Romeo’s letter to his father in Act V. This prop gets passed from Romeo to Balthasar to Prince Escalus, who then “reads” it onstage near the end of V.iii.

This has turned out to be the most dangerous of the three documents I’ve made for our show. Well, at least for me. I never interact with Friar Laurence’s letter, and I’ve reread/proofread Lord Capulet’s guest list so many times that I can easily look at it with a straight face. But I can’t look directly at the Prince when she matter-of-factly lists off all the very serious details she supposedly read on this piece of paper. I just can’t.

This is the list of guests Lord Capulet sends me off with in I.ii. And it doubles as the list of wedding guests in IV.ii... which is also handed to me because Lord C. still doesn't know that I can't read. *facepalm*

From the audience's perspective, this should just look like a looong list covered in tiny writing. But I couldn't resist having some fun with the actual contents. I started with the subset of guests our director chose to include, but then it gets a little stream-of-consciousness, and some parts are borderline fanfic territory. Full transcript below the cut, in case you can't read my handwriting in the photos.

This is the urgent letter that Friar Laurence tries to send to Romeo between Acts IV and V. The audience won’t get to see what’s inside, so I had a bit of fun. (But I do think Friar L. would totally use plant-themed stationery and/or draw plants in the margins of his letters.)

Yesterday, I got to take a close-up look at the little model plane that flew across the backdrop at the beginning of this clip. Two charming details that don’t show up in the video: (1) little round photos of Zara and Fitzbattleaxe’s faces on the side, as if looking out passenger windows; and (2) the insignia “NCC-1701” on the tail.

Day 25: Favorite adaptation of an operetta

The Stanford Savoyards’ 2013 production of HMS Pinafore: The Next Generation. I’m aware of a number of Star-Trek-themed productions of Pinafore, but I think this one was particularly well thought out. (I may be biased. I was a Vulcan science officer in the chorus of ship’s crew, so I got to see/experience a lot of the rehearsal process plus the full run of performances, and also help out behind the scenes.)

All of the leads and some of the chorus were played as specific Star Trek characters. Mostly from Next Generation, but our directors also cleverly paid homage to the Original Series by turning Sir Joseph into an aging Admiral Kirk, accompanied by a chorus of alien lovers (his “sisters, cousins, and aunts”). The set was an impressive recreation of the bridge of Picard’s Enterprise. The whole show was so full of details and references. There were always crewmembers looking busy in the background. We’d semi-improvise whispered dialogue (not audible to the audience) as we “worked”. One time, another science officer enthusiastically told me in great detail about how the ship’s sensors had just detected a new planet made entirely out of pie. I immediately had to turn my back to the audience, because a Vulcan shouldn’t be seen giggling. Kirk’s alien lady-friends took control of the bridge during the entr’acte. There was a helmsman who kept getting drunk in the background and a redshirt who was often in some sort of mortal danger. The show opened with a modified version of the Star Trek intro, announcing the Pinafore’s mission “to boldly go where no Englishman has gone before” – followed by a seamless transition into the Pinafore overture. “Never mind the why and wherefore” somehow turned into a dance-off between the captain and the admiral. Buttercup brought a tribble onboard in her basket of goodies, and it found its way into a replicator at the end of that scene; later, in the Act II finale, tribbles came pouring out of that same replicator. This whole show was a beautiful experience.

The Stanford Savoyards have developed a bit of a reputation for this sort of thing. There was also the 2012 Browncoats of Penzance, and the 2014 modernized Patience that replaced Aestheticism with scifi fandoms (Trekkie!Bunthorne vs. Whovian!Grosvenor). Before my time, there was a Marx Brothers Trial by Jury (1996), an anime Mikado (2005), a Bollywood Sorcerer (2006), and a production of Sullivan and Stephenson’s The Zoo where Carboy was Dr. Horrible (2010).

As for a more traditional production that incorporated a really interesting concept: Lyric Theatre of San José’s 2013 Grand Duke, where Ernest Dummkopf’s theatrical troupe were portrayed as an amateur theatrical troupe! Troupe members were seen going about their day jobs in the background during parts of Act I, and it really brought Pfennig Halbpfennig to life. In addition, not everybody in the troupe was portrayed as an actor. There were dancers, builders, tech crew, a costumer, a stage manager, and even a graphic artist who reacted to some of the plot developments by holding up appropriate sketches.

Day 20: Favorite Act I finale

The Act I finale from The Yeomen of the Guard has two key moments that I find particularly memorable. Well, three if you count a certain bit of backstage mischief that happened in the production I was in last winter.

1. “The prisoner comes to meet his doom” gives me chills every time I hear it. Something about the abrupt mood shift right before it, the tolling bell, and those harmonies.

2. That rapid sequence near the end with seven different characters reacting to the prisoner’s escape could be described as meticulously choreographed chaos. If you look at the libretto, you’ll see that Gilbert simply gave each character a couplet of the same meter (plus a few more lines for Jack). Sullivan’s setting is ingenious. Each couplet is set differently, and some repeat and overlap with each other. I can think of other examples where Sullivan takes a series of identically-structured verses and sets them uniquely to illustrate characters’ differing states of mind: “I am so proud” (Mikado), “How say you, maiden” (Yeomen), “When a wooer goes a-wooing” (Yeomen). But the seven-character exchange in the Yeomen Act I finale is definitely one of the most interesting instances.

3. At every dress rehearsal and performance, while Wilfred was commending Phoebe to her “brother” and Fairfax was agreeing to undertake this task, our headsman was backstage miming an epic guitar solo on his ax. It got more epic each time, and by the end townsfolk were joining in as additional band members and groupies. Our Cholmondeley even made commemorative shirts with a picture of this and the slogan “A HEART OF MASSIVE ROCK”. And now I can’t listen to this part of the music without imagining the headsman rocking out in the background.