Special Report: Photo Shoot

Today we got our 3 Little Maids together for a photo shoot at the Japanese Friendship Gardens in Kelly Park. We all met at the warehouse at 11 am where our makeup designer, David Kirby, got the ladies all painted up. Our costume designer, Lisa Claybaugh, helped them into their costumes and wigs and we all set off for the park. Please enjoy the behind the scene's photos and be on the look out for the finished photos coming soon!

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*photos courtesy of Tim Converse and Sandra Linehan

Left, right, and center: blocking begins

The first two weeks of our Mikado rehearsals are over, the cast has had lots of time to work with our music director learning and perfecting the songs in the show and now it is time to turn them over to our stage director for blocking, but what is blocking? In simplest terms, blocking is the process by which directors arrange actors on the stage. Popular understanding states that the term blocking originated in the 19th century when directors and librettists like Gilbert would use actual blocks to depict the actors and move them around a mock stage to get an idea of what the show will look like. There are several factors that go into blocking a show; dramatic presence, sight lines to the audience, as well as set and lighting design.

As these shows are primarily visual pieces, it is important to consider how a scene will look when blocking. If your two main love interests are singing a duet, it would be better to place them in a secluded corner together rather than on opposite ends of the stage, or if you have a powerful king making a grand entrance it make sense to stage him on a raised platform while the rest of the cast looks up at him in reverence. Sight lines are simple enough to explain, they are what the audience can see. Each stage has it's own peculiarities to where the audience can see and what is considered "off stage" and it is crucial for a director to know where those lines are. Set and light design also play a role in blocking, as mentioned before if you have a grand entrance and the set incorporates a raised platform, the natural choice is to block the actor there. On the flip side, it is important to know where the lighting designer will be aiming the stage lights as an actor in the dark is an unseen actor.

There is one important member of the production staff we have not talked about yet, the stage manager. The stage manager is really the one responsible for making sure a show runs smoothly. They attend every rehearsal and take detailed notes about blocking and entrances. When a show begins its run, it is not uncommon for the director to remove themselves from the production, they may still be present and will offer notes on the performance, but at this point, the stage manager is in charge of calling entrances and making sure the blocking is carried out in the manner the director laid out.

A note about terminology; you may have heard the term stage right or stage left and wondered what they mean. The reason behind using terms like stage left and stage right is to avoid confusion. When the director is staging, he/she will be viewing the scene from the point of view of the audience. Obviously, the actors view it from the opposite point of view. If a director were to say "move left" the actor would have to question "his left or my left". To alleviate this, theater companies have adopted the use of stage left, stage right, up stage, and down stage. Up stage refers to the back of the stage (a term derived from a type of stage that rises away from the audience), down stage is the opposite (the side closest to the audience), left and right stage are from the actors point of view, and the term house left or house right may be used to indicate the stage from the audiences point of view.

Got it? There will be a test.

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Inspiration! The origins of The Mikado

The year was 1884, Princess Ida is nearing the end of it's run and Richard D'Oyly Carte realized that for the first time since 1877, no new Gilbert and Sullivan production would be ready by the time Ida closed. In March of that year, D'Oyly Carte sent contractual notice to Gilbert and Sullivan that a new play would be required. Gilbert immediately began working on a script that involved falling in love against their will use of a magic lozenge. Sullivan was less enthusiastic about the opportunity, having seen a close friend suffer from a stroke and contemplating his own failing health in addition to a desire to devote his time to more "serious" music, Sullivan wrote back that it would be impossible to work on another collaboration with Gilbert. Gilbert was surprised to hear that Sullivan was not interested in another collaboration and asked him to reconsider. Sullivan responded that he would prefer a plot which allowed him to write music that complemented both humorous and serious plots and that the "magic lozenge" plot was too improbable as well as too similar to a previous show by the duo, The Sorcerer.

A photo of the Japanese Village
taken by W. S. Gilbert

It seemed that this may be the end of the Gilbert and Sullivan collaboration, however in May of 1884, Gilbert wrote to Sullivan again asking if he would reconsider should Gilbert write a plot with no supernatural elements and with "a consistent plot, free from anachronisms, constructed in perfect good faith & to the best of my ability". Sullivan agreed, and Gilbert began thinking of a new plot, the plot which would become The Mikado. The story of how The Mikado came to Gilbert states that he was walking in his study one day when an ancient Japanese sword fell off the wall. Gilbert picked it up and placed it back in it's place and as he did so realized that an exotic locale like Japan would make a good setting for his new plot. In the 1850's Japan had been opened to western trade and influence and by the 60's and 70's a massive interest in  Japanese culture had swept through Britain, this culminated in the Japanese Village exhibit in Knightsbridge, specifically at Humphrey's Hall a few miles from Gilbert's house. It is widely believed that this was the inspiration for the show, however that may not be accurate; for example, Gilbert began working on the plot in May of 1884 and the Japanese Village opened in January of 1885. However, Gilbert may have known about the exhibit coming to Kinghtsbridge and it is clear that he used the exhibit to build interest for his plot as well as to accurately depict the Japanese style going so far as to hire members of the exhibit to teach the cast traditional Japanese movements and attitudes.

The rest of the story is history, in March of 1885, the show opened at the Savoy theater and became the longest running Gilbert and Sullivan production closing in January of 1887 a staggering 672 shows. Since then, it has become one of the most often performed pieces in musical theater history. It has been translated into multiple languages and is a popular choice for school, amateur, and professional companies alike. Not to be left out of the fun, John  Philip Sousa published a march based on the themes of The Mikado it premiered the same year as The Mikado and can be found here played by the US Marine Band.

All background information taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mikado

As always, you can keep in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, and our website.

Are you particularly busy?

My dad likes to use the cheesy pun "time flies like and arrow, fruit flies like a banana". While it caused us all to groan, the first half of the pun is accurate beyond belief. It is a singular anomaly of life that, as much as we wished otherwise, time continues to flow despite our busy schedules. It can be easy for those of us involved in a production to forget that there is still a company surrounding us continuing on with it's day to day business and we thought this might be a good time to highlight some of the activities going on.

This past weekend Lyric Theatre hosted auditions for the next two shows. This summer's discovery series production of The Prince of Pilsen and next fall's main-stage production of Gilbert & Sullivan's Utopia Limited. We had a turnout of around 80 people for these auditions, a record for the company, and our production staff was very pleased with the quality of singers available. Next weekend will be call-backs for both shows, and the production staffs will be continuing to meet to discuss casting and artistic vision, and we look forward to presenting these shows to you in the coming months.

The Board of Directors continues it's mission to oversee the running of the company and to work on it's many committees. We strive to continually monitor the financial and holistic health of the company and to

make strides into new methods of meeting the needs of our audience and performers. In addition, we sent out our membership renewal letters and are in the process of prepping for our annual membership meeting on May 4th. If you are currently a member of the company, you should have received information about the membership meeting in the mail last week. This is a time for us to gather together and share a meal with the whole Lyric family as well as to hear reports from the president of the company and the finance committee. This is also the time when we elect members to the Board of Directors. If you are not a member of Lyric Theatre, but would like to have a voice in shaping the future of the company, information can be found here.

Our Marketing committee is hard at work planning the artwork for the our upcoming season. We are pleased to announce that Jennifer Medeiros, a long time Lyric cast member, will be returning as our graphic designer. She has already worked up some really cool designs and we can't wait to share them with you. We are also working on some cool new forms of marketing for The Mikado and we will be sharing those with you as they happen.

Looking even farther ahead, our Production Staffing committee is in the process of hiring stage directors, music directors, and producers for our next season. We are pleased to announce our production staff for Utopia Limited; Laurie Hupman: producer, Phil Lowery: stage director, Jeff Yaeger: music director, and Neil Midkiff: vocal director.

Phew, that's a lot of stuff I could use a vacation after just writing about it! Mikado rehearsals continue and you will be hearing more about them as we get farther along. As always, you can keep in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, or our website.

Behind the baton

Tonight we spend some time with one of the most recognizable members of a production team, the music director. The music director is responsible for ensuring the cast and the orchestra learns the music and conducts all the shows. The music director is involved in a production from the very start and must be an expert on the music, analyzing and interpreting what is in the score and reconciling it with the stage direction. Our music director for The Mikado is Aaron Schultz. Aaron first joined Lyric Theatre in 2009 as our music director for Yeoman of the Guard, interestingly Yeoman was Aaron's first Gilbert and Sullivan show. Like many of us who did not grow up with G&S, Aaron found out that he really liked the style and has been music director for several shows since then. I asked Aaron to share some of his thoughts on how the rehearsals have been going;

"Rehearsals started off great with the first all-cast gathering. The main issue with the evening was the inability of one's stomach to endure the amount of good deserts the mouth wants. Seriously, the cast delivered a fantastic first read, it appears that not only is the cast gifted in talent, but also a friendly group of super nice folks. I am very excited to work with them! And indeed, after two days thus far, I have not been disappointed. I had scheduled the leads on the first night over a four hour span. The goal was to bring people in and out in such a way as to touch at least half of all lead song moments, while requiring a minimal amount of time. The arrivals and departures worked, but the leads were so strong that we got through what I thought would be 4 hours of music in less than 3."

The men's chorus hard at work
under Aaron's baton

Not to be left out in the cold, Aaron has this to say about the chorus; "Four days in and, wow, the chorus has learned a LOT of music over 7.5 hours. We have pretty much 95% of the chorus measures, including combined, men's only, and women's only. Even though there is no substitute for seemingly dull parts banging out, in the end I feel that these early rehearsals have still managed to create some real music and enable some shared performance experiences!"

About The Mikado, "The Mikado deserves its reputation as a top tier G&S show, and indeed a top tier English opera. While it may not have the overt beauty of Puccini, the drama of Wagner, or the 'greatness' of Verdi (in my opinion, The Mikado does not aim for this). The opera does span the range of G&S and is fun to work on and a delight to perform"

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A 2nd Trombone! - The music of The Mikado

The Schirmer edition of
score 

Rehearsals officially started on April 6th with two weeks of music rehearsals. Before we begin staging the show, our music director works with the leads and chorus to ensure both quality of the singing as well as to gain an understanding of musical phrasing. In an operetta, a lot of character personality can be conveyed through the way a song is sung and it is important that our cast understand how to portray that personality. Much of the personality is found in the score itself, through dynamics and articulations (a fancy word for the markings that tell you how to sing or play a part; for example whether to slur two notes together or sing them separately). In addition to the score, some of the personality will come from director's suggestions or an actor's personal interpretation of their character. Towards the end of the first two weeks the cast will have worked through all the music in the show and will be fully prepared to begin staging the actual scenes that you see on the stage.

I thought it might make an interesting point to talk about the different versions of the score as well as some interesting facts about one of the most famous songs in the show. As you might expect of a show like The Mikado, there are multiple versions of the score and one of the most interesting is the "First Night Edition" that still survives in some places. It is not very often performed and there are some major differences between that and the Schirmer score we will be using. Most notably, is the fact that Yum-Yum's aria "The sun whose rays" was originally in Act 1 of the show. However, the original Yum-Yum complained that she would not be able to do the song justice so shortly after "Three little maids" and "So please you sir" and so it was moved to Act 2 just after the opening chorus. In addition, some minor changes were made including; removing a verse from "Were you not to Ko-Ko plighted" and "So please you sir" was originally a quintet with Yum-Yum, Pitti-Sing, Peep-Bo, Pooh-Bah, and Pish-Tush, however Pish-Tush has left the stage earlier with the chorus and with no convenient way to bring him back, the part is often cut from productions. In addition the "Little List" song was originally later in Act 1 then where it lies now and had a chorus refrain, the music for which was left out of the autograph score making it very difficult to add back into the show.

Jordan Eldgredge as Ko-Ko

Speaking of the "Little List" song, this is a song that has an interesting role in the show. It is pure satire meant to poke fun at the culture and society of Gilbert and Sullivan's time. Because of it's role in the show, this song is often rewritten to poke fun at more modern trends. We will be doing this very thing for our production of the show and I hope to be able to share our rewrite with you soon. In the meantime, I'll leave you with the lyrics from our 2010 production of The Mikado. As always you can keep in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, and our website.

As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I’ve got a little list — I’ve got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed — who never would be missed!

There’s the pestilential nuisances who e-mail you with spam —
Like “bankers” from Nigeria whose goal it is to scam.
The loud-mouthed TV dietitians yelling that you’re fat —
They’ll send you some concoction that’ll slim you just like that!
The telephone solicitors who simply won’t desist —
They’d none of ’em be missed — they’d none of ’em be missed!
He’s got ’em on the list — he’s got ’em on the list;
And they’ll none of them be missed — they’ll none of them be missed.

There’s the operetta singer, and the others of his race,
The off-pitch soloist — I’ve got him on the list!
The people who smoke cigarettes and puff them in your face —
They never would be missed — they never would be missed!

The CEO who runs his enterprise into the ground,
But walks away with millions when the whole affair is found,
All fat cats working Wall Street and the bonuses they flout,
And the idiotic Senators who help to bail them out,
And that singular anomaly, the sub-prime mortgagist
I don’t think he’d be missed — I’m sure he’ll not be missed!
He’s got him on the list — he’s got him on the list;
And I don’t think he’ll be missed — I’m sure he’ll not be missed.

And the people who pollute TV with shows that they contrive,
The exhibitionist — I’ve got him on the list!
The people who cause accidents when texting while they drive,
They’d none of ’em be missed — I wish they’d all desist.

The talk show host who claims to be so balanced and so fair,
But never is objective when his show is on the air,
Montgomery Theater renovators canceling our shows —
Just how this place will look next year — well, heaven only knows!
And all the social Twitter Facebook MySpace Friendster-ists
I don’t think they’ll be missed — I’m sure they’ll not be missed!
You may put ’em on the list — you may put ’em on the list;
And they’ll none of them be missed — they’ll none of them be missed!

Special Report: Live from the Mikado potluck and read through

Tonight we gather the cast and production staff for a time honored tradition at Lyric Theatre. Before every show rehearsal period, we get together and share a meal followed by a read through of the show. The point of this event is to give our cast a chance to meet each other and socialize before we dive into rehearsals. It is a night of fun for all and the top off is the read through where our cast sings through the show often with hilarious over acting. Tonight is no exception with bouts of raucous laughter rising off the rehearsal floor every few minutes. I am happy to announce that this is a highly enthusiastic cast and they are excited to show you what they are going to make of the old classic. We look forward to presenting you this show in a short 10 weeks!

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So you want to be a star; first you must audition

Every show at Lyric Theatre begins with the audition process, a time when the directors and producer gather together the best talent in the area and force them to compete for our approval. I'm kidding of course, we are always grateful for the high level of talent we see at auditions and the process of casting a show is one of the most difficult parts of the job. For the Mikado, we had over 50 people audition for us, each one seemingly more and more talented. Of those who auditioned we had to cast a show of just 9 leads and a chorus of 17. As you can imagine, this requires a lot of debate and give and take among the production staff to cast the best person for each role.

For the staff the whole process begins about a month before the audition dates. During this time, we work on creating an audition notice that has a show synopsis along with the lead roles for the show and a short description of each character. That notice is then sent off into the vast expanse of the internet through our mailing list as well as posting to various message boards and Facebook groups dedicated to informing Bay Area actors about audition opportunities. Before anyone knows it, the audition date rolls around and we gather together to listen to each prospective candidate. The directors are listening for musical ability as well as style and natural acting ability, occasionally we will have a "cold reading" where we provide a number of lines from the show and ask each candidate to read one, this is an opportunity for our stage director to see how each candidate approaches a role without any direction. After 2-3 days of auditions, the staff will meet to discuss who will be "called back" for which role. Call backs are where we provide music and dialogue from the show and ask each candidate to prepare this material. Each role will have 2-3 people called back and from those candidates we will cast the show (chorus members are not called back, but cast from the larger pool of candidate).

After call backs production staff begins the arduous task of casting the show. More often than not, we simply wish we could cast everyone who auditioned for us, but unfortunately that is not an option. We will spend hours pouring over our notes about all our candidates and discussing their performance and how they would fit with the artistic vision for the show. As I mentioned earlier, this is a long process and my personal record so far has been 3 o'clock in the morning to fully cast a show! In the end, we contact everyone who auditioned for us and tell them the good news, or in some cases the bad news, and move on to working on other tasks. Next time we will talk about one of those tasks, set design.

Ewa as Perichole
photo courtesy Steve Stubbs

Before we go, I wanted to share another perspective of the audition process with you, that of the person auditioning. I asked Ewa Nowicka who most recently stared as the title role of La Périchole with Lyric to tell me a bit about her process of auditioning. Obviously, the first task is to decide if you want to audition for the show, this can be a question of interest in a show, available roles, location of company and performance venue, etc. Assuming you decide to audition the next step is to sign up for an audition slot (Lyric uses an online booking system allowing our candidates to pick the time that works best from our available pool). Then you have to decide what song you are going to audition with; do you want a song from the show that will show off your compatibility with a desired role or do you pick a song from another show that shows off your range and acting ability. Finally, no matter how many times you audition there is always the challenge of working with a new pianist (often you don't know who it will be until you walk through the door) and overcoming your nerves. For all the work actors put into their auditions, they have about 6 minutes to make an impression on the production staff and secure a call back!

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