Shakina Nayfack is a Musical Directing fellow through The Drama League’s Directors Project. He is assisting on Mormons, Mothers and Monsters and The Game.
From Shakina:
What a week! Mormons, Mothers and Monsters opened to a great review in the Boston Globe, but just when I thought I was off and running on The Game, things got crazy. The much acclaimed Jill Abramovitz (see my Week 2 post about her work as Mother) was put on two weeks of vocal rest due to a severe throat infection she’d been battling during our entire rehearsal process. There are no understudies in a lab show with such a short run, so we had very little time to find a way to keep the show afloat. Friday night’s performance was canceled, and the entire administrative staff of Barrington Stage Company put their heads together to come up with an alternative. The marvelous Bill Finn actually suggested to the group that I step into the role, a challenge I most certainly would have accepted, but the creative team felt certain that turning the Mother into a drag role would destroy the dramatic tension around the protagonist’s queer coming of age. There’s not much conflict to coming out if your mom is a 6′ 2″ tattooed drag queen. Still, I was flattered by the vote of confidence from the guru of BSC’s Musical Theatre Lab. As a much more sensible (though equally hectic) option, we recruited the talented, hilarious, and brave-as-all-get-out Christianne Tisdale who learned the role in 5 hours and took to the stage for a two-show Saturday, book in hand.
The silver lining to all this, for me personally anyway, was that I got to learn on the fly how to work a put-in rehearsal. A put-in rehearsal is just like it sounds… you are quite literally putting an actor into a role, teaching them the blocking and choreography, and making sure they know what’s happening around them. For these rehearsals, where Christianne hadn’t even read the script yet, there was a lot to catch her up on. Vadim spent two hours going over the music with her, then the cast came in and Adrienne led them all through the show scene by scene. We ended up cutting one of the numbers (“BYU for Me”, where Mother tries to convince Mormon to attend the religious university, a fun uptempo song with more pom-poms and cheer moves than one can handle while holding a script!). The next morning, without the cast, I worked opposite Christianne on stage in every scene, while Adrienne and Vadim coached us through the show once more from top to bottom. Then it was showtime! Christianne was phenomenal, and managed to discover some really tender acting moments even while turning pages and sight-reading her music.
While all this was going on at Stage 2, rehearsals we’re getting underway for The Game, wherein Ms. Tisdale is also playing a principal role. We had only just started music rehearsals when the crisis arose over at Mormons…, but by the time we started the put-in, The Game had moved on to full staging rehearsals. Christianne and I were running between rehearsal spaces, from 1990s Pittsburgh to 1770s Paris, monster claws to corsets. Christianne was a total trooper, and while I missed out on watching Daniel Pelzig develop the choreography for the decadent and debaucherous opening number “Night After Night”, my notation skills were put to the test as I caught up and quickly transcribed all the action that had been set in my absence.
Unfortunately Jill Abramovitz is out of Mormons… for the rest of the run, but Christianne Tisdale has graciously accepted the task of taking on two shows at once. She will finish Mormons… this weekend, and then be back on The Game full time. She and I have one last rehearsal together mid-week. Adrienne has left for her next show in Los Angeles, so Mormons… is now under my care, as well as the infallible stewardship of Production Stage Manger Rose Packer. The whole cast and crew have been awesome through this hurdle, and the show will go on!
As for The Game, by this time next week I’ll have much more insight into the production. The cast sound phenomenal, and the ensemble work I’ve witnessed thus far is fun and thrilling. The week ahead is all about exploring the intimacy between the principals. In a show steeped so deeply in seduction and betrayal, there’s a lot of sexual energy to harness and unleash. I’ll be sure to share all the sordid details!