Week 20: Crane Pains
August 21, 2012
16 March 2012
This week has been much like the hundreds of Indian weddings I've attended. It's chaos as the preparations come together. Everyone has doubts whether it will actually happen. And then, the minute the lights go on, and the band starts to play, all the pieces fall into place, and everyone has a damn good time.
Director David Farr warned us technical rehearsals for The Comedy of Errors would not be as easy as they had been for Twelfth Night. He was right.
The show that we have created, with Nizar Zuabi at the helm, requires technical precision at every turn.
The main reason for this is that numerous entrances and exits require the use of an automated crane. The crane weighs more than a tonne and has been attached to the roof of the building for support.
This crane is loaded with items and people of different sizes behind the set, which are then maneuvered onto stage from above. The setting for our production of The Comedy of Errors is a Mediterranean Port; the presence of the crane, and the countless oil barrels that also litter the set, is meant to place all the action in and near the docks.
The crane is loaded with set, props, and members of the cast behind the stage, which are then maneuvered onto stage from above. This means the crane is mostly used in transitions between scenes. Some of these transitions are simple. For example: a pair of guards escort Egeon across stage as if they are taking him door to door to find someone to pay his ransom. Some of these transitions are much more complicated — a human-sized birdhouse is lifted off stage with the crane, while five actors roll on five oil drums that Antipholus of Syracuse body surfs, while five musicians play a complex score and walk across stage.
Each of these transitions takes time in the technical rehearsal, and some of them take more time than scenes written in the play.
Initially, we had been told that the crane would be loaded with items from both the upstage and downstage ends of the theatre. During the rehearsal period, the building team discovered that this would be impossible; the crane could only be loaded upstage. The crane is so central to the production, and changing blocking to a single direction of goods loading was so challenging, that in-house the stage was disparagingly named 'Cranegate.'
An hour before our first performance, I was approached by Costume Supervisor Hannah Lynnly Lobelson, who said a last-minute costume change had been made for the Messenger, my speaking part in the play.
'Now the melancholy god protect thee, and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal.'
(Twelfth Night. II. iv. 73-75.)
Until the afternoon's dress rehearsal, I had worn a neutral outfit for the Messenger, which didn't specify his profession. Hannah told me the Messenger would now be dressed as a fishmonger.
If it sounds random to you, imagine my bemusement. I had to pull this off, and the performance was in an hour!
I couldn't find Nizar to seek an explanation before the show (the aforementioned chaos reigned), but Assistant Director James Farrell told me that the character needed to seem like he was a recurring part of the story, instead of just appearing for the first and only time in the final act, as he does in the text of the play. The fishmonger's is a costume I wear in the complex barrel-rolling transition I've just mentioned.
So, I reassessed the character, and went on in the show with this newfound wardrobe, without rehearsing the character anew.
Guess what? It worked.
The change of costume gave my character a back-story embedded in the narrative of the production (if not the text), and a familiarity with the other characters in the play that heightened the credibility of his message.
by Ankur Bahl
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