Berkeley Rep Blog
Category archive: At the theatre
Smiles, everyone. Smiles!
posted by Terence Keane on Fri, Oct 24, 2008
in At the theatre
We're always looking for ways to let our audience peek behind the scenes -- and to help you understand how many people it actually takes to put on a show. So, even before we had this blog, we had staff photo day.
Staff PHOTO Day?
Ahhh!
Around here, those words are spoken with a particular emphasis. Some people dread them. Some people get excited. Some people speak them with disdain. Others spend all year dreaming up kooky ideas.
Every fall, we ask each department to pose for a picture. We suggest coming up with a theme that makes the shot fun to look at it, while also telling us a little bit about what that team contributes to the theatre. Then we post the photos in the lobby for everyone to see.
So I just spent the entire day on the Roda stage while our faithful photographer, Kevin Berne, snapped pictures of all my co-workers.
This year the staff had a lot of fun ideas. But my favorite pictures came when Tofu, our box office mascot, ran wild while his co-workers set up for their photo. (Those stockings, by the way, belong to Christina Cone, our webmaster.)
Run, Tofu, run!
Thanks to Kevin for donating his time. To check out more of his work, visit kevinberne.com.
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Box office loves Lucy
posted by Elana McKernan on Wed, Oct 22, 2008
in At the theatre
At times I'm shocked by how much working in the box office feels like being trapped inside a 1950s-1960s sitcom.
Most old-school sitcoms are based around dysfunctional families. Due to our close quarters, small staff, and the communal nature of our work, I often feel like going to work is entering into an established family dynamic. We have Christine Bond, the box office manager, who is the matriarch of the family. She really runs things, but her counterpart, Terry Goulette (box office supervisor), is our more immediate authority figure, and the man we go to with most of our trivial questions, comments, and concerns. Then there are Mark Blank, Woo (short for Mike Woo), Christina (not-so-short for Christina Cone), Destiny, and me. We are the petulant children, those who take phone calls day after day, have little faith in humanity, and have been known to shoot rubber bands at one another in between phone calls. Fellow Berkeley Rep staff comprise our extended family, and at times it feels like they are our wealthy, "big city" cousins. We are the (rubber band) gun totin', squirrel-impersonating (don't ask), Box Office Hillbillies who done struck it rich and come to the Berkeley Hills.
We also have frequent (and hilarious) encounters with technology that would rival any of Lucille Ball's baking disasters from I Love Lucy. The speakers at our sales windows present us with persistent challenges. Firstly, they seem to pick up on ANY outside noise, so the most distant rumbling of a motor (or the not-so-distant earth-rattling sound of a garbage truck) will interrupt any conversation between patron and staff with a loud, ever-present KHRRRRRRRRRKCHHHHHCHHHCHH. Such encounters force us to adopt elaborate miming techniques, so we often look like we're playing charades rather than selling tickets. Secondly, the window is placed directly in between the speaker and the computer, so every attempt at selling a ticket at the window feels like a superhuman effort at splitting my mouth (which must be positioned directly in front of the speaker) from my eyes (which must be close enough to the computer to see where the available tickets are located) and stretching my arms (which must reach the computer to type) from my shoulders and neck (which must be back at the microphone with my mouth). I frequently find myself wishing that I were that stretch woman from The Incredibles. Who knew selling tickets could be so physically taxing?
Once I do succeed in selling the tickets, I must print them. Our ticket printer has obstinately refused to consistently cut the ticket stock, so if we don't keep a watchful eye on it, it ends up spewing our tickets every which way.
To add some excitement to our daily grind, we have begun to compete to see who can make the most money in a day. Though we have not yet resorted to such measures (and will not--don't worry, Christine!), the opportunities for sitcom-worthy sabotage are endless! "Oh, you don't want to purchase tickets from Woo, he is easily confused and will put you in the wrong performance," etc.
To be fair, a great deal of the parallels between the box office and, say, I Love Lucy result from my general clumsiness. Such clumsiness includes but is not limited to:
- My inability to refrain from spilling my water on the ground and/or myself.
- My habit of standing up quickly to help someone at the window and being pulled abruptly back by my headset, which is still attached.
- Standing up quickly while my headset is still attached, then trying to take my headset off only to find that it has become tangled in my hair, causing a long and painful extrication process (while the customer at the window watches impatiently).
- Picking up pens quickly to have patrons sign their credit card receipts, and accidentally flinging them halfway across the room.
Also, did I mention that we have a possessed radio? Lucy, you got nothing on us!
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"Be cool. Don't freak out."
posted by Robert Sweibel on Mon, Oct 20, 2008
in At the theatre
The plot of Yellowjackets focuses on a news story published by the Jacket, the student newspaper at Berkeley High School. Well, to our dismay, we discovered during the run-up to the show that the real Jacket -- like so many other newspapers these days -- doesn't have enough funds to cover its expenses.
So we asked our audiences to help "Save the Jacket." We announced the problem during a curtain speech before each performance and encouraged people to make donations. After the show, our house manager stood by the door with a donation jar. It seemed like no big thing. Who knew that our audiences would contribute more than $6,600?
Berkeley Rep audiences literally saved the school newspaper!
Last night we welcomed eight teens from the Jacket staff to the final performance of the play. They came bearing a gift -- a beautiful card and letter to the Theatre eloquently expressing their gratitude. After the final curtain call, the cast – led by Ben Freeman, who played Avi -- toted out the donation jar and announced how generous our audiences had been. Then Ben invited the Jacket staff to join the cast on stage for a round of applause and a photo. Let me tell you, these young journalists were beside themselves. I even heard one say to another, "Be cool… Don't freak out." Of course, they were nothing if not cool when they joined our young cast on stage to celebrate the generosity of our community.
Nice all around. Personally, I thought it was incredibly generous of the cast to share their final moment in the spotlight and shine the light on others. What a great group of artists.
Check out this news story to learn more about the Jacket, our efforts to save it, and the paper's 50-year history as an independent reporter on Berkeley news: ibabuzz.com.
Photo by Abby Hanson
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Welcome to the world of Company Management!
posted by Jamie Caplan on Fri, Oct 17, 2008
in At the theatre
On weeks like this, it's all about the coffee.
I'm the company management intern here this year, which keeps me busy with lots of different tasks, one of them being arranging the travel and housing of our out-of-town actors and helping to plan and execute our first rehearsals for every show.
It is quite eventful around here these days, what with two shows in rehearsal, one of which is rehearsing offsite for the next two weeks. How busy, you ask? Let me answer that:
Day 1 (Monday, October 13) began at the office at 9:30 am, prepping to pick up the company for The Arabian Nights at the airport. Over the course of the day, we went to the airport four times to greet the actors, drive them to their housing, and make sure all their concerns were met and their questions were answered. Beforehand, I had made signs that said “Arabian Nights – Berkeley Rep” so the actors would recognize us.
Thankfully, the whole day went smoothly. You wouldn’t think it would be so exhausting just to drive around all day, but by the end of the day (about 9:30 pm), we were beat. And it wasn’t time to stop yet...
Because Day 2 (Tuesday, October 14) was even busier, beginning at 7:30 am this time. I drove around Berkeley in our trusty company van -- we call it Lola -- to pick up food and drinks for our official first rehearsal, and the company "meet & greet." We then set up all the food, made a TON of coffee, ran around to set everything up, and then celebrated when it was all over. Oh yeah, and in between we attended the introduction of the show by the director and the first read-through of the script, which was so enjoyable. It was a great experience for me to be able to sit-in on the read-through because I loved hearing the script I had read over a month ago come to life. It was also fun to see the actors I had just met act in this great play. We then shuttled the actors to the rehearsal venue and back again and finally ended our day at around 7:30 pm.
And now...the actors' boxes have just arrived, shipped from all over the country. So I'm off: it's time to deliver thei stuff to their housing in San Francisco!
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My first kiss... at least on stage
posted by Joan Anderson on Mon, Oct 6, 2008
in At the theatre
Kissing on stage has always been the most terrifying part of performing to me. During my freshman year in college, when it came to the day when we had to practice stage-kissing...I skipped it (OOPS).
Imagine my excitement when I arrived at Berkeley Rep as an intern and was offered an understudy role in our world premiere of Yellowjackets. Now imagine the change in my expression when I read the script and realized my understudy role called for a big, fat kiss--not just one, but two.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
I was extremely excited to have this understudy opportunity, but my spirits just sank to the bottom of my gut when I found out I had to kiss a stranger. When the first rehearsal rolled around, I was shaking in my boots, wondering what it would be like. "And please," I thought, "let my partner be attractive. Lessen the blow just a little bit."
To my immense relief, my stage partner is an attractive young man--and that's half the battle. Then, during the first understudy rehearsal, another pair of actors had to kiss...and they did an awesome job. Being the competitive overachiever that I am, I told my scene partner that they just could not show us up. So when it was our turn I told him,"Let's just go for it."
It was hilarious and awkward. There we were, trying to have this intimate moment, and we weren't off book yet--so we were trying to kiss and look down at our scripts at the same time.
Well I survived, and I can look back now and say it wasn't so bad after all. I'm still not a big fan, but I will live to kiss in another play.
The picture: Matt Hudson and me, practicing.
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On with the show
posted by Robert Sweibel on Fri, Sep 26, 2008
in At the theatre
You may have already noticed that we've extended our run of Yellowjackets by a week. In response to extremely powerful buzz (sorry) and -- more to the point -- strong demand for tickets, the show will now play through October 19. Woo-hoo! Sounds like butts in seats and money in the bank, right? Well, that's not necessarily the case at all. The decision to extend a popular show is complex.
Before we can consider an extension, we have to clear our first hurdle: cast and crew availability. With a cast of 11, we have to clear 11 schedules with upward of 11 agents. With this show, we see that Lance Gardner, who plays Rashid and James, is unavailable for our typical 2pm Sunday matinee curtain. He's already working with another theatre – go Lance! So any matinee we schedule has to begin at 3pm, enabling Lance to get to the theatre… with minutes to spare. And a 3pm matinee start time means we have to put off our typical Sunday 7pm curtain until 7:30pm. That's what's reflected on our calendar for closing day, Sunday, October 19. Finding everyone else ready, willing, and able, we're good to go…
Provided we have time for load-out and load-in. After the show closes, the stage crew has to dismantle the set, sometimes storing it in case we decide to tour the show, or loan or rent the set to another theatre wanting to produce the play. If we're not storing it, we're recycling and re-using as much of the material as possible. Then we have to load in and build the set for the next show, in this case Mary Zimmerman’s The Arabian Nights, which begins previews November 14. Usually the crew rebuilds the stage from the bottom, creating a new floor for every show. Thankfully, our production department managed to rejigger their schedule to make this happen. They're all about flexibility. (We even have a Berkeley Rep "flexibility embrace," but that's another blog post entirely.)
The second hurdle we have to clear is the cost of running the show. And with 11 actors and a multi-person run crew, Yellowjackets is pretty pricey. Plus there are costs for an additional week of marketing, upward of $10,000. And front of house costs for the house manager and concessionaires. And air conditioning! Do we have enough performance programs or do we have to reprint? We think we have enough. (We invite our patrons to take their programs home, and we urge those who don't wish to keep them to turn them in for re-use.)
Anyway, as a nonprofit, we're not driven by the need to produce surpluses. But neither do we subscribe to the old nonprofit adage, "You’ve got to spend money to lose money." Minimally, we want to break even. You may ask, why go through all the trouble of extending the show -- the time, the energy, the risk -- just to break even? Easy. Sharing the experience of live theatre is what we're about. If we can attract enough guests into the theatre to cover our extension costs, we go for it, even if we risk playing to smaller houses. Because a "dark" theatre night makes us sad.
So, can we attract enough people into the theatre to cover our costs? That's the third and final hurdle, and it's my job (I'm the director of marketing & communications) to bring others on staff to a well-informed decision. Of course, we give consideration to the response of the professional critics -- we like to say that every variation in the posture of the Chronicle’s Little Man has a $25,000 impact on the box office -- but thankfully, the true test is audience response and demand for tickets.
It’s all about you. A critic can't save a show that people dislike. (In other words, nothing ruins a bad product faster than good marketing.) And a critic can't close a show that people love. And audiences love Yellowjackets. We know from sales. We know from the positive response of our guests, many of whom are on their feet at final curtain. We know from the Yellowjackets buzz (sorry again) we overhear as guests leave the theatre. We know from incoming letters and emails. So that makes an extension a good break-even-or-better bet, right? Not yet.
There are no season subscribers to "pre-load" the house for extension performances, so there needs to be substantial demand from the general public. We look closely at rate of sale. How many tickets are selling each week? Are we trending upward or downward, or are we flat? With Yellowjackets, we’re continue to trend upward. We look at the average price paid per ticket. With this show, the number is low, because so many young people are attending, and if you're under 30, tickets to Berkeley Rep are half price. So we take all this data -- rate of sale, sales trends, average price paid per ticket, and other variables -- and we project forward.
So, bottom line. Are we going to populate our extension with enough guests to cover our "nut"? (That’s theatre talk for the cost of operation.) And will we achieve the critical mass to create a galvanizing experience for audiences and artists alike? After all, most people prefer to see plays in a packed house. Because theatre is an experience of communion.
And in the end, yes, we believe we can create that experience with a Yellowjackets extension. A profit-driven company might not take those odds. But at Berkeley Rep, we live by them. On with the show!
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Show me love, baby
posted by Megan Wygant on Fri, Sep 19, 2008
in At the theatre
Last weekend, an article from the LA Times talked about the wave of success playwright Itamar Moses has been enjoying of late.
It really does feel like there’s a Moses play everywhere you turn—Bach at Leipzig played at Santa Cruz Shakes in August, The Four of Us opens at The Elephant Theatre Lab in Hollywood this week, and The Old Globe Theatre in San Diego opens Back Back Back next week (and--if you’re really keeping track--he also has two shows about to start rehearsal off Broadway).
The funny thing is, while buzz was building in San Diego and LA, Itamar was here, in rehearsals for Yellowjackets. Everything was building and building and building around him, and he was sitting in the rehearsal hall, doing what he does best—writing like a madman. So, when the Times needed a pic of “The Playwright,” they asked one of their Oakland-based photographers to meet him here.
As a rule, someone from the marketing department comes along to facilitate anything press-related at the Theatre, to make sure the shoot is safe.
(Here, for example, we’re in the Thrust during load-in for Yellowjackets. You can’t see it, but the stage is filled with technical crew, working to meet very very tight deadlines. Wires and cords and power supplies are everywhere. It’s probably not the best place to let loose a playwright whose script isn’t quite, well, finished.)
Unofficially, though, I’m there to do whatever needs doing—a photographic Gal Friday, if you will. I’ll break into locked rooms that look like they might be interesting, drag chairs and benches into more photogenic locations, or pull together ‘props’ suggested on a whim (for example, grabbing an empty cup from the concessions bar so that Itamar can pretend to enjoy a cup of “joe”).
The photographer’s job is to take a good picture. The playwright’s job is to be a good subject. My job? Is to help them do theirs.
That’s how I ended up spending a recent Tuesday morning at Au Coquelet, drinking coffee with Superstar Playwright Itamar Moses—with the express order of keeping him distracted from the fact that, hey, wait, a photographer was sitting in the bushes outside the window and snapping pictures like some sort of paparazzo stalker.
Also, had people stopped walking by, I’d have been pressed into the role of “passerby”—pacing outside the restaurant so the photographer could capture someone’s reflection in the window.
Here are five things I learned about Itamar during the shoot:
- He used to be on the chess club. Au Coquelet was where he and his friends used to play speed chess on weekends.
- Senior year of high school, his first class was at 10am, and he’d stop in at Au Coquelet around 8:30 or 9, grab a cup of coffee, and write for an hour. This was when he first started to entertain the notion of writing professionally.
- His iPod playlist is eclectic, ranging from classical jazz to new indie bands he’s just discovered. But, he cannot listen to music while writing—too distracting.
- Watching an actor work with the script is possibly the most important part of the rewriting process –- if a line doesn’t sing, or a scene doesn’t click, it could be that the scene and the line need to be rewritten…but it could also be that the clues the actor is using to shape the character are not yet fully defined, and the scene’s not working because the actor hasn’t been given the proper foundation.
- He has a really bad—I mean, really bad—fake British accent.
Yeah, sometimes I'm convinced I have the BEST. JOB. EVER.
(Immediately above: the shot that ran in the paper. Believe it or not, I'm somewhere behind the green bush on the far right. Photo by Dave Getzschman)
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Word jumble
posted by Elana McKernan on Wed, Sep 17, 2008
in At the theatre
Despite how cool and collected we may appear when you peek through the little sales window into the box office or when we hand you your tickets at will call, answering phones all day can be hard work. Those of us in the box office even have a unique set of afflictions that we deal with, sometimes on a day-to-day basis. I have compiled a list of our troubles, so that you can get a sense of our work-related maladies...but you'll have to be patient, because you don't get to hear them all today. Today we are just going to focus on a little something I like to call the:
WORD JUMBLE (also known as: Box Office Autopilot)
No, I'm not referring to the friendly little word game that you find in the Sunday newspaper next to the classifieds and the funny section. When my colleagues and I get in the groove of answering ticketing calls over and over again, dozens (if not hundreds) of times a day, day after day, we develop our own personal scripts. Nothing as interesting as the scripts that come to life on our stages, but scripts nonetheless, with careful phrasing and repetition of key words.
I personally am a fan of using the few seconds it takes to authorize the patron's credit card to remind the patron that there "are no exchanges or refunds on these tickets, and there's no late seating to any of our performances." It's a pretty useful dialogue, when it works. Unfortunately, our pesky patrons sometimes like to shake things up. They ask questions! And they ask those questions before I get the chance to charge their credit card, so I end up repeating myself five times in one conversation! It’s worse when I actually realize how much I am repeating myself, so one part of my mind says, "Stop talking! You already told him this!" while the other part says, "...noexchangesorrefundsontheseticketsnolateseating..." When combined, these two parts of my mind seem to add up to a stuttering mess of "er buh well umm solikeIsaid uuuuh."*
Another form of this Box Office jumble is when we forget whether we’re talking to subscribers or not. As some of you may know, subscribers have certain privileges. By far the most popular of these privileges is that subscribers can exchange their tickets if their assigned dates do not work for them. Often when I am completing a subscriber exchange, the "scripted" part of my brain will take over and I'll give subscribers the exact same spiel as I give single ticket-buyers, only realizing my mistake at the tail end of the speech when the subscriber gasps, horrified: "I can't exchange my tickets ever again? But why?!? Is this a new policy?" At that point, I quickly backpedal: "Oh, no, I'm sorry, I was mistaken, as a subscriber, you can exchange your tickets up until a day before the show, but they are not refundable." However, there have been conversations (I'm not proud) where I have repeated this mistake two, three, or even four times. I can almost feel the subscriber judging me through the telephone sound waves.
And speaking of subscribers, I'm off to go help one at the window! I'll try to not get too jumbled....
*This phenomenon can also be filed under the category of "The Great Mind Blank Disaster," but I will go over that in more detail later.