Friday, April 07, 2006The Jedi Knights of the stageWe all have our moments of glory.We all have our place in the giant clockwork. This week I found out exactly what that meant. In a live theatre performance, with orchestra in a pit and performers on the stage, the conductor is the person who holds it all together. The conductor lives within the middle of two worlds. On the stage, the performers' interactions are a complex web of changing relationships. In the pit, the music is a varied interaction of notes, instruments and tempos. The conductor sits in the vortex of both these worlds, using his baton to keep the performers and the musicians in sync. This week we found out what it was to do a show without a conductor. This week we learned how important each of us is to the whole and how delicate the balance between our worlds onstage, in the orchestra pit, and backstage. In short, our conductor, Alex, was felled by a violent bout of food poisoning or stomach flu just a few hours before our Wednesday matinee performance. A trouper and consummate professional, he tried to do the show. We provided him with gatorade, ice, propped-up chairs, and bags (in which to vomit should the need arise). By the middle of the overture, he was conducting while reclining on the top of his platform, unable to even sit up. By the end of the first song, he couldn't even do that. Then he had to leave. The second song was performed without anyone at the helm. The musicians cued each other by eye contact and they somehow felt their way through, silently and intuitively matching the singer above them, who was also flying completely blind. Sitting in the house by the sound board, I didn't notice a thing. I had my crew members posted down by the pit door to keep me informed. And we were all on headset, constantly monitoring the situation. By the third song I got the word on what was happening: Alex had bolted into the men's dressing room and gotten violently ill. Jim, the singer performing the sergeant lead in the second act, was making up, half in costume, and saw this. Jim happened to have had conducting experience in the past -- but of course was completely unprepared to take on a show, mid-performance. He ran up into the pit, still in costume, and took over. We made it through Act I. The audience couldn't tell the difference. I could, but only because adrenaline was sharpening my senses to an absurd degree. At intermission we had to regroup. Was Alex feeling better? He thought so. Jim -- now frantically putting on his costume and making up -- had to go onstage almost immediately. So we send Alex out. (Oh, and in the meantime the toilets overflow and both dressing rooms are flooding. I really need to mention that.) I listen accutely from the house. The first song sounds like it's on track despite the fact that everyone is stressed (and most everyone still has to pee like a racehorse). I start to relax a hair. But then my lighting board operator asks a disconcerting question: Does your regular conductor have hair? Uh, well, no, I reply. Not one. Well, she says, the guy who is conducting... does. WHAT??? I get my crew to run downstairs to see what's happening NOW. Apparently Alex still couldn't make it. He collapsed again, and now Harry, the cellist, was conducting. Luckily, we have two cellos so the music was still present. But Harry's partner -- a woman who had never done the show before in her life -- was suddenly stuck with all the solos and the full cello part. Except for some occasional veerings off the track... I don't think the audience could tell the difference. We did it. The musicians forged ahead without anyone at the helm who had ever done this show before, playing off the actors and making best guesses as to when to start, stop, ritard, pick up tempo. The actors, having no one to focus on to keep them going, had to intuitively work with the musicians to cue them when to start up and stop. Everyone knew the material... but without a key player to keep them together, it was like flying by instrument only. No visuals. Only intuition, faith, and a collective ignorance of how to actually stop this thing if it truly derailed. Which it never, miraculously, did. At one point in the second act I felt a wave of goosebumps go through my body. I felt strings between me and every one of the performers, and every one of the musicians, and between me and the wardrobe mistress and my two beloved assistants. We were all tightly bound to each other, the complex vibrations between us were taut and intricate. It was more than between us and Alex. It was between all of us. Without someone obvious at the helm, we had to operate at a sub-conscious level, using the force like true Jedi knights. Like the scene in Star Wars where Luke is training with a shield over his head, tuning his senses to hit the bobbing sensor with his light saber, the musicians and singers were all suddenly robbed of their ability to visually understand reality through the conductor's baton. So they had to go deep, go into their feelings, grope their way through the dark. I felt an overwhelming sense of pride at being part of this strange family, with these people I've known and worked with for over twenty years. I was awed at how humans -- flawed humans who will disintegrate at a misplaced prop or not enough water bottles in the dressing room -- can rise to an occasion of extreme stress and come through with flying colors. We did it again in these second show. But this time we knew the shape of the train wreck and were a bit more adjusted psychologically. Everyone was amped. The energy was through the roof. The show was GREAT (and the toilets got fixed!) The audience left, smiling and talking. Men put their arms around their wives' shoulders. Heads were tipped towards each other intimately, relaxed. They enjoyed it, but they really didn't know what they'd seen. I knew. When the final notes were played, the orchestra hit them with consummate authority, perfectly, exuberantly. They had made it through the labyrinth and the light was in sight. The finale was an act of supreme conquest. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 10:35 PM  
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