Breathing Corpses and moving Celebrations

Progress Blog caught up with the cast and crew of Breathing Corpses at their first run though. The play is made up of a number of scenes in different settings and with different actors so this was the first time many of the actors had come together to rehearse.

One of the major things to sort out at this stage is how to move people and props smoothly from one scene to the next. Stage manager Emma Walsh was there taking detailed notes about exactly what needs to be moved and when. Attention to this sort of detail makes a difference to the audience’s enjoyment of the play. For example there was some discussion about what to do with the lid from a box of Celebrations one of the characters opens. It was decided to throw it away – doing away with the need to take the lid of during the scene and remove it at the end.

Production manager Liz Carroll was also at this rehearsal and I took the opportunity to ask her what a production manager for a show actually does. She explained that they organise all the things that need to be done around putting on the performance leaving the director free to concentrate on the artistic side. They ensure that there are people to run the lighting and sound and organise the front of house rota. Liz has booked audition and rehearsal dates as well as helping run the auditions. She did ask me to point out though that in this case there wasn’t much to do as director Carole has been was so well organised! The production manager’s involvement in a show starts with a production meeting before the show is even cast. This meeting includes any technical crew and the director explains their vision about the production. Liz’s final job is chasing up all the cast members to make sure they hand in their biographies in time to go in the programme. As you can tell from the photo Liz has also been helping with set painting – not part of the job description.

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Coming up...

Breathing Corpses by Laura Wade 6th to 11th September 2010

Auditions for 5th Writefest, Sunday 12th September 2010, 2.30 pm Progress Theatre.

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka 11th to 16th October 2010

See Progress Theatre website for details of all our productions and auditions.