EOP 04

From Players Wiki

[edit] Evening of Performance: Post Mortem Notes

2/19/04 8 PM Playhouse

House

• Phil: Lobby shots were very artful
• Everything went well

Makeup

• Craig: We like her (Katie/JoeBob)!
• Phil: There was makeup
• Emily: People did surprisingly well with not losing things- nothing disappeared- very good.
• Chris: The makeup looked very good with the lights.

Costumes

• Emily: No big major things to find, so it was pretty easy

o Underbudget o Lots of people to drive Emily around: thanks Linda! o Book o’ Forms: This is new! We should use this for future shows- they’d be helpful to inform those involved.

• Carrie: Maggie didn’t fulfill what we thought she was going to do, but it worked out in the end. It was good to have her backstage during the show.
• Erik: “I was very happy”
• Jess: “They were fantastic!” Courtney’s slip choice closing night- not quite sure why, but apparently it was her choice, not costumes’. Costumes were wonderful
• Jordan: “Everything was perfect”

Props

• Phil: We had many things that were all broken
• Jordan: Needs his lights
• Jess: Needs her table
• Carla: Furniture back at all?
• Phil: Annoyed with adding props the last night, and then they broke. Needed clearer prop slots for Black Comedy.
• Erik: Emailed Matt the props list, but he didn’t get it. Could have ended up poorly, but things worked out.
• Phil: We need everything before Tech Sunday and no adding things after that.

Furniture

• Jess: Trying to set up a time to take it back.
• Phil: out before Saturday preferably, if not before next Friday.
• Carrie: would have liked to be more informed, but really, none of us knew anything about it.
• Mooridian’s seems like it’s their fault. Very shady apprehending of things that aren’t ours.

Sound

• Bennett’s not here, so we’re making fun of him.
• Craig: there was no phone in Hush...
• Adam T: Didn’t really expect it (the phone) to be used for anything other than what he built it for.
• Phil: we almost cut the phone after the 1st 2 nights, but we finally got it working. Still activated at irregular times.
• Jordan: Why did it happen?
• We explained- it’s a foot pedal.
• Jess: People should be careful.
• Phil: Told Sean to have a disk ready for back up.
• Jess: Never got electricity power up or down sound-
• Phil: Effects needed to be previewed before Tech Sunday
• Jordan: Never got Chorus of Angels sound cue that he wanted. Complained after second one, never got it and gave up.
• Carla: Bennett was under assumption things were cut
• Jess: Had cut it just before opening night, not before then.
• Erik: Record scratch, timing was bad, was never on time and sometimes wasn’t there. All of the cues were late.
• Phil: we had a malfunctioning CD player which needs to be fixed. We never set a deadline before tech Sunday for sound cues, which needed to happen.
• Chris K: The mic-ing in Hush was very poor- the one on Emily
• Jordan: it was cut.

Lights

• Chris: I liked most of my stuff except for the spots in Hush. Single light from one angle isn’t the best way to do it. I’ll do it differently next time.
• Erik: Tech Saturday: we tried to tell him stuff to fix, and on Sunday it wasn’t fixed.
• Chris: Fixed some stuff, not all.
• Jordan: The lighting in general was rushed. Felt last minute. If started a day or two earlier it would have been better. So, the cues were messed up on Saturday, and messed up on Tech Sunday.
• Phil: Everything we did on Saturday we could have done a week earlier: something worth considering.
• Carla: Expected Chris to look at script and know what she was referring to by her cues.
• Phil: Hugh was really fscking good. Out of all the ops I’ve worked with, really amazing.
• Mike: it was awesome. Hugh rocks!

Set

• Adam T: Having Joey with the van every Wed was extremely helpful. My first time designing a set. Thought at the beginning that what we had taken on was too much for a three week building time. This feeling was stronger during the process than it is now. I was promised 12-15 stage hands, didn’t happen. Thought we would have had 12 people so set changes would have gone quicker. Thanks to Phil for helping build Peaches (the sculpture).
• Phil: I was worried about set changes. Change to Stye better than we thought.
• Erik: People getting up during the set change.
• Phil: Managed to break and fix Peaches.
• Carrie: Not more people closing night than other nights.
• Jordan: Erik’s mom yelled at people to sit down.
• Phil/Ben: Needed a program note for intermission.
• Anna: both reviews indicated that RPI Community is stupid.
• Phil: the set has no Poly’s in it.

o We broke a lot of stuff. Needed to define set versus props. Needs to really be decided on show to show basis. o Rocking Chair: John repaired it well.

• Chris: The shelf was really really rickety.
• Ben: Doors weren’t really ever right.
• Phil: Based pretty much on budget* we were lucky we had left over doors.
• Erik: Black Comedy* could see “techie” helping get couch through door.
• Phil: No way to keep that from happening. We could have replaced door jam with metal, but $.
• Carrie: I never noticed it.
• Jordan: Not terribly noticeable.
• Phil: Had fun opening night grabbing glass off stage.
• Jess: Tried to tape stuff, didn’t think the bottles were going to shatter. Broke bowls, plates, glasses...
• Phil: John did an excellent job fixing things before they needed to be fixed.
• Ben: Rolling set piece was awesome.
• Chris: Should have put a teaser up to cover wires
• Phil: thought about painting it, but really it shouldn’t matter or distract from a good show. Given the sight lines in the house, it wasn’t really a big deal.
• Adam: Things were accomplished. : ) but, thought was too elaborate for EOP.
• John: really happy we didn’t use the Stye trap door effect.

Buddhas

• Phil: They broke good.
• Carrie: Jess?
• Jess: I want to smash the last one- they were great!

Publicity

• Ben:

o Went well as it could have. o Too many programs. o Marquee project failed.

• Phil: Really expensive, not very big. (marquee)
• Ben: thinks it would have worked if it was bigger.
• Phil: The lamination is the problem, we think.
• Ben:

o T Shirts: made money. o Press releases went out on time. o Carrie printed out cards to send to people o You can poster campus and not see a difference, but we need more money to do anything.

• Phil: what can we do?
• Chris K: mini- 12 angry men kind of thing.
• Jeff Moon: In the last few days definitely noticed the a cappella stuff.
• Phil: maybe 1 good poster, then many smaller and cheaper posters would be more effective.
• John: my roommate decides what goes on RPI TV.
• Adam T: Helping out- SPAIN was actually talked about in one of his classes.
• Phil: Different type of show, different publicity altogether.
• Jordan: Low turnout bound to happen because of one-acts. Two things we could do differently: 1) he heard that lately we’ve been out of touch with the community- networking has kind of disappeared. 2) We need to hit up freshman hill more- give them something to do.
• Phil: dorm storming something to consider. We made 90% of our income lines
• Mike: RPI TV is a good idea.
• Emily: Draft of the program that went around, so we went and wrote stuff and it didn’t show up or get fixed.
• Things didn’t get in and there were typos.
• Phil: we can move out the proofing date.
• Ben: hang it up, write in the stuff that needs to be fixed, and then correct it.
• Phil: need to enforce the deadline for bios.
• Carla: Stood up in class and announced the show. In terms of the program, she didn’t have time to look at it on Tech Sunday. Maybe a couple days before tech Sunday would be better.
• Jess: This was rushed, and different. (about tech Sunday)
• Phil: Push the program deadline back two days.
• Anna: Freak out overlaps, which sucks.
• Phil: We’re done with our schedule before they’re done with theirs.
• Chris: issue with parking: get students and valet.
• Phil: Inquire about opening parking garage on show nights.
• Jeff M: Not doing public performances because...?
• Phil: It’s a rights issue and an institute issue- doing random theater sometimes makes people angry.
• Jeff: We want more people from off campus to come here.
• Jordan: Sage has a more open attitude towards theater, we’d like them to come.
• Craig: the real problem is that the shows are concurrent and people get sick of theater.
• Kay: The children’s museum down the hill might be worth looking into for publicity.
• Carrie: The marquee took a really long time to get started and if we had known that we could have started painting earlier or figuring out money. Having it only a week out was more than mildly annoying.

ASMs

Mike

• Phil: Did a good job making decisions.
• Jess: Mike is awesome.
• Carla: Games over com, very good.

Kay

• Phil: Did a good job. Could have been a bit more forceful, but did well overall. Got the impression that you were to some extent afraid of the position. The show went really well, and everyone called cues well overall.
• Erik: She slept through a rehearsal!
• Kay: Claims it was jet lag.
• Kay: I wasn’t mean enough- Bob never took his shorts out of the hall after being told 8 or so times.

Carla

• Phil: You had the hardest show, I imagine. Calling cues was fine. You needed to be calmer in general, especially for this particular show. The cast needed to understand that things would be fine and get a relaxing vibe from the directorial staff, but I’m not sure that they got that. You should avoid getting the actors to hate you. You only have a certain quantity of “mean” to use, and you can’t use it all up. It’s important that you exert control over the cast and crew especially come show nights.
• Kay: you should listen in when it’s not your show, because I tried to get you a couple times and you weren’t there.
• Carla: You were quiet in the com.
• Phil: we had problems early on, be careful not to make eye contact with the actors while they’re onstage.

SM

• Adam T: I didn’t appreciate getting sucked into doing stage crew stuff, because I didn’t have time. I was willing to help, but I couldn’t. Would have appreciated starting recruiting people earlier.
• Phil: We ended up using John a lot more than we thought which worked out very well.
• John: Phil made fun of my trap door.
• Ben: was hoping you were going to be on Bennett more than you were.
• Phil: you have a good point. One of the problems was not having a hard deadline for cues.
• Ben: we needed somebody to tell him to do his job.
• Phil: we didn’t hear about that at all. Had we heard, I would have been on him both as the TD and the SM.
• Adam: Something about a boat at night going 40 knots.
• Phil: needed to come up more during production meeting.
• Kay: appreciated that Phil showed up in the wings at random times to do stuff.
• Jess: thanks for being calm, especially when things were getting crazy. You were able to keep things on track.
• Jordan: I second.
• Mike: taking naps during shows...maybe not so good.

Directors

Jess

• Mike: Jess is awesome.
• Craig: She’s a girl.
• Adam T: thanks for dealing with me not knowing what I was doing.
• Carla: Noticed during the shows that set would change props/set wise
• Phil: disconcerting that that was happening, but ended up ok. Need to really do that before hand, probably with a guy to make sure that your set was ok.
• Craig: Felt honored that she came to him as one director to another.

Erik

• We like his mom. She should be Playered.
• Kay: like how he was very flexible with the blocking and with the changes with trap door.
• Anna: did well with giving direction.
• Adam T: Erik was very flexible with everything that I had. Laid back, but still cared. : )
• Erik: well, it’s EOP and we have a limited budget.
• Carrie: Your show was the “good kid” of the three.

Jordan

• Carla: you were great to work with through the rough spots and everything. Thank you.
• Jeff M: With the casting/ensemble issues. When casting this kind of thing, be careful that you don’t have people...
• Jordan: Mykola wrote me in the beginning saying that he’d be busy, and we knew that he’d probably not be around the whole time.
• Jeff: We were under the impression that he didn’t have lines because you didn’t give them to him, but apparently that was talked about.
• Craig: You needed to be stern. We’d get a little pissed off because you wouldn’t yell at people. When people don’t do what they’re told, it pisses off those of us who are. I talked to a couple people and that’s the only reason I stayed. I would have been happier with less people (not same # better controlled, just less people).
• Emily: People were pretty lax about not coming to rehearsals, and those people never had any penalties against them.
• Jordan: A lot of it was scheduling, and Carla was going crazy trying to keep track of them.
• Phil: I don’t know of anything that would work as a penalty.
• Carla: we made phone calls, we talked to people, there were only 3 people that were constantly late, and we did all we could do.
• Jordan: there were many inexperienced people, and then there were people, like Gale, who were disrespectful towards me as a director.
• Ben: You threaten the person with being removed from the show, and then you follow through. That’s how you deal with that. Take them from the show and find someone to fill their role. Otherwise, people don’t take you seriously.
• Phil: there is a benefit to making an example of someone to some extent.
• Ben: EOP you’re working with friends, and you have to remove yourself and get over that- become a director.
• Kay: In regards to Gale: she said that things were always starting late, so it was ok for her to be late.
• Phil: Gale’s lateness is really a personality defect- it’s not a disrespect thing.
• Carla: having people late to show nights is unacceptable.
• Ben: another example is having understudies. Maybe not for EOP, but that’s really a kick in the ass.
• Phil: When Chris Lynch wasn’t here on a rehearsal night I went around to the cast and told them to decide what to do if he didn’t show.
• Emily: this is the second show I’ve done that this has happened, because the last time we talked about the same thing.
• Craig: it would have been pretty easy to have understudies in the ensemble of Hush.
• Ben: well, in this organization there are people around who will do it- take a role knowing they might not do it. Actors need to know that they’re replaceable.

Box

• Adam J: lots of people came to the show, reversing the trend from the last few shows. It’s good that we’re reaching other communities and other shows.
• Ben: I don’t know about programs.
• Adam J: (Went through finances.)
• Carrie: He did a fantastic job.

Producer

• Jordan loves her.
• Carla also loves Carrie.
• Ben: Carrie hounded me. This is a Good ThingTM.
• Jess: Carrie probably needs to be more relaxed about cast changes. This was likely a miscommunication.
• Jordan: The cast should’ve come to me instead of Carrie, as I won’t change otherwise. More feedback.
• Mike: Reiterates that the cast problems were an initial miscommunication that was corrected.
• Best produced EOP in recent memory.
• Ben: Availability of producer is very important and was present.
• Adam J: It was nice having regular meetings through out the course of the production- very helpful knowing what was going on.

Cast

• Craig: Chris Lynch adding things closing night- as a fellow actor is was completely unprofessional.
• Jordan: Talked to him afterwards. Laura told him to go ahead and do whatever he wanted.
• Mike: He was back there getting pissed off for a long time before the show.
• Craig: we were scared that she was in danger
• Phil: Nobody knew about it, and in a real show that runs for longer that’s something the SM would yell at him about.
• Jess: Along the lines of people adding things- Courtney would do things that were completely new every night. She blew out the candle and the actors had to react, lights had to react. This happened repeatedly that she would change things and if she’s in another show people need to be aware.
• Mike: Thanks to my actors for being on top of things- they were very break proof.
• Jordan: about competent actors- it might be a good idea to look into having workshops for acting. As an organization it might be a good idea to look into this to increase the level of professionalism. (i.e. upstaging, changing things, basic things that they don’t know, stage left, stage right, upstage downstage) The basic stuff needs to be learned.

o **There was a dance performed by Jess and Mike**

• Ben: you need to speak in their language.
• Phil: Workshops would be helpful for both actors and technicians.
• Jeff: Emily did a good job scaring people into doing things. Jake was really good- had a great work ethic.
• Jordan: He was very focused and on top of things.
• Carla: Cast was very good at freezing.
• Kay: My cast was awesome and very professional. The only problems were with Bob, but he was much improved.
• Jess: My cast was amazing because they had to deal with so many things. They were able to deal with many things.

These notes were compiled by Carrie DePetris in hopefully a fairly unbiased fashion. As the Producer, she’d like to mention that in the future it would be better if someone other than the producer takes notes at the Post Mortem, as it is very difficult to comment and type at the same time.