Watership Down Rehearsal Diary – Week Four

16 June 2016

Production week…

When one show finishes and another begins, the theatre is miraculously transformed from one world to another as if by magic…

Within minutes of the Untold Stories cast taking their final bow on Saturday night, the Watermill tech team began the ‘get out’.  This is when the theatre is completely gutted of all set, lights, costumes and props to make way for a new show.  It’s wildly exciting for the new company and somewhat heartbreaking for the old company but we get over it during what we call the ‘post-show blues’… This turnaround all happens in just a few days, including all the building, painting, rigging, wiring, sound checking, costume setting; (the list goes on).  Unlike the actors who get four weeks to rehearse the play, the tech team only have a couple of days to perform months of blind planning.  It could be likened to imagining the configuration of a huge jigsaw puzzle without the pieces and then suddenly having to put it together in record time.

Once everything is finally in place, the cast arrives and tech begins.  We start from the very beginning of the play and every time there’s a lighting change, costume change, sound effect, scene change, prop negotiation, entrance or exit, we stop to insert cues or sort out staging issues…so roughly every four or five seconds.  With the ensemble nature of this piece we are all nearly always on stage.  This means that any costume changes usually have to happen within seconds and entrances/exits have to cross smoothly through very tight gaps in the set.  Assistant stage managers and any available actors (usually none) help out those who need to change or get to their next entrance on time. Sometimes we need to actually leave the building and run around the garden in order to get from one side of the stage to the other! (Fingers crossed it doesn’t rain too much…).

Once we’ve spent two days adding the technical elements to the show, we have one dress rehearsal and then previews start! So here’s to all the unsung heroes behind the scenes who make The Watermill’s shows notoriously fantastic.  It’s over to you until our first preview on Thursday.

Who’s coming?!

Scarlet Wilderink

Scarlet is playing Hyzenthlay in Watership Down at The Watermill from Thursday 16 June to Saturday 23 July.
Find out more and buy tickets.