Thursday, March 27, 2008

THE MIND CHURNS: Wonder what it's like backstage at the Nederlander Theater for Rent? Regular commenter Sue recently toured the facility, and files this report:

The first thing I noticed is that there’s almost no wing space – unlike some of the larger Broadway shows, which need wide offstage spaces to bring their scenery on and off, here there’s just a narrow alley around the set, and that’s it. The listing of the order of the songs taped up backstage is leftover from the New York Theatre Workshop production – when they changed the order of two of the songs, they drew a little arrow between the two to show the reversal, and that’s been the show order sheet ever since. (The changed order was between Joanne’s “We’re Okay” and “I’ll Cover You.”) The two stage managers – the Production Stage Manager and SM – have been with the show since NYTW. Twelve years. Before this, neither of them had stage managed a Broadway show or a musical. The pages of the SM’s prompt book (the book with blocking, light and sound cues, etc.) are actually wearing thin and getting a little brown around the edges. The cast supposedly calls her “pinky toe” because she knows the show so well that she can tell everyone where to stand onstage, down to where their pinky toes should be. A couple of the show’s musicians have been with the show through the entire run as well.

The spike marks onstage – the taped lines and crosses showing where scenery should be placed or where actors should stand – are deliberately huge. Director Michael Greif thought it added to the look of the show. (And by the way, Greif is still very involved with the show. He comes in for cleanup rehearsals, is there when a new actor gets put in, and generally checks in with the show whenever he can. That’s very unusual – after opening night, a director leaves the show, and some never look back. Unlike some other long-running Broadway shows, some things – choreography, costumes – have even changed under his guidance during the 12 year run.) The theater was left deliberately shabby when Rent moved in. In fact, above the mezzanine, house left, there’s a hole in the ceiling. Apparently, an electrician put his foot through the ceiling while working on a vent, and the director loved it and asked them not to fix it. However, theater owners get pretty lazy when a show has been in a space this long (remember reports of the state of the Winter Garden after Cats?) Our ASM friend said that the basement floods all the time and the Nederlander is just falling apart in general. The stage technology is also stuck back in 1996. (My stage manager friend couldn’t believe that they didn’t have “moving lights,” but it’s been a while since I’ve been a techie, so I can’t go into this in depth.) When Rent moves out, expect some major renovations before the next show moves in. One thing the owners did do is replace the leopard-print carpeting in the theater a few years ago with something more muted. Scraps of the old leopard print line the hallways backstage as soundproofing.

Past the wing space and into the backstage area, the walls are completely covered with paper (including rehearsal schedules, notices about Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS events, and a daily sign-in sheet for the cast), photos, and posters. The dressing rooms go up four flights, with only two dressing rooms on the ground floor. Each room is shared by two actors, regardless of star power or size of their part in the show. The musicians are on the top floor. On the wall going up the stairs from the ground floor is a large piece of posterboard with several photos pasted onto it. The ASM told us that Jonathan Larson brought in the board during rehearsals at NYTW and asked everyone to bring in pictures of people they knew who had AIDS or had died from AIDS, or just people they loved in general, so they would be surrounded by love. In the center is a picture of Jonathan with his arm around a man in a hospital bed. The production team moved the board to the Nederlander, and since then, people have kept bringing in pictures, so they extend past the board, all along the walls, and up the stairway for four flights. On another wall, little cut out pictures of the head of every actor who has appeared in Rent are gathered in a collage. There have only been about 120 people in Rent since it started, and many actors have returned to it again and again, or have moved up from swing roles (a swing is like an understudy who is usually a background/chorus member and can cover several parts rather than just one) to leading roles. The actor we saw playing Benny that night was the original Paul, the character who leads the Life Support meeting. These days, actors regularly go in and out of the show, with swings playing a lot of the roles. The ASM told us that, during the pre-riot scenes, the number of cops (supposed to be three) changes depending on how many swings are playing roles, and that there was actually a performance with no cops onstage at all.

Right before you enter the stage right wings from backstage, there’s a large, beautiful oval wood carving that says, “Thank You Jonathan Larson.” Larson’s great-uncle made it for the show’s Broadway opening, and the wood around the edges is worn to a soft finish because all the actors touch it before they go onstage. It echoed what has been in my own thoughts every time I’ve seen the show or listened to the soundtrack. Thank you, Jonathan Larson.

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