**Editor’s Note: In addition to being one of the hosts of this blog, Gina Marie Hayes is also Assistant Director of Love’s Labor’s Lost.  Gina shares some thoughts on today’s first preview of LLL.

The lights shine, the music swells, and four beautiful women sweep onto the stage in exquisite evening dresses. It’s a scene that could be described by the lyrics of “Some Enchanted Evening…” *

Except it’s bright daylight.

Matinees are a special challenge here at Shakespeare Santa Cruz, and the opening preview of Love’s Labor’s Lost just happened to be scheduled as a 2pm matinee. As I write this, the last of the audience has just shuffled out of the Glen, happily chatting about the performance they just saw, and I’m left in the Glen to reflect.

The thing about a Matinee is that it really showcases the work of the clowns. J. Todd Adams, who is playing Costard in our production, has spent his past few weeks “parfecting” his detailed mannerisms, magic tricks, and bawdy jokes that work quite well during our daytime rehearsals, so they naturally play well at a Matinee.  Our Don Armado, played by Victor Talmadge, seems even more pitiable and beloved in the harsh light of day, although I’m sure that darkness will lend him a swarthy romantic quality as well. And the parade of the Worthies – well, I won’t give away any spoilers. Suffice it to say they are hilarious at any o’clock.

As Assistant Director, I have my nose in the script for much of the rehearsal process, underlining words for the actors to emphasize, scribbling notes from the Director in the margins, and adding word definitions, dramaturgy, or simply entrances and exits anywhere I can find space for them. This helps me keep track throughout rehearsals of what notes the Director has given the actors and if any of them have changed since we last went through that particular scene. This is all well and good, but what is truly gratifying is the moment when I am able to put down my script and watch the actors (who have internalized all their notes long before) arrive on stage and incite the audience to raucous laughter.

Some audience members have told me that they come only to the Matinees. Others swear by evening performances. For me, there’s nothing like seeing a play in broad daylight and under the glow of the stage lights at night to know how truly universal it is. And though I may be biased, I’m convinced that Love’s Labor’s Lost plays well in all lights.

–Gina, Assistant Director on Love’s Labor’s Lost

*A song that Director Scott Wentworth frequently hummed in rehearsal before we added in sound cues.

**Note from Gina: Tonight’s preview of The Lion In Winter marks the opening of the 2010 Festival — woo hoo!  Can’t believe it’s already here, and will be over before we know it.  Hope to see you all this summer.  It’s going to be an amazing season!

My inner child is wildly happy right now.  She is just elated.  That’s because I’ve finally become what I wanted to be as a little girl: a princess.

No, not in real life (sigh).  But starting tonight you can find me onstage as French princess Alais Capet in SSC’s production of The Lion in Winter.  Under the leadership of the incomparable Richard E.T. White, our director, we just finished that busy and exciting time in the rehearsal process called tech.  Tech involves moving into the theater, acting on the set for the first time, and spending a few days working with all the design elements.  This is when the play comes to life, when months of preparation come together to create theater.

I’m always slightly shocked during the first day of tech, like a kid who’s forgotten it’s Christmas and suddenly finds presents everywhere.  In this case, I found myself onstage in an exquisite blue gown, surrounded by our magnificent castle of a set, watching as designers and technicians adjusted sound levels or refocused lights.  And the design in this show is nothing less than spectacular.  You’ll have to see for yourself the stunning set created by John Iacovelli, which glows under Kent Dorsey’s beautiful lighting; or the utterly gorgeous costumes by B. Modern, complemented perfectly by Jessica Carter’s and Jakey Hicks’ wigs and hair styling.  The awesome music and soundscape were composed by the fiercely talented Bonfire Madigan Shive in collaboration with sound designer Gregory Scharpen.  And the candelabras that look straight out of 1183?  Those, and all the other 12th century-esque objects, were made by the props department under the leadership of Lydia Bushfield.  These designers, with their tireless crews, have given us a world worthy of James Goldman’s funny, ferocious script.

Mairin (center) with acting interns Kelvyn Mitchell, Alexandra Pucci, Brendan Ward, and dresser Olivia Schlueter-Corey

Tonight we have the honor of opening SSC’s 29th season with our first preview of The Lion in Winter.  After a month of rehearsal and four days of tech, we’re ready.  As the afternoon becomes evening, I’ll bounce into the dressing room, stuffing my car keys and cell phone in my bag, and slip out an hour later as a princess from 1183.  I’ll have stopped thinking about the world outside and will turn my mind toward Alais and Henry; kings and queens; love and family.  I’ll be backstage, excited to spend the next two hours as a character I’ve grown to know and love (and who is, I’ve discovered, not just a princess but a warrior as well), and I’ll be ready to welcome that final, vital element to complete our piece – that is, the audience – you!

–Mairin Lee, Actor (Alais Capet in The Lion In Winter)

(**Note from Jessi: Sara Wilbourne worked for SSC for many years in the staff position that I now hold.  This summer, she’s come out of retirement to work in several different areas of the Festival. . . we are thrilled to have her calm demeanor, years of expertise, and lively spirit around again!)

After being an arts administrator or the past 15 years, I really wanted to have an integral role (no matter how small) in the productions and as well as a backstage theatrical experience.

Welcome to: The World of Minutiae
Part I: Prop Shop

Sara working on those ubiquitous candles for "The Lion In Winter."

This summer I have had the opportunity to work under the tutelage of Props Master Lydia Bushfield. Daily I am astounded by the depth and breadth of her knowledge and creativity, as well as that of set designers John Iacovelli and Michael Ganio. I’ ve worked on 1) multiple hand-written letters, which have important supporting roles in Love’s Labor’s Lost; 2) candles candles candles for The Lion in Winter (one task: giving our 21st century dripless candles that medieval look by hand-dripping wax down the candle surface); 3) “frosting” the glass in lanterns, with several layers of specific spray paint and then using the ubiquitous gaff tape to hold the lantern handles upright; 4) generally: taping, sewing, hot-glueing, sand-papering, painting…. the list goes on…

One Saturday Lydia and I spent some quality time at the SC flea market where we scored medieval-looking bottles, a hairbrush and mirror set for a queen, and a HUGE old trunk perfect for King Philip of France. These examples are a mere drop in the proverbial bucket of what the prop shop finds and creates.

When watching the plays, keep your eye out for anything an actor handles or sits on as well as all the set enhancements. That is the prop shop at work.

Part II: Wardrobe

My second job this summer is running wardrobe. Once the costumes are all made, they are handed off to the wardrobe department, which is the on-the-scene group at every show making sure everything is clean, mended, and in the right place at the right time. This is my first experience with this particular part of a theater production. What’s not to love? Rubbing elbows with the actors, getting up close and personal with all (and I mean all) of their costume garments, on show days being the first to arrive and the last to leave. What makes all of this possible is ORGANIZATION. We’ve got: costume piece lists (for checking both before and after each show), weapons lists, scene breakdown by character lists, mending lists, laundry and dry cleaning lists, (quick) change lists….. thank goodness.

In a week I’ll know in my bones everything about what is happening when and where, but tonight is our first dress rehearsal with Love’s Labor’s Lost, and there is still much to be known. For now – I am loving those lists!

Sara and costume shop manager Noah Marin.

Tonight, specific wardrobe jobs will assigned, and we will begin to morph into a well-oiled team, helping our respective shows to run smoothly.

The Lion in Winter is reasonable, from a wardrobe point of view (7 characters, one quick change). Love’s Labor’s Lost, of course, has many more characters, and it is out in the Glen rather than on the indoor stage. Almost everyone in LLL changes his/her clothes at some point, but not all in a 2 minute quick change. Whew! We actually have three locations to monitor: the main dressing room, the interns’ dressing room, and the Glen backstage. Good thing there are three on the wardrobe crew for this show. There will be just enough going on to keep us alert and interested; I don’t foresee resorting to knitting during long wardrobe lulls…….

Take a breath. Use the lists. Break a leg!

–Sara Wilbourne, Jill-of-all-Trades

I am writing this while I am eating my lunch, because this is about as close to a lunch break as I am going to get today! Technical rehearsals have begun for Love’s Labor’s Lost and The Lion in Winter and that means crunch time for the prop shop. We are a small, but scrappy bunch, the prop shop. There’s myself, the prop master, responsible for not only the research that goes into figuring out what each prop should look like and for building as much as time will allow me, but also the day-to-day running of the shop, making sure we have all of the necessary tools and supplies we need to create the props, keeping track of the budget, attending design and production meetings and generally trying to find, build, recreate, beg, borrow or steal around 300 props. Working with me is: an artisan, Caroline (a talented craftsperson who continually “makes purses out of sows ears” as we say in the south); Richard (the prop carpenter who builds all of the large projects like the bed you will see in LION); Sara (who has come out of the core offices after ten years to get her hands dirty in the prop shop); Scott (the prop shopper who bravely goes out everyday to procure anything we might need from supplies to trying to find just the right lanterns for the soldiers to carry in OTHELLO — when you see those lanterns think about Scott and the hours, and I do mean hours, he shopped to find just the right ones); and I also have an intern, Mary, (who has graciously completed so many tedious projects like hand writing all of the documents in LION).  Together, we are responsible for everything you see that can move off the set or the “properties” of the set if you will. That includes hand props, furniture, set dressing, weapons, consumables and the list goes on.

As I write, Sara and Mary are trying to make the handles on the five lanterns for LLL stay in a permanent upright position, as requested in rehearsal notes a few days ago. Why, you may ask? Ours in the prop shop is not to question, just to make the magic happen. Caroline is creating the leather wraps that will hold the candles on the sconces that yesterday Laura Julio spent an entire day scroll sawing out of wood (yes, they are wood painted to look like iron). Just prior to that, Caroline dry brushed down the ferret chair (bet you never thought you’d see that sentence in print.) Richard is cutting the posts off the foot board that he built yesterday for safety reasons and adding them to the canopy which appears on the bed later in LION. (Yes, some days we build, some days we deconstruct what we just built yesterday).  Next door, a fabulous costume intern, Renee, is cutting some 50 yards of blue dupioni which will drape anything that stands still when Phillip makes his entrance in LION. Scott is off in Watsonville buying a range of things from a twiggy basket (not too tall, not too short) to the metal that will be forged into the blood dagger for LION. (Joe, our technical director, and I are pooling our talents to create this little piece of stage magic.) And I am off to the Glen to do a fire arms test for OTHELLO. We have a real gun, which fires blanks, but a real gun nonetheless. It is kept under lock and key and it is my job to make sure it functions properly before putting it in the actor’s hands. Yes, I am like the person who tastes the food for royalty to make sure it’s not poison.  We have a lock-up in the props shop full of guns, knives, daggers, swords, bows and arrows. If you need something from me in the next few days I suggest you speak softly and carry a big stick. Well, off to test the gun and try to whittle down the some 100 to-do line items on my list. When you come see the shows remember to notice how nicely those handles stay upright on the lanterns in LLL!

–Lydia Bushfield

Next up in The Green Room: Acting Intern Alexandra Pucci

Pop Quiz!

A dramaturg is:
a) German for smart-ass
b) a person who does historical research for a specific production of a play
c) a play editor or translator
d) a sociologist*
e) all of the above

Ok everyone, hum the Jeopardy theme song to yourselves while I get my tenth cup of tea for the day. (Earl Grey. Hot.)

I’m back, are you ready for the answer? Excellent. If you answered e) all of the above you would be….wrong. German for smartass is “Klugscheisser”. But all the other ones are correct, so never fear. (So, next time somebody brings out that tired joke about dramaturges being smartasses, you can show off just how much of a “dramaturg” you are by correcting their German.) Ja voll!

Textual Consultant Michael Warren and Dramaturgical Assistant Mara Sherman

My job as Dramaturgical Assistant to The Lion in Winter is winding down – the research portion of my job ended a week or so ago, and with tech starting TODAY (the 15th) there probably wont be more for me to do until previews start or I can see a full run through again.

(Tech, for those happy few of you who haven’t experienced it, is a series of rehearsals where the technical elements of a play – lights, sound, props – are added. Rehearsals last all day (usually ten or twelve hours) while the designers and stage manager work their magic.)

When tech is over and we get in to full dress rehearsals and previews, I’ll probably take a few notes – point out when the actors have their backsides to the audience, correct line flubs, but really my job at this point is to provide moral support and to laugh at the right times during runs.

That’s all for now. See you at the theater!
–Mara Sherman, Dramaturgical Assistant

*I’m serious- there is a branch of Sociology called Dramaturgy. Google it.

Next in The Green Room: Props Master Lydia Bushfield

As a directing intern, the majority of my job is to sit tight, keep quiet, and learn – so you can imagine my excitement when it came time in rehearsal for us to go down to the Glen and learn art of archery. The hunting scene in Act IV of Love’s Labor’s Lost calls for the four ladies of the court to shoot bows and arrows, ostensibly at deer.  Deer seem hardly their main object, as Boyet quickly highlights that these “shooters” may well be more interested in shooting Cupid-arrows at their “suitors” than bloodying up some deer.  Our goal, of course, is to bloody no one at all, and stage management carefully scoured the area for stray bicycle riders before we began the first bow and arrow lesson. I didn’t think I liked sports—and was pretty certain I hated violence, but (at least when our dramaturg/archer extraordinaire Kayt Ahnberg does it) archery is so elegant – and also empowering (though still definitely scary!)

It is really a shame archery has fallen out of style.  There is really something to be said for the thrill of the hunt – and for once the women are on the hunting side.  This is actually a play in which women have remarkable control over relationship.  These men who have cloistered themselves in accordance with an absurd vow to study with no sleep, food, or female contact, are made the “Juliets” of the balcony scene – with the women pursuing their suits from below (more businesslike in nature than Romeo’s) while the men play Juliet from inside their palace walls.

Fun as all the antics are, the really incredible part of this process has been seeing all these artists, young and old, dive head first into the rich and often complex language of this play.  Veterans of the Shakespearean stage and interns alike engage in this war of wits, challenging themselves and each other to discover the tools that Shakespeare has given us to use in the text.

This afternoon our director worked with the younger actors on some of their speeches and it was amazing to see just how much Shakespeare gives you in the text when someone who’s devoted his life to performing Shakespeare helps us see it..  A seemingly ordinary line of text, “Ay me, I am forsworn,” comes alive brilliantly when you realize what can be done when you hum the mmmms and nnnnns hum and draw out all the long vowels.  As Brett (Longaville) sighed “Ay me,” I could really hear both the despair and the excitement of being “out of the way,” head over heels in love with love.

We were restaging the final performance of the “Nine Worthies” in rehearsal this evening, complete with armour, fake muscle arms, snakes, and helmets with the largest plumes I’ve ever seen.  Yet even as the men devolved from frat boys to four year olds with the most outrageous antics, we were reminded by Scott that the true humour comes from the language of this play.  Scott, half-exasperated, half-elated keeps saying “this play just won’t be pushed!  You try to make it do something it’s not meant to and fights right back.”  More and more I find that, funny as the characters are that these actors are creating, I laugh the hardest when Shakespeare wants me to laugh – at the language itself.

–Avital Rutenberg Schoenberg

Next up in The Green Room: Acting Intern Emily McKeown

Happy 4^th of July everyone! After a full week of rehearsals, including learning fight choreography in Othello, music for Love’s Labor’s Lost, and a stumble through, I am very excited to go to the Annual 4^th of July company picnic. Our day was shortened so that we could celebrate, but in no way was it a light rehearsal because with such a short process every minute counts. Today we started by working on the Cassio and Montano fight in Othello and quickly moved to a stumble through of Love’s Labor’s Lost’s first act. The run-thru went well, and it was nice to see everyone’s hard work come together, especially moments that I hadn’t seen

Actors Shashona Brooks and Sherill Turner at the SSC 4th of July picnic.

After the run thru, everyone slowly made their way over to the Stevenson Knoll, bringing homemade treats (I brought a delicious lemon cake!). There were burgers and hot dogs on the grill and as I put a large plate of food together, I sat myself down in a patch of sunlight overlooking the ocean. The SSC company picnic is a wonderful time where cast mates and crew members have a chance to sit down together and chat about the process thus far and life outside of the festival.

Once we let our food digest some of the company went to the field to play softball and soccer. I didn’t participate, but watched and supported from the hill. After the picnic, most of company walked along West Cliff to watch the local fireworks. It was a wonderful afternoon and evening with an exciting group of people. I am thrilled to be working with such a talented group of artists, and can’t wait to see what these productions will be on opening night! Hope to see you all there!

–Shashona Brooks, Actor
(**Note from Jessi: you can see Shashona this summer as Jaquenetta in Love’s Labor’s Lost, and the Messenger in Othello.)

Next up in The Green Room: Directing Intern Avital Rutenberg Schoenberg

greenroom [ˈgriːnˌruːm -ˌrʊm] n (Performing Arts / Theatre) (esp formerly) a backstage room in a theatre where performers await their entrance.

Hello and welcome to The Green Room — the official blog of Shakespeare Santa Cruz! We’re so excited to be able to bring you voices from backstage on The Lion in Winter, Love’s Labor’s Lost, Othello, and La Ronde (our Fringe show). We can’t wait for you to hear from some of our Actors, Stage Managers, Technicians and more. But first. . . we’ll be your hosts this season, so here’s a little bit about us (you can see our photo to the left):

Gina: Year-round I am the Assistant to the Artistic Director and Intern Coordinator for Shakespeare Santa Cruz.  This involves taking care of the Artistic Director’s Schedule, helping to arrange Casting and Intern selection, and making sure all the Interns get to the Festival as easily as possible (among many other things)!   This summer I’m also very excited to be Assistant Director on Love’s Labor’s Lost! Typically an Assistant Director is another set of eyes and ears in the rehearsal room, and will take notes or offer suggestions regarding the production when asked. It’s a dream come true to be able to work for a professional repertory theatre company in so many capacities.

Jessi: I am officially on the SSC staff year round as the Administrative Coordinator, which means I take care of many paper worky type things. I also coordinate Shakespeare to Go, our community touring program that visits area schools and community centers each spring. During the summer I take care of anything from paychecks to table cloths for the front of house. This is my 11th season with SSC and I am thrilled to help bring you these productions. I myself have not been in rehearsal yet but have been at many design meetings and production meetings. I can tell you that everyone has hit the ground running and I am seeing great ideas come out of the rehearsal room. I really hope that you enjoy reading the blog this year and I will see you at the shows!

We’ve just begun our second week of rehearsals for all 4 productions. So, watch this space to get the backstage scoop on SSC’s 2010 Summer Season!

Coming up next in The Green Room: Actor Shashona Brooks