Creating Theatre

I had a bit of a shock today. I was reflecting on my experiences over the last bunch of years and realized that my role directing The 3 Pigs at Loose Moose Theatre for Kids marks my 21st kids show.

• One show as both Sound and Lighting Operator.

• Four shows as Sound Designer.

• Eleven shows as an actor playing 28 different characters.

• Two shows as Assistant Director.

• Five shows as Director.

If you count the roles and shows, it comes to 23, not 21, but that’s only because I did sound design on one of the shows I directed and one that I was an actor in.

Loose Moose Theatre for Kids is one of my favourite shows to be involved in. They are a special bit of magic with some truly amazing people. For The 3 Pigs, I did up a commemorative poster for everyone directly involved in the show. At the bottom, I added credits like a movie poster. Just to get the show up and in front of an audience, I count 22 people, not including the spouses and partners who put up with our nonsense and the countless volunteers helping with front of house activities like concession, ticket sales, and ushering.

The entire process looks like this:

Casting. This involves a combination of inviting company members to join the cast and opening auditions to find people who might not know about The Moose and bring them into our insanity.

Scheduling. The Production Team puts together a rehearsal schedule that lasts four weeks and then starts sourcing the backstage talent.

Rehearsals. Four weeks of taking an outline of a show and improvising scenes together to find the characters and tell the story. The goal is 55 minutes of engaging theatre for four- to twelve-year-olds and their parents, siblings, and grandparents.

Costuming. During the rehearsals our costumer, Cindra Kennedy for this show, is busy pulling costumes and fitting them, adjusting them, fine-tuning them so they look great on stage and help bring the characters to life.

Cue-to-Cue. After three weeks of rehearsals and making stuff up, we do what’s called a cue-to-cue, which gets our sound and lighting designers together with our operators,into the theatre and working with the actors to finalize the specific cues that trigger sound and lighting events. It is a gruelling day. Sometimes two days.

Hell Week. Immediately after cue-to-cue, we’re into full tech rehearsals with full costumes and scene changes. The actors, Stage Manager, and Assistant Stage Manager do each scene change. Actors often play more than one role, so there is the added chaos of changing costumes and characters backstage immediately after walking out one door and, within seconds, walking through another door as a completely different character.

Tweaks and Tuning. During all of this, the sound, lighting, costumes, set, props, scene changes, and characters are all developing and changing, ebbing and flowing as we do our best to keep the energy positive and the show fresh every time we run it.

The Run. After a month of rehearsing five to six days a week, it is time to put up the show. Call time for the first day is usually 9 AM, with our first show at 1 PM. The idea, especially for the opening weekend, is to take our time setting up for top of show, running any special sections such as finicky cues, mic checks, singing and dancing calls, fight calls, chase calls, and any other bit of weirdness the cast or crew wants to run. Then we set for top of show and do a run. Sometimes it’s an “Italian” (all the dialogue no set, just sitting around ripping through lines); sometimes it’s a “Russian” (in our theatre that is a fast-forward version of the play with no set changes, but actors running through their blocking and lines at mach speed).

The reward for this insanity is putting it up in front of an audience for twelve shows over four weeks. The kids will cheer for the good guy, yell at the bad guy, sometimes cheer for the bad guy, and be a functional part of each show. Each one will be different in a different way. If you’re in Calgary, you should come out and see The 3 Pigs at Loose Moose Theatre Company from October 31 to November 22. Bring your kids, borrow some kids (with permission), or just come see it and give your inner child something to cheer about.