The Friday before, my head was ready to explode. I'd been present at 98% of the fittings, had then turned all that information into notes & from the notes, drawn up the plots. The final hurdle after three days of typing to make sure every individual change for each of the twenty-four was rendering me cross-eyed & unable to see what was on paper in front of me. Plus having had the cast swap around with characters, trying to keep track of who was who & where now ... but we got there.
I'd also discovered VaRep's way of working. The Ensemble do their own pre-sets. We were only to pre-set for the principals. I had a minor fit at Lauren, who's been released from Paint to be my second dresser. Uh-oh.
For K&I, I pre-set for every single female's change; total control. My head was saying, but these are Actors! Can we trust them? Will they do it? What happens if they don't?! Will it be my fault if they've forgotten & they've nothing to wear? Eeek.
I have only one pair of hands so Marcia became my temporary double in First Dress to provide me with a second pair & oversee the QCs. Likewise Sarah worked alongside Lauren to help her along the way & learn which actor was which.
We'd had our meeting & had designated places to change to the cast. That all sort of got overturned as the cast know their own timings for off-stage & back on better than anyone. What exists in theory on paper.... So places were switched about, from SL to SR and vice-versa. People turning up in Quick Change when you least expect them, which more than once begged the question of, 'why are you here?!'
So there was some chaos & some carnage as we encountered the real-time timings of costume changes alongside set changes and the orchestra's music. But the Rep has a magic word for those moments. "Hold!" And we pause, locate the problem, redress the problem & make it work faster. Sometimes the QC a few feet away was still too far so a change was moved to between the Blacks just off-stage as change times were that brief; literally a few beats & back on. But each time we held for a costume change, by the second time we ran, it then worked faster. Success.
Tech & Orchestra took a while longer to fix some of theirs. When it came to the musical number 'Keep It Gay', we held. (In fact, we kept it gay for a really long time. By the end, we were so gay, if not probably actually gayer than Gay.)
But the most remarkable element for me was how the actors became [wordy moment alert!] paraclete. One of my favourite Greek words, it means "to get alongside" & help out, partner up. That's exactly what they did. Like Elliot said, 'paying it forward'. By Act II, the two leads tend to exit, change & re-enter together. Hence when I was already changing our lead guy, Jason, one of the spare guys would step in to dress Scotty for me.
I began to see how practices which appeared unconventional to me (or my backstage experiences to date) can also pay off. And the pre-sets? They worked. Credit where credit is due, this is a pretty well-organised cast. They know the system. They remember.
When it became busier in Act II, I took back control of my QC room at Stage Left, allotting space to the six or seven people trying to change within. It works; we've got a routine going now. No more clambering on top of each other to reach the rack & unhanger their costume. The costumes are already hung on pegs & ready to go.
I made a cameo appearance in the Third Dress, much to the delight of Wendy and Patti (Dir.) and Emily-Above. There's a wig which comes off SL & needs to re-enter SR. But ahead of the show-within-a-show of "Springtime..", we also lose the Crossover onstage. (There's no way to get from one side to the other without being seen.) I went behind the flat to reach Joel on his ladder holding the flat up. Joel suggested I chuck it. I went for the overhand throw. The wig soared .... and plopped down, in the visible gap of the 'open door', centre stage. I stomped mid-stage & lobbed it grumpily to SR. Oh how they all laughed! Grr.
But we've got a system going now! I throw it across the floor to Joel. Joel throws it over the open door to Tommy. Tommy throws it SR to Lauren. After the show, the wig gets a rigorous tidy .... The ridiculousness of Theatre.
A week in, it feels like we've been running this for months already. I've already got my dresser's plot pretty much memorised & the changes are choreographed & worked out. Jason has re-settled into the role & is much calmer to work with. The track-backs (when an item goes on stage & you need to collect it to re-set for later use) have been figured out. Things have stopped vanishing on me because I know where they end up now!
I spent two dress rehearsals chasing three hats around backstage. Jason would exit SR wearing his hat to change at the same time as the office set was moved forward to open the scene, requiring a prop hat to already be hanging for his re-entrance as 'asleep in the office'. These are things we have figured out now! There are ways & there are means for that sort of illusion & an extra-special Hat Tracking spreadsheet can work wonders. Costume Geekery.
It's times like this - when the show runs smoothly, when the changes happen with time to spare and I remember how much I actually enjoy dressing; the whole interaction between cast & crew.
I still don't think Producers is a two dresser show
but it's a show which can run on two dressers
~ along with a bunch of helping hands.
but it's a show which can run on two dressers
~ along with a bunch of helping hands.
________
Some words acquired & shared:
Vom. A theatre word. I'm sticking with "passageway" because...
Vomitorium:
A passage situated below or behind a tier of seats in an amphitheatre.
Derives from the verb vomeo, vomere, vomitum, "to spew forth."
Lovely.
Words shared: Pinny. Flagging. Squiffy. Cooker.
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