from Benno Nelson, Floor Manager

Today was the first day of proper tech rehearsals, which means including the final technical aspects of the show like lights and sound.  Our lighting and sound designers are really fantastic. Andre Pluess, the sound designer, in addition to providing a lot of great sound effects, has composed some thrilling music to be used in transitional moments from scene to scene, and Chris Binder, the lighting designer, has some truly elegant cues that help direct focus onstage.  Unlike in movies, in the theatre the audience has free reign over the stage and it is much more difficult for the director to control where the audience is looking.  Ensemble acting and smart lighting help to direct focus to the most crucial areas of the stage, and you’ll get to see these techniques to great effect in The Lieutenant of Inishmore. Especially if things keep progressing as well as they’ve started.

Another feature of the audience’s freedom of focus in the theatre is the importance of “dressing” the set or filling it out with odds and ends—props that may not have any specific function in the play but help make the playing space look lived in.  For this show Todd Rosenthal (the Set Designer) and Dan Katz (the Props Master) have collaborated to fill the set with a lot of interesting trinkets so that no matter where you look there will be something worth seeing.  But with all that’s going on in this play, you may never get a chance to appreciate their hard work.

More tech work tomorrow: wish us good luck and plenty of patience.