SCENE CHANGES

[Musicaldudepeter]

Posted: 5/20/11 at 7:53am

I just viewed (probably illegally) the Lincoln Center revival of SOUTH PACIFIC on YouTube and it was breathtaking.

One of the things I loved about it was the incredibly quick and beautifully cinematic transitions between scenes, going from Company Street to the Commander's office, from the Bathing area to Emile's house, the scene changes are just as interesting as the show itself

What I noticed is that a lot of the actors (so it seems) brought on props and sets (tables etc) to the scene in which they were next in; Flys dropped down (backdrops, etc) as well

But on Broadway, are there such things as "stage crews" like in amateur community theater? People dressed in black that come on to change a scene during a blackout. There is no real blackout in this production of SOUTH PACIFIC for example; its like as if the scene changes are meant to be witnessed by the audience.

When did all the electronic stage stuff start to develop on Broadway for instance - sets (tables, chairs) being wheeled on, on stage on their own or electronically moved on without any people pushing them on...

Anyone have any thoughts on this? I'd love to hear them!

[dramarama3]

Posted: 5/20/11 at 7:57am

There is definitely such thing as a 'stage crew', but I think these days more and more of the work is done pre-production in order to maintain a more fluid, actor-based show.

[Actor2]

Posted: 5/20/11 at 10:41am

This is what I love most about professional theatre. For the most part, scene changes are integrated and truly a PART of the performance. This is so vital to ensure a non-stop enjoyable viewing experience.

In most community theater and educational productions, the moments when the stage crew comes out to change the scene while incidental musical plays in the background is grating and takes the audience out of the mood of the piece.

When I direct, I strive to make the transitions as entertaining and sense engrossing as the scenes and songs on stage. In this way, we're not hiding the transitions. We're embracing and celebrating them.

[charlesjguiteau]

Posted: 5/20/11 at 5:53pm

A little (simplified) history on Broadway Musical Set Design 101.

Early in the last century shows fell into 2 categories: extravaganzas like "Showboat" had elaborate stage machinery, elevator stages, turntables and treadmills combined with painted wing and drop sets. Sets were changed behind a drop curtain of some kind. Then there were the smaller intimate shows containing 2, 3 or 4 acts. One set per act, separated by an intermission when the stage crews would switch to the next set.

The true classic structure of the Broadway musical began in the 1930's and lasted through 50's and later. It involved alternating scenes between full-stage sets and in-one scenes played downstage of a painted drop. Drop comes in; stage crew tears around switching the set upstage (bang, bang, ouch, bang); drop goes up; behold new set upstage! Nearly all the scripts of the Golden Age (the Rogers & Hammerstein years) are structured this way.

But in the 40's great designers like Jo Mielziner and Oliver Smith began adapting more cinematic techniques to the stage. Winches began to pull wagons (castered platforms) with sections of the set on and off in view of the audience for straight plays and musicals alike. Grooves cut into the stage deck could "steer" pieces on and off stage in more and more sophisticated patterns. The original My fair Lady used 2 huge turntables to pivot one set after another into place, although even there, Lerner's script still depends on the basic fullstage/ downstage/ fullstage structure.

In the 60's those wagons were still the way to go, but by the 70's, ever sleeker pallets came into use, allowing chairs and tables to glide on and off on what seemed to be just the thickness of the carpet underneath them (actually beveled deck pieces 1 1/2" thick floating on teflon strips). If you visited the crossover space below the stages of those shows, you'd find an army of hand-operated winches with steel cables running through banks of pulleys up to the maze of grooves in the stage deck above.

And the decks above continued to employ all the tricks of the long-ago age of the extravaganza: treadmills were in constant use (2 were busy throughout David Mitchell's "Annie" carrying characters, set pieces and orphans' cots on and off stage). In Mitchell's "I Remember Mama" a turntable within a larger turntable let Mama's house rotate and glide around the stage at will.

By the early '80's computers entered the picture to operate the winches and turntables that men had run till then. The elaborate choreography of Robin Wagner's spinning light towers in "Dreamgirls" wouldn't have been possible without the computer technology that had just arrived on the scene. Even the mega-productions like "Phantom of the Opera" of Maria Bjornson, or "Les Mis" and "Sunset Boulevard" of John Napier continued to rely on winches, pallets, turntables and elevators. The decades since have only added more muscle and fewer human operators to the equation of how to get furniture on and off the stage.

There will be a pop-quiz tomorrow.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 5/20/11 at 6:04pm

I remember a production of HARVEY that had scene shifts that I loved so much that I went back and saw it a second time. The set changes were done by folks dressed as mental patients from the hospital and they did all sorts of funny stuff with the furniture while switching back and forth between the hospital and the house.

[SweeneyPhanatic]

Posted: 5/20/11 at 6:25pm

I saw the tour of "Fiddler On the Roof" with Harvey Fierstein last year. I know professional productions of "Fiddler" reproduce the original staging of the show (I imagine some amateur productions do the same. When I did it in high school, we had a whole book our director was taking some of the staging from). What I want to know is if the scenes changes I saw in that tour were the same changes made in the original production. They were very smooth, with buildings gliding from one side of the stage to another, opening up or spinning around to create a new playing space.

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 5/20/11 at 8:44pm

charlesjguiteau,

I GREATLY appreciate your wonderful post, but I simply MUST make one addition. It is wonderful to mention the work of Jo Mielziner and Oliver Smith, but it is a sin to exclude the work of Bill and Jean Eckart, especially when discussing the introduction of show decks and winches into avista scene changes - they designed "Mister Johnson" using a show deck and winches and 40 scene changes in 1956, not to mention their work on numerous other shows -- Body Beautiful (with the unfurling show curtain and the working sauna), The Golden Apple, Once Upon A Mattress, Damn Yankees (another iconic show curtain), Mame, Lil Abner, Julie Andrews' Cinderella, Pajama game, Fiorello! (with a great usage of double turntables), She Loves me (with THREE interlocking turntables).. often breaking the rules and advancing the art and technology of theatrical scenic design (not to mentional television serial design), creating still iconic images and mentoring great designers of the future - including the wonderful Tharon Musser...

NO discussion of scenic design in The Golden Age and the advances of the craft should exclude these two artists. The book "The Performing Set: The Broadway Designs of William and jean Eckart" by Andrew B. Harris is required reading to understand a pivotal time in Broadway and the design and technology of Broadway shows.

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 5/20/11 at 8:44pm

*double post* Updated On: 5/20/11 at 08:44 PM

[charlesjguiteau]

Posted: 5/20/11 at 8:50pm

Harvey's Fiddler tour was probably based on the 2004 revival that David Leveaux directed on Broadway in which Harvey replaced Alfred Molina as Tevye. That set (and production in general) was a radical reconception of the original Jerome Robbins production from 1964. Leveaux used a raked deck surrounded by birch trees and flying pieces for most of the sets. By contrast the original set designed by Boris Aronson featured a turntable that embodied the circle of the village and that facilitated all the set changes. In 1964 cast members would roll Tevye's house unit or the tavern onto the revolve and the turntable would rotate the pieces from exterior to interior, etc. But even Fiddler used that old convention of in-one curtains at several points in the show (like for Yente's "I Just Heard") to cover crews resetting the scene upstage.

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 5/20/11 at 9:11pm

The tour with Harvey was, indeed, based on the Robbins staging and not the Leveaux revival.

The tour opened with Topol as Tevye, with Fierstein coming in as a replacement. It is currently out on a Non-eq contract. Both legs of the tour have been produced by Troika.

The scene design is my Steven Gilliam and is inspired by the original Aronson design in some ways, but makes no use of a turntable. the production was designed utilizing an automated show deck, but was eventually redesigned (part way through Fierstein's run) to eliminate the automated show deck and feature a false proscenium that may vary in size as dictated by the host venues. THAT design is currently on tour.

Here are the designs, including shift plots, for the tour as it originally opened --
http://www.trinity.edu/sgilliam/SLG/FIDDLER/TROIKA/homepage.html

Here is the same design, as revised to eliminate the automation --
http://www.trinity.edu/sgilliam/SLG/FIDDLER/TROIKA2010/homepage.html

:)

[charlesjguiteau]

Posted: 5/20/11 at 9:12pm

broadwayguy, You're 100% right to acknowledge the Eckarts' amazing contribution to the art of moving scenery. And everything new is built on the shoulders of our forebearers: the triple turntables in Tony Walton's stunning design for "The Real Thing" in '84 are a direct descendant of the Eckart's design for "She Loves Me".

And if we're talking the honor roll of greatest Golden Age set designers? Along with Mielziner, Oliver Smith and the Eckart's I would also include Howard Bay, Peter Larkin, and the eternal Boris Aronson.

[mikem]

Posted: 5/20/11 at 10:08pm

I also love the cinematic scene transitions of the Lincoln Center production of South Pacific, particularly the first one where they go from Emile's house directly into the sailors coming over the hill. Bartlett Sher did a fantastic job in taking advantage of the depth of the Beaumont stage to make those kind of seamless transitions.

As an aside, some of the guys in sailor uniforms who were moving things around on the stage were stagehands, not actors. There was a crew helping with set changes, just not dressed in black.

[bwayphreak234]

Posted: 5/20/11 at 10:40pm

I love how the scene changes for Women on the Verge were done with the projections coming in and out, and withe the four treadmills moving the pieces in and out seamlessly.

[SweeneyPhanatic]

Posted: 5/20/11 at 11:08pm

broadwayguy2: Wow! Those are cool, thanks for the links. I'm a little confused though. You said during Harvey's time on the tour, they eliminated the automated deck, and added the false proscenium. When I saw it in Atlanta, it clearly had its own proscenium arch (which I thought was fantastic), but also the set pieces were definitely moving around without being pushed & shoved by the actors/crew. I'm just wondering if the changes were staggered between different cities, of if the units were being manually controlled, and the movers were just VERY well-concealed.

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 5/21/11 at 1:07am

Sweeney,
You are very welcome. Now, to clear your confusion. The tour of Fiddler was designed, originally, Mr. Gilliam to feature an automated show deck and a false proscenium that had a 40' wide opening. when Topol left the production, Harvey assumed the role of Tevye. This, based on your description, is what YOU saw in Atlanta - the full original Gilliam design with automation and 40' proscenium, starring Mr. Fierstein.
During Mr. Fierstein's tenure, the creative redesigned the show to eliminate the automation - cutting the show deck and altering existing scenery to allow the cast and costumed crew to maneuver tham around the stage and integrating push-sticks into other units to allow crew members to push some pieces on and off. The false proscenium was also changed in order for the show to play a wider variety of venues.. the NEW false proscenium could be reduced to a 36' opening. Those changes were finalized, according to Mr. Gilliam's site, in April and May 2010.. they would have been added into the show at least a few months AFTER that. That reduced version - no show deck and a proscenium that may be varied in size - is what Troika carried over to the current non-equity tour.

Charles, VERY well said.

[bwayphreak234]

Posted: 5/21/11 at 1:10am

I saw Fiddler once with Topol and the automation was incredible and the set was stunning. I saw it again without the automation and the stage was too small for those big set pieces. The pieces were rather unwieldy for the cast to move, and the transitions just got clunky and awkward

[charlesjguiteau]

Posted: 5/21/11 at 11:39am

broadwayguy, terrific of you to share the actual docs on the Fiddler tour. Wow, great resource. I feel especially protective of the original '64 design of the show since Fiddler was MY first Broadway show, back in '67 with Harry Goz as Tevye.

Sadly cutting the turntable cuts more than a way for scenery to move around the stage. It cut one of the basic metaphors of Aronson's original design. The original proscenium was a circle of shtetl houses, and the deck's circular motion supported that point. My memory of the final scene on an empty stage has the cast of the village spend one last moment together in a complete circle. Then the deck slowly begins to revolve as family groupings step off one by one and exit till it's just Tevye's family and his cart. Counter to the revolve Tevye pulls the cart (remaining in place) and when the revolve stops, he pulls the cart around to reveal the Fiddler who plays those final notes, Tevye signals him to join them, and the curtain falls. That Jerry Robbins guy really knew what he was doing.

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 5/21/11 at 1:22pm

You're very welcome. I am glad to have wandered across Mr. Gilliam's site a long while back.

It would be wonderful to see the original ending to Fiddler under Robbins, much as I would LOVE to see the original Lil Abner's "Sadie Hawkins Day Race" ballet, a 20 minute dance / chase sequence where the scenery never stopped moving.

A fun point - Tharon Musser served as the Eckart's assistant for Lil Abner and their tutoring allowed her to pass the exam to join the designer's union as a set designer.

Updated On: 5/21/11 at 01:22 PM

[Jon]

Posted: 5/21/11 at 1:40pm

The original production of Sweeney Todd had stagehands in costume, blending in with the ensemble, to turn the central "cube" unit (the bakeshop/barbershop). They also had two follow spot operators, also in costume, visible on stage, in the upper side decks of the superstructure. (actually an old iron foundry)

[My Oh My]

Posted: 5/21/11 at 6:00pm

I agree that scene changes done by stagehands can take an audience out of the play, but it really depends how it's done. I've seen shows that integrate the changes done by stagehands in a way that is clever and amusing to audiences. If you just have a bunch of people randomly come out and start to move stuff, then I can see how distracting that could be.