“Hoisted by your own Petard” – The Production Blog

13 February 2012

At a recent Head of Departments meeting, those of us that blog and tweet were advised to be mindful of what we say, so as not to make ourselves look foolish or inadvertently give the wrong impression of where we work.

Now it’s probably a bit late for the former and though I would never intend to do the later, sometimes in theatre we can take ourselves a bit too seriously.

I quite often have a “Woody Allen” moment, like the time on the first night of a show and just as the lead actor came downstage for his final speech I heard that “Tink” a lighting designer hates. The actor  finished the show with half his face in darkness.

In the bar after the show someone was discussing  this moment and how wonderful that we had caught the inner turmoil of the character with the light and shade of his conflict. The Director and I just looked at each other as the chief electrician quietly asked “shall I bother replacing that blown bulb then?”

It can be the same with stage directions. Here at The Watermill, we have quite often held the premier of a play that has then gone on to be published. Which means all that happens on the stage is then noted into the stage directions and cast in stone forever.

It is quite common for some stage manager to ring us asking whether we still have an  item of furniture or props from a production we did here. I normally apologise as nine times out of ten this was a piece of dressing we only put onstage for no other reason than it was handy and filled a space, covered a speaker, or some such other trivial reason.

For this reason I sometimes never know when watching a production if an item has been  cleverly crafted into the action or whether, like us, it was something handy that fitted the action.

Hence the fun we’ve had finding a PETARD – not a day to day item of furniture. As always the team here have risen to the challenge and we are now the proud owners of one.

For those not sure what such an item is, you don’t have to do any serious research, just come and spot it in the production of Lettice and Lovage which opens this week.

I, meantime, will try and see how many new productions I can introduce a Petard into as being the essential part of the action  ….. now would Ben-Hur would need one on his chariot ?

Lawrence T Doyle
Production Manager