Show time.

It's occurred to me that I haven't said much about how theater works.

 

The Theatracks puts on two shows a year: a fall production and a spring production. For the fall production we've chosen to produce a magic show. This year's fall production, and those before, are a  big responsibility for the Theatracks, as it takes a long time to master an act. While observing the club, I've grown very proud of the students who've put together acts almost by themselves.  For almost two months, I've watched these students work hard for this production because they want it to be good. I've seen this work ethic countless times before we started this production also. Yet the club never seem to get the recognition that they deserve.

 

These students always work hard--learning lines of others and themselves, learning music cues, learning light cues, learning blocking, learning emotion, learning character development,  and much more, yet not many people see their work. 

 

The Theatracks hardly ever have a full house; on a good show night, the school theater is a little over half full.  I just don't think that's fair.

 

Why is it that students go to basketball games and football games, almost filling up the bleachers,  yet the same students can't even fill up half of a theater? Is it because we're the little guys?

Well, I think it's time to start supporting the little guys. Our school is a community. If we support you, you should support us. So readers, I'm asking if you'll come to our next show. Get our theater filled like the bleachers at homecoming. We work just as hard as the boys do.

 

The show, running name High School Magical, runs from December 4-6 at 7pm in the Sparks High School theater. And, on December 2nd at 4pm there is a preview of the show at the Sparks library.

 

This is our job, to entertain and amaze you. So please, please come to the show. We would absoulutly love to have you there supporting us.

Lights, Camera... Not so Much Action.

Mereu finally gave the Theatracks "The Talk." 

 

Coming up on 21 days of rehearsal before the show, the Theatracks were finally sat down and given the talk to get them in the zone of becoming serious about their work. (Farias also gave my AP English class this talk.)

As mentioned in a previous post, some of the Theatracks haven't exactly been up to performance standard. Well, maybe that's the wrong way to put it. Many of the students have been putting tricks together, and most of them are already preforming their tricks (or what they have of their tricks) for other students. But there are some students, including myself, who haven't been working as hard as we could be. 

And Mereu had finally had enough.

Telling the theatracks to either start working on their acts, be it learning a new trick or starting from scratch,  or to please find another place to spend their freetime, I've already seen a difference in the work ethic of the theatracks. 

Everyone who decided to stay is now working on something new.

The members that had their basics down are starting to put together full acts. Mickayla atarted putting moves to music, as well as Maddy and Lexi, and Jackson started putting actions to his acts.

Many of the members who weren't doing much have started something as well.

Bella is working on blocking her script to her act, Chase started a small disappearing act, Hunter and Luis on a comedy act, and Autumn with juggling. Even me. I've been tossing the idea around of working with readings, and I've finally started taking the steps to learn it. 

There is still some time where the theatracks can sit and mess around, and while we work somethings stand out like mickayla saying this;

"If I were a personality type, I'd be extra virgin." Mickyala Clue. October 27, 2014. Her thoughts on personatily types.

 

I have to say that from my last post referring to this issue, Newbies, I've seen a huge difference in the Theatracks. It's beginning to feel like a family again. 

 

 

Home.

Oh, to be in the theatre

That famous dusty smell,

The echo of the empty stage

Which dreams and wonders tell

The tinny sound of ivory keys

Sitting in the corner

The spacious house with history

Ten thousand past performers

A set goes up in one week's time

With actors tripping 'round

It goes back down in even less

Then starts another round

Directors say, That's fine, we'll call."

Producers bite the budget.

Technicians walk in with a burger

While choreographers dodge it

The lighting crews show up on time

(A minute 'til the curtain)

The stage crew quickly don all black

The financiers, uncertain

The house crew wants to see the show

So they usher quickly

Refreshment servers look and see

A sea of faces vaguely

The posters change around the town

As actors brag, "I'm in that!"

Then sweat about a hundred pounds

As lights hit costume hats

They live on scones and soda-pops

And ready-made sandwiches

The dancers are forever stretching

And calling teachers, "witches"

The singers have an air about them

That demands attention.

And when you hear a group laugh loud

You've found the comic's station.

The empty dressing room is heavy

With a musty smell

Of make-up and of time gone by,

A thousand "weeks of hell"

The volunteers and union folk

Like to hang from rafters

Tying lights to tiny trestles

With the view of raptors

A rat is seen in a corner,

It's been there just as long

As anyone can remember

Some write it in a song

The green room couch is old and worn

The 'fridge is working half-time

The ticket crews all know the actors

To let them in on time

The building echoes in it's mass

As a show begins

But then comes what will make all worth it

In the very end

People come from all around

Standing long in line

They get a program, read the ads

From financiers this time

The empty chairs are filled within

An hour of unlocked doors

The talk is of the weather and

Of shows they'd seen before.

The fully lit house is bustling

With sounds of joy and laughter

And actors feel that nervous pang

Praying for the here-after

The house lights flash, and comes a voice

Saying, "Do not flash cameras"

The empty pit then comes alive

Warming the orchestra

A silence falls across the house,

The actors' heartbeats skip

The curtain rises majestically

The tech crews grit their lips

The show goes on, with hitch or no

A separate yet collaborative work

The dance of sound and lights and crews

As sets change in the dark

The ever worried, coffee filled

Stage manager gives cues

And when the curtain falls again

All listen for the news

A clap, a roar, a standing row,

A silence dead as night?

A shriek for "encore!", or tomato?

Will the show take flight?

Afterwards, while actors mingle

Among remaining crowds

And all the techs reset the cues

And directors furl their brows

The house then empties once again

With echoes, all that's left

Until another show begins

In the silenced deft

At this time, as before

A solitary figure

Says, "Thank you," to the empty stage

And silent furniture.

It's impossible to explain

The pull of this, the theatre

But my soul is part of it's

Never-ending grandeur

It speaks to me, and calls my name

And I will always know

That this is truly home for me

Forever, on with the show!
 

 

 

--David Young; Ode to the Theater 

The last few weeks of of school have been like a tornado for me.  With my classes, drama, and getting ready for band competitions, I've hardly had more than five minutes to sit and think to myself. Yet in the few minutes that I have had, it's been in drama when the students are still trickling in and slowly settling down from the day.

The theater is, in its own way, a home for the theatracks. It allows them to settle back into their own being; they unwind and start working on their tricks, shaking off the worries of school, forgetting the fact that they have to go home and start worrying about it again.

Thats why I chose to use this poem, because it reminded me that the theater is still my home. That, like the other members, I get to go to the theater after school and become myself again. I sometimes forget how easily a place where you spend so much of your time can become a haven. It creeps up on you slowly, and you don't really realize it until you go back after being away and you have the sense of home.

After this blog I came up with a question for the readers. You don't have to answer but maybe you could just keep it in mind; Is there a place, or even a person, that feels like home to you?

Works Cited

Young, David. Ode to the Theatre. Every Poet.  N.p. 04 Oct, 2007. Web. 24 Oct, 2014. 

Structure

Everything has structure.

Writing, magic tricks, a building, people. 

This was the main point Mark Kornhauser, a comedic magician and a good friend of Mereu is helping the Theatracks put the upcoming show together, made during our last meeting after a few of the performers put on their acts. 

As the Theatracks sat up on stage with Mereu and Kornhauser after their performances, I sat and took notes on what he was saying to them, thinking that some of the things he was saying were a bit harsh, yet by the time he left, I realized that he was right in every way. 

Especially in the sense that everything has structure. 

Kornhauser had some very wise words to him, which I didn't doubt but he's a lot different then when I've seen him up on stage. This summer a few of us in the Theatracks were able to go see Mark perform in Masters of Magic on August 6, 2014, and let me tell you hes a very funny man. I've found two of his acts on(click for link) youtube and you really should watch them. 

 "Practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect."- Mark Kornhauser (field notes 02,Oct. 2014.)

The importance of Kornhauser and Mereu to everyone in this production is more than I ever thought we could rely on people for. Not that we expect them to do everything for us, actually many of the performers are writing their own scripts and coming up with their own acts, but to us, they are our structure. They help us decide if a line works or not, how to move at a certain point, and even how to act like you're picking up a thousand pound bar when really, its just a pipe.

Keep in mind that everything has structure, and if you don't think that something you're working on doesn't have any, maybe you just haven't found the building blocks yet.

Newbies

The SHS drama club started the year off excited about doing a magic show, talk flew about how we would be able to make things disappear and reappear... and then there was a murmur from the corner.

It soon grew to an audible hum.

Then a roar that sung and rang off the walls.

The freshmen have arrived.

Ah, the fight between freshmen and... just about everyone who is older than them.

Don't get me wrong, I know that I was once a freshmen and was probably just as annoying as the 2018 class is... but I just can't bring myself to think that I was. 

But we're we actually like this?

While there are a handful of kids working on acts for our next production, there at least two more handfuls of kids that aren't. They sit in the corner or in the lobby and yell and laugh as loud as they can. Maybe they make themselves loud so they seem bigger in size. 

Now it's not only freshmen who sit around and do nothing. It's some of the 2016 class as well. I keep wondering as I look around and take notes if the kids just don't want to be here or feel like they have nothing to do, freshmen or not. 

Mereu and I along with the stage manager Maddy Brown had a talk about getting kids invloved, yet that's harder than it seems. Mereu tried teaching some of them small tricks that could become something so amazing, yet it ended up flopping and they went back to their respective corners.

To be involved people have to be willing and I'm not so sure these people are.

Superstition

Superstition- a widely held but unjustified belief in supernatural causation leading to certain consequences of an action or event, or a practice based on such a belief.

Peacock feathers, dropping unused make-up, and wearing the color blue are only a few of the many theater superstitions that performers hold in a very real light. In the past week I've been talking to Mr. Mereu about things to avoid saying or doing in a theater as to not bring bad luck in. The superstitions that we have been talking about may seem a bit silly to outsiders, yet the people working on stage take them very seriously. Here are some of my favorite superstitions:

credit to: http://www.blurb.com/b/589370-macbeth

Macbeth:

Known as one of the bloodiest plays written by Shakespeare, this play was used by theaters in an older time to keep their theater afloat. If theaters weren't bringing enough money in, they would run Macbeth, since it was so gory many people would come to see it. Sometimes it would work, yet most times the theater would soon go under. Theater in our time now refuse to run Macbeth, and it's seen as a bad omen to even say the word inside of a theater, usually referring to the play as written by the Bard.  Saying Macbeth in a theater is seen as welcoming bad luck and death into the theater, also foreseeing that your theater will soon go under.

http://www.technicaltheatreawards.com/flys/

 Whistling:

Theaters have sets of which they pull up into the rafters after they are done with that set; the people that do this are called riggers. The riggers that worked on these stages were normally sailors, who would come back off seas and look for small jobs that they could do before they set off again. Sailors knew how to tie many knots, since they had the time on ships to learn and build this skill, so theaters looked to welcome them in as riggers. They also had a skill with whistling. Sailors who had the job of tying down sails learned codes in whistling to be heard over the roar of the sea, making sure to be heard to signal the untying and moving of the sails. Well, once these sailors came onto the stage, they still held onto the system of whistles that they used on ships. Whistling in a theater is bad luck because of the automatic response of untying knots for the sailors. There was an instance where a man was whistling while the sailors were up in the rafters, and he hit one of the notes that signaled the sailor to untie the knot he was manning, dropping the set and crushing the man to death.

http://coolspotters.com/venues/palace-theatre-cleveland-oh

The Ghost Light:

One of my favorite theater superstitions is called the ghost light. When a theater is empty, and all the lights are out, a single light is kept light up on the apron of the stage. This light is normally a lamp, keeping the theater light up just enough so people can see where they are going so they don't fall of the stage. The thought of keeping a light on is so people don't get hurt, but also to keep the ghost of past performers out. Ghost will come out in an unlit theater, taking up residence and reliving their deaths onstage no matter if people come back or not. If the lights are out, the theater is open game for the ghost and even if they are turned back on, they wont leave. The ghost take it back as their own stage, becoming jealous of the people on stage and tormenting them and ruining their plays.

These are just a few of the theater superstitions, and there are many more from where these came. But for now just remember, that if you're in a theater, don't whistle and always leave the lights on.

An Introduction to Magic

Sparks High Theater

My introduction into Sparks Highs drama club was second semester of my freshman year, when my orchestra teacher had asked if some of the class had wanted to play the background music for Dracula. I had ended up playing on stage with a few of the other orchestra students and I fell in love with how much of a home the club felt.

A little over a year later and I'm now working on getting an act together to perform on the stage. Being back stage while the others work is a very different experience than being in the sound booth and I've started to realize things and see them from a performers perspective instead of seeing them as a couple of goofy kids up on a stage.

One of the things I've noticed is how each person that is performing holds their tricks very dear to them. They work on a single movement, a set of two lines, how to toss a ring, again and again until it's perfect. And they still seek improvement. Mickayla Clune, a junior who preformed in our last play An Actors Nightmare, is a perfect example.

Actually looking for these things has opened my eyes in many ways, and has also brought the feeling of home back again, helping me notice that this club is more of a family than I thought. The Theatracks rely on other members to help with their tricks, and that's something I never did notice. How each person matters. Do the other members, the ones who sit off to the side, do they understand this?