Tale #38: Get Off The Floor

Whenever I feel a sense of panic or an overwhelming sense of stress coming on, I immediately lay down on the floor. I find it helps with calming my heart rate, collecting my thoughts, and essentially pulling myself together. This behavior used to be confined to the privacy of my home. However, as the shows I worked on at VACT got exponentially larger in scale, I started to do this in our theater and rehearsal spaces as well.

As a creative person, and the offspring of Mama Terry, I had huge ambition when it came to the shows I worked on. At twenty-two I said, “Hey! You know what I think we should do? Throw people in the air!” (See Bring It On the Musical 2016). It was either very trusting of the board or very foolish of the board to say, “sure twenty-two year old. Go do that.” At least it all worked out well. Very few people got hurt.

It was a couple of sprained ankles in case you were worried.

In Legally Blonde Jr. (Fall 2018) I wanted not one, but two live animals on stage amongst the cast of 121 children between the ages of 10 and 14. Thank you Mama Terry for making Miguel and Joey cooperate long enough to play Bruiser and Rufus.

A show I had dreamed of doing since I was a little kid, watching my VHS copy starring the greatest Batman Christian Bale as cowboy-wannabe Jack Kelly, was Disney’s Newsies. Growing up, I always said it should be a Broadway musical. When it first came to the stage, I made my mom and Aunt travel to New Jersey with me to see the original stage production at the Papermill Playhouse. When the rights for amateur theaters became available, I jumped on it. No…more like I clobbered it, smacked it over the head, and drug it back to the board of directors and said, “this is what I’d like to do now please.”

By that point, I had enough credits under my belt that I was trusted as a director. The powers that be at VACT approved my requests for large set purchases, costume purchases, and tech expenses because they knew I would use them well and they’d contribute to the show.

While that is an immense privilege at VACT to be in that position, it also applies a great amount of pressure, and here’s why:

What if the ridiculous thing you asked for that cost a lot of money, a lot of labor, a lot of time, and a lot of stress, doesn’t work out the way you think it will.

And we’re back to Newsies.

At age 25, I determined that if I was going to direct Newsies (the dream!) I was going to do it right.

For our April 2019 production, I wanted the full broadway experience complete with a scaffolding style set, a printing press, and flying drops. I wanted to reach the moon and people gave me the spaceship to get there.

As if out of a dream, in February of 2019, a very nice man named Brandon of Crystal Lake South High School emailed our Founder Dee asking to be connected with the director of Newsies. He had a set from their recent production he was looking to sell.

It.

Was.

Perfect.

Immediately I said yes I’d like that can we go get it now please.

So we agreed on a price and set up a date for pick up.

On a chilly Thursday afternoon, I had my teenage dance instructors cover my Verona Youth Dance classes, and myself, Mama Terry, Uncle Charlie, and Cousin Charlie Jr. drove to Crystal Lake, Illinois to get my set.

This set was absolutely massive. The director had done a great job of writing out instructions, labelling pieces, and making sure we’d be able to put the very expensive set we bought back together. His teens were able to help us load it up, however, five adults and a slew of teenagers does not make the strongest loading crew.

We spent almost three hours loading all of the pieces plus the two hour drive each way. It was a long afternoon. I owed my family big time. I’m pretty sure they considered leaving me in Crystal Lake. Luckily, we had a team of volunteers meet us at the building to help us unload the monstrosity.

Our show was rehearsing alongside four others in the building at the time: The Giver, Three Nanny Goats Gruff, The Aristocats KIDS, and 42nd Street YPE. This meant that my massive set had to be stored alongside these other four sets in a building that soon felt like it was closing in on itself.

The set included the flying wall pieces I wanted so that was checked off. I managed to find a Grosh backdrop in Condition: D for significantly cheaper than a drop in Condition: A which meant I could spring for the Newspaper Border and Digital Newsies Logo for the main curtain.

That just left the printing press.

I emailed a company that advertised owning a collection of printing presses. They forwarded my email to another woman who also owned a printing press but was much closer to Verona. She said she had an 8×12 Oldstyle Chandler & Price platen press that she’d be willing to let us use.

I was on cloud nine. All of the pieces were coming together.

Because we couldn’t rehearse with the fully built set in our rehearsal building, like physically couldn’t because the towers were too tall for our stage, I made a binder with stage diagrams for each scene. I used our PAC stage blueprint sheets and mapped out where each set piece would go on stage. I used colors to represent the pieces, wrote out the choreographed set changes and how they timed with the music, and wrote out which tech person was responsible for which piece. I accounted for wing space, stage space, and backstage space as well as the size of the set pieces as documented by the Crystal Lake South High School team. I put each sheet in a sheet protector so they wouldn’t get wrinkled or torn.

This was an exceptionally beautiful binder.

Fast forward to move-in day.

We had a stellar team of volunteers work on this Newsies set. We moved all of the pieces over to the High School Performing Arts Center on a Friday night and spent all morning Saturday assembling it. The printing press was delivered Saturday afternoon.

While the Printing Press was an absolute bitch to get into the high school, it was an unbelievably cool set piece. However, that’s a story in itself that we can save for another time.

By Saturday afternoon everything was assembled and the printing press had made it into the theater. The crew of volunteers had left and it was myself, Mama Terry, and Lighting Guy Steve left at the theater.

My mom had to run home to take care of her dogs, so she left Steve and I to get started on our spiking (the process in which you use bright colorful tape to mark where all of your set pieces go on the stage for each scene).

As we were spiking, a panic sprouted in my chest and grew rapidly as I came to the full realization in my head that the set pieces were significantly larger than the dimensions I had on my spec sheet.

Crap.

Almost everything I had plotted out in my beautiful binder was worthless.

I had planned for the large towers to roll and move. Yeah they weren’t gonna do that.

There were two medium sized rolling platforms I had meticulously choreographed into the show. Yeah, they weren’t gonna do that.

I stood there staring at this massive set that cost a lot of money, a lot of labor, and a lot of time that was simply not going to work as I had planned and as our crew had prepared for…..

and I laid down on the floor.

Now Lighting Guy Steve at this point in our friendship had seen me do this a few times so he was pretty used to my odd behaviors.

But I was in full panic mode so I laid there on the floor for a good long while.

Steve tried to comfort me even though he knew that I had messed up and my plan was just not going to work. Steve was much more indulgent of my laying on the floor than my mother was.

By the time Mama Terry had returned, I was still laying on the floor in despair. She of course asked why and we explained how the set was not going to function as I’d planned. She asked what the solution was and I embarrassingly admitted that we needed to not use one of the medium rolling pieces. We could keep the larger towers stationary and keep the one medium rolling piece on stage and just move it upstage and downstage as needed. I felt absolutely horrible because that second medium rolling piece was expensive and people spent a lot of time rebuilding it. The second medium rolling piece also had the “World” gates on it that the Newsies opened and closed throughout the show.

Mama Terry put on her tough voice and said, “just lose the piece and get off the floor.” Mama Terry is not a fan of Alyssa laying on the floor.

We stored the unusable piece in the scene shop and made it prop storage. It was the most expensive prop table you will ever find in your entire life.

Ironically, while it was stored at the building with the gates still attached, we had all our props in there so they were out of the way of the other shows. We called it the prop cage.

We took the “World” gates off of the unusable medium rolling piece and decided to attached them to a pipe so that we could fly them in and out. I, of course, went and did the reweighting because honestly it was the least I could do at this point. They gates were now going to fly in and out in the show instead of rolling in and out on a set piece.

That night I went home, took my beautifully done binder, and chucked it in the garbage.

That Sunday, Steve and I spent the day working on lights and props respectively as I pounded sparkling waters (see Tale #19).

Monday night we had our first dress rehearsal. I explained all of the set changes but I accidentally missed an important detail.

I forgot to tell the cast that the “World” Gates no longer opened and closed because in order to make them fly in and out safely and quickly, we had to screw them together in the middle.

We were moving through “Carrying the Banner” and arrived at the point when the Delancey Brothers come out to open the gates. Delancey Brother number one walked right up and attempted to open the gate as he had done for weeks in rehearsal. Only this time it didn’t open.

Instead he started to pull the whole gate towards himself on it’s flying cables which made the gate start to swing.

I yelled from all the way back in my seat in the house, “Stop! It’s not going to open. Stop! Stop pulling on it! I forgot to give that note I’m sorry! Just carefully set it back! It’s going to fly out!”

He carefully lowered the gate back towards the set piece so it could fly out. He was, understandably, not thrilled with me for forgetting that detail.

Producing large scale musical theater productions is incredibly stressful. There is never a dull moment because at any moment, something could go wrong.

But the show must go on. Yes sir. The show must go on, right after I lay down on the floor just real quick. Just for a minute….or ten.