Tale #13: You Need To Make A Hand Signal

I have always been jealous of pit conductors. Their ability to lead a group of musicians to make beautiful sounds is a skill I so badly wish I possessed. I thought I would never get to experience the thrill of conducting a live orchestra. I can now say, I have semi-successfully conducted one number with a live orchestra.

Publicity is an extremely important factor in how successful your show will be. We always took advantage of as much local coverage as we could get for our productions. Backstage with Bruno is a local segment where Michael Bruno comes to your show’s dress rehearsal to interview actors and film a number. It airs as part of a popular 4pm news broadcast on Fridays. It’s always great for VACT when Bruno can come and do a segment because it is a great way to boost ticket sales.

For our 2018 production of A Christmas Story, he was able to come but only before our Wednesday dress rehearsal. This was the one dress rehearsal that our pit conductor was going to be late for.

Now, I can read a pit conductor’s score. I had taught myself for choreography purposes so that I could find YouTube tracks that matched our score to use for rehearsals. I have also conducted actors as the accompanist played in regular rehearsals if the pit conductor was unavailable. I understood the basic concepts and how to keep a number going.

Therefore, since Bruno could only come to film at that Wednesday dress rehearsal, I was going to conduct the orchestra.

I was the Choreographer but I was also in the show as a dancer, so I had to have my hair and makeup done in performance mode by the time Bruno came to film. I was wearing sweatpants, my show t-shirt, and my VACT jacket. I looked very “extra”.

We did all of the cast interviews first which ended up taking a while. Bruno likes to set each interview in a different space on the stage and incorporate different set pieces. It makes the footage look really good, but it can take a lot of time. Some of our actors started to get cranky. We would always warn the cast that the process can take a while but as the person facilitating the publicity, I definitely felt anxious about the cast getting crabby.

It was finally time to record the number. I had to run through the backstage area to go down the stairs to get into the pit to conduct.  I was a little frazzled as things were behind schedule and my nerves of conducting were causing my head to spin.

As I cut through the shop, the actor playing Father stopped me to ask why it was taking so long.

I snapped to him and said, “Hey!” Then I basically told him it will take what it takes so stop. I don’t remember the exact exchange word for word. Again, I was frazzled.

I ran down the stairs and went to the pit.

We did a number called “When You’re A Wimp” that was performed by a group of child performers for filming. So not only did I have to lead the orchestra, I had to keep a group of children on rhythm.

I stepped up onto the box and grabbed the baton. I opened the book to the number and got all of the musicians ready. There was just one part I had forgotten. This song had a vamp for the dialogue.

A vamp is a section of music that you can repeat until the actors on stage make it through the scripted dialogue within a song. I knew how to bring the actors out of the vamp but I didn’t know how to bring the musicians out of the vamp.

Seeing that I was panicking, the bassist leaned over and said, “you just need to give us a hand signal.” Ok hand signal, easy enough.

We began the number and things were going smoothly. The kids and musicians were following the tempo well. We arrived at the vamp. The kids finished up their dialogue and I needed to move on. I gave the kids a signal for four counts.

Now time for the hand signal. I went with a very frantic wave of my left arm to the pit to signal that we were moving on. Thankfully they got what I meant, and out of the vamp we went.

We got through the number decently well and I breathed a sigh of relief.

I turned around to look for Mama Terry (Director of A Christmas Story) only to see our actual pit conductor Brett sitting in the audience. We had gotten so far behind schedule with the interviews that he had actually made it in time for the number. He could have conducted the damn thing himself.

Brett is an exceptionally talented conductor who conducted his first show at age 18 with West Side Story. You know, a fairly easy introductory show to conduct.

He was decently impressed with my performance as a novice conductor. He then taught me how to properly get an orchestra out of a vamp.

How to bring the orchestra out of a vamp:
Step 1: Hold your non-baton-waving hand in a rock (aka a fist) for the vamp.
Step 2: Raise your pointer finger to show you just have one more time through.
Step 3: Open your palm and continue on through the score.

Rock. One. Wave. No overly-dramatic arm movements necessary.