the mixer too that seems to create issues/balances that I don’t want.
- A New Keyboard & Patch Changes – A new keyboard was delivered and set up a few days ago. Rachel spent some of her tech time this morning saving stock sounds ready for the Keys 1 patch changes – Harp, Hurdy Gurdy, Rhodes, etc. My first look at these elements was right before the rehearsal, and so the patches were being trialled on the gig. This was a mistake on my part as I was still getting used to the feel of the new keyboard and did not know how each patch would sound/respond. The sounds were not always appropriate.
- New Cue Lines/Visuals – There were a few lines and visual cues that occurred in the rehearsal tonight that I’d never heard or seen before. These are the effects of constantly making alterations and not running them through thoroughly with all involved. It’s annoying.
Pros/Cons Of Having Two MDs
This whole process has highlighted a few issues with having two MDs on a production…
- Shared Workload – The amount of hours involved in transposing over half the show score, as well as programming keyboard patches, might well have been overwhelming for me as a sole MD on this project. I’m really glad I’ve been able to share that tedious work with Rachel.
- The Chinese Whisper Effect – Because of limited time with the band, each MD is relying on the verbal notes regarding cueing songs/pickups and whatnot without actually seeing what the band are expecting from the MD, or even whether or not they are expecting it at all. If a cue is missed or wrong, is it the fault of one MD, the other MD, or the musician in question?
- Keeping On Top Of Constant Alterations – This is probably a problem that is quite specific to this production, but with things being altered constantly it is common for only one MD (the MD playing that particular rehearsal) to get these changes solidified or pencilled in. Then it’s the old Chinese Whisper again of what has been changed and how. Commonly though, that same change will be further altered by the time the other MD plays that cue. It’s crazy!
Self-Reflection – Was It Really As Bad As You Thought?
All that being said, my overriding negative feeling through all of this comes from the fact that I do not yet have the ability to adapt and perform as well as I want to (perfectly) amid all of these hurdles and curveballs. It is frustration at myself, because I know that these are exactly the kinds of hurdles and curveballs that will crop up on any production.
Trying to consider objectively, I think that 75% of my work in the Dress Rehearsal tonight was good work and went well. So why is it so easy to focus on the ropey 25%? Why is my ‘go-to’ to start placing blame on others and to consider all of the elements that stopped me performing perfectly? In stead, shouldn’t I maybe take a little time to be kind about the things that I did well?
I keep in mind that one of my goals for this year is to be kind to myself and to avoid getting too upset about not being able to do all of these things perfectly first time around. I realise that right now I am a student and that this year is for learning and making mistakes, but it is even more tricky to be self-forgiving when it feels as though our mistakes also have an impact on many others (musicians, performers, creatives etc.).