Blast from the Cast!

My deepest and most heart felt apologies for abandoning you for the past couple of weeks. I would love to pretend it’s because I’ve been so ferociously busy securing lines, moves and drum parts, but frankly, I’ve been holding off on this instalment of the blog for the soul purpose of being able to write this:

“It’s the final count down! Na-Na-Naaa Naaa Na-Na-Na-Na Naaa!!”

Yes, that’s right you bunch of blog reading theatre-goers! We have reached the technical week for My Fair Lady! With us all now being able to do the parts in our sleep (seriously, I’ve been caught air drumming in a deep slumber) we are going to take the Pitlochry festival Theatre’s 60^th season by storm! We have but three days to polish those dance moves, focus the spotlights and put the finishing touches on Adrian Rees’ outstanding set and costumes before bursting onto the stage with all the energy, excitement and nerves that only a first night can bring.

But whoa there Nelly! How about I give you an idea of actually what a tech week involves. We’re starting off in the theatre with a band call, which will include the extra trumpeter and cellist who will join us for the run. This gives us a chance to rehearse all the numbers in the correct setting so we can flag up any potential problems regarding sound and sightlines to our magnificent musical director, Jon Beales. We then begin working through the show very slowly…bit by bit…lighting cue by lighting cue…set change by set change, often repeating them many times, until everyone involved is entirely happy with it. During these days more often than not madness sets in. You begin to wonder if daylight - or indeed life outside the theatre -continues to exist, in a kind of ‘If I shut my eyes does the world stop?’ mentality. At the other end of the technical rehearsals you are faced with at least two, possibly three dress rehearsals and finally after a very long, hard week you have the opening night. By this point pretty much everyone is surviving on adrenaline.

So to those of you who have managed to get those golden tickets for the opening night, after you have settled into the comfort of the PFT’s seats and before you are whisked back in time on a fantastic journey to early twentieth century London, spare the briefest of thoughts for everyone who has worked tirelessly in getting the show ready for you good people to enjoy and cor blimey guvner, I’m sure you will!

S.B x

My Fair Lady Set Gains Momentum

Hi everyone and welcome to my take on all things scenic at PFT.

First of all perhaps I should introduce myself. I’m Allie and I am a production artist for PFT. For those of you who don’t know what that is, don’t feel bad I didn’t either to begin with! It means I am one of the people who paint all the scenery for our productions.

Having already completed the sets for Trelawny of the Wells, Henceforward and See How They Run this past 3 weeks we have been working very hard to get My Fair Lady ready to go over to the stage for it’s fit up and technical week. I have to confess with the weather having been so nice concentration has occasionally wandered and we have tried hard to get it outside to work on, need to top up that tan for opening night after all. My Fair Lady is a beautiful design but a bit of an unusual set for us painters, in that there is hardly any paint involved! Instead we are pasting thousands of pieces of text and posters to it. It has been really enjoyable but when we get the workshop back to normal, and not looking like the Andrex puppies have gone berserk with the loo roll it will be great. There is one thing I am certain of after this process and that is that I will never have wallpaper in my own home, far too much mess, it will be paint all the way.

Last weekend for me was one of the best parts of the process. The fit up, where the carpenters put the set together on stage. It is always really exciting for us as we finally get to see it out of the workshop and in context. It also means we get a chance to work on stage with everyone else which is nice - though they are fond of jumping out of the wings in the dark on a certain unsuspecting scenic. I have to admit that the set looked big in the workshop, nothing to how it looks on stage! We have just managed to get the floor painter, a simple design  of a black satin finish but the size of the stage here makes it take a couple of hours and roughly 30 litres of paint per coat!

Nearly done but just in case you are worried we have been very well behaved with the text on the My Fair Lady set. We've kept it clean, tempting though was it to make the odd stray sentence  appear. We have also resisted putting in chunks of the script, in case any of the cast forget their lines, though I am sure they wouldn’t mind if we did that. There is still time though for us to sneak in something which you will have to keep an eye out for.

So until next time all the best.

Allie