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Countdown to curtain The journey to a show’s opening night starts weeks—even months—earlier, but things really start speeding up in the days right before the first curtain. It can be hectic, but Berkeley Rep’s artists, artisans, and staff have plenty of talent and a cando attitude. Here’s a peek at a few things some of our departments do to welcome you to the show. A special thank you to the contributors of this article: Colin Babcock, James Ballen, Timothy Bruno, ashley dawn, Fred Geffken, Karen McKevitt, Kitty Muntzel, Sarah Nowicki, Jacob Marx Rice, and Maggi Yule
SCENE SHOP
FRONT OF HOUSE
Patron Services Manager Katrena Jackson [above] and the rest of the team make sure your pre-show and intermission experiences are excellent. They source locally made and delicious treats for the concessions counter and stock the Hoag Theatre Store with artisan-made gifts and showrelated books, CDs, and dvds—and constantly rotate and edit the selections for your enjoyment. Of course, they also make sure the restrooms, lobby, and house are sparkling clean, but that’s not as exciting as those delectable cupcakes beckoning to you from concessions!
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Scenery is carefully planned out, built, and embellished weeks in advance, but that doesn’t mean the artisans and crew can rest during the week before opening night. With new shows, perhaps some scenery gets radically changed or even cut during tech week. In Troublemaker, a rolling staircase unit was replaced with a chaise (which the prop shop built), and the artistic team decided they wanted not one but two doorways where silk curtains unrolled on cue, later to be ripped down by an actor. “I came up with a good rigging system for that,” says Colin Babcock, the assistant technical director. He reimagined the rig used for the rain scenes in White Snake, which utilized many cups for the “rain” to fall out of. But this time instead of cups, the shop team created one long box and rolled the whole curtain into it, with one edge of the curtain Velcroed to the bottom of the box. On cue, the curtain unrolled, and the Velcro made it super-easy to remove. The turntable in the show also created a fabulous effect: actors walked and ran on it, creating the illusion of traveling along city streets. In this photo, ET Hazzard, Stephanie Shipman, and BJ Lipari are building the turntable, later dubbed “the donut.”