Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

176 Chapter 6 The Director
6. Director’s and Designers’ Presentations.
When cast and artistic staff finally assemble
at the Cedar City theatre on May 5, 2008,
the director and then the individual designers
present their various concepts and plans
for the production. Here Costume Designer
Swenson shows her costume renderings to
the assembled company. © Robert Cohen
7. The First Reading. The directing and design presentations are followed by a reading of the entire
play by the actors, seated around a table and working from the scripts mailed to them several
weeks previously. Other members of the production team have remained for this reading: they
include the casting director, the vocal and dialect coach, the dramaturg, and members of the
festival’s artistic directorate. This reading is followed by a discussion of the play’s details, and
everyone around the table is encouraged to speak, comment, and ask questions. The first
reading may be followed by a second, third, or even more readings in the ensuing days. In this
case, the rehearsals moved directly into the staging of the action. © Robert Cohen
8. Staging, or “Blocking.” After the reading phase, the play
is given its initial staging. The director, in collaboration
with the actors, “blocks” out the play’s physical
action—each character’s entrances and exits, stands
and sits, and other major moves. Actors pencil down
this blocking in their scripts to be able to repeat it the
next time through the scene. These rehearsals take
place not on the theatre stage but in a nearby rehearsal
hall. No scenery or costumes are yet available, so these
rehearsals make do with substitutes: a table stands
for a railing actors will lean against; a rectangular,
stock step unit represents the curvilinear staircase
they will descend. The locations of walls and doorways
are marked on the rehearsal-room floor with strips
of masking tape. If more than one play is rehearsed
in the same hall, the different “sets” are indicated by
different strip colors: in this case yellow represents the
set pieces for School for Wives, green those for Fiddler
on the Roof. Many actors wear “rehearsal costumes” to
simulate the bulk of the costumes they will wear in the
play. Here Betsy Mugavero wears a billowing rehearsal
skirt to mimic the skirt she will wear as Agnès in the
production, and Tim Casto has donned a rehearsal cape
as her guardian (and would-be husband) Arnolphe. As
he stages the play, Director Cohen refers regularly to
planned moves he has already penciled into his script,
on the music stand; he may change these plans in an
instant if the actors make moves he likes better. Visible
in the background are a costume rack for the rehearsal
garments, a stack of shelves for rehearsal props, and
a rehearsal schedule for the entire repertoire of the
festival’s plays currently in preparation. © Robert Cohen