Leo days 13-17, November 16-21

Tumbling gemstones.

It's always so satisfying seeing the various elements come together. Though it can be quite the challenge getting all the jigsaw pieces to fit together. Particularly with a show like Leo, where there are well over a hundred sound and light cues to support and join the many quick scenes and solo speeches. (Is this one a true soliloquy, or who is Leo talking to?)

Thursday we finish building light cues, set sound levels, and spend the afternoon with all designers and actors finally together, assembling the pieces late into the night. Then, as crafted as each moment--and particularly each transition (always tricky those transitions)--is, it seems that from Friday on we're mostly consumed with tweaking and adjusting and reworking the moments of change. Micheline keeps a careful eye on the actors too. (Though of course it shouldn't happen, I've seen productions where the actors' work virtually halted and in worst cases regressed when we get to tech week. Thankfully that isn't the case with this production!) It's a war on two fronts, running the show afternoons and evenings followed each time with one set of notes to tweak the sound and light cues, followed by another set of notes for the actors.

As the pace picks up, it gets trickier as assistant director to contribute in a timely way without getting in the way of the designers and directors vision and their quick collaboration as veterans who have established ways of working together and no time to waste. As for the actors, there seems only room and time for a single source of notes to integrate into the runs or one single precious hour per day when the actors can work on stage with tech other than the runs. I do get to see my observations addressed, but through the discrete mechanism of midnight emails summarizing my thoughts, read by Micheline the following morning and the relevant points addressed either at the top of the afternoon or after she's had a chance to see a run and decide if she agrees with my conclusions.

While the foundation is very strong, Micheline and the designers keep changing as much as they dare for as long as they dare. New sound and light cues are added, existing cues are re-shaped, actor blocking is altered. But essential ideas are unchanged--we've done our homework, no need and no time for second-guessing!--and as the days go by, the nature of changes get narrower and tech notes in particular take less and less time. I'm reminded of gemstones in a tumbler, gradually loosing their hard edges and being transformed through repetitive motion into smooth, shining, brilliance.

We aren't quite brilliant yet. It's always terrifically difficult to generate the final polish of a show without the one last, most important jigsaw puzzle piece: the audience. It's now 7:30 and the audience of the first preview performance has JUST been let in as I type this sentence (ah, the joys of laptops with wireless internet access!).

Perhaps it's not a jigsaw. Perhaps it isn't gemstones. Perhaps it's Frankenstein's monster.

Hopefully it'll be a little better behaved. And a little more polished.