Hanging with the Dream Team

Playwright Katharine Sherman writes about beginning technical rehearsals:

We’re in tech for The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood!

Something I love about tech is the community of people working on the show expanding. This week we have Søren Olsen and Dan Dukich in the room with us. They’ve been on ladders, hanging microphones, checking microphones, walking through the house to see and hear from every angle. We started adding light and sound cues to the show last night and we’re over the moon about it.

Søren and Dan are the dream team. They’ve worked together - and with David - before. I asked Søren a bit about how he begins to make worlds with light:

You start with the background,
and then pick out pieces of the foreground that are the most interesting.
Light is a subtractive art in general, like sculpture -
your canvas has the subjects on it -  you’re removing elements to make your subjects visible.

I asked him if there was anything unusual about lighting this piece:

In devised theatre, the context or the setting isn't given
so light shapes the world most distinctly - it’s a larger challenge than lighting a play or musical set in a certain time and place.
You have to know what world you’re in, and I have to build that world out of light.

Søren and Dan have a shorthand. Last night they worked seamlessly together building moments, knowing that light and sound work together to create variation, tempo and tone. It was creepy, and I wrote down a conversation they had :

Dan: Søren, are you doing any kind of fire effect?
Søren: Not an effect but a shift.
Dan: When does it start?
Søren: I was gonna take it off your sound how long is the cue.
Dan: About twelve seconds.
Søren: Thank you.

Our dream team doesn’t end there. On Saturday, Alex Olsen came in to paint the stage. On Monday night, we welcomed board op Steve Modena to the room.

Beginning to see the show with lights and sound (not to mention the devastatingly attractive costumes) has been incredible so far. It’s going to be beautiful - get your tickets now here!

      ~Katharine