BD Wong in Herringbone. Photo by Richard Termine.

Installing the set for Herringbone in the Berlind Theatre

Installing the set for Herringbone.

If you saw Herringbone, I’m sure you noticed the concentric turntables that brought the entire set to life, moving pianos, trunks and doors in a seemingly effortless motion around the stage.  It may have looked easy, but I can promise it wasn’t.  Our fantastic production staff put in an enormous amount of hours to make Eugene Lee’s set come to life, so I wanted to share a few photos to show you how they did it.

The Berlind Theatre isn’t build with any turntables (or trapdoors) in it, so anytime we do something like that, we have to raise the stage floor to build the gear into it.  In this case, an entire new floor was built, with two independently operated motorized steel-framed turntables that were controlled from offstage through a rather sophisticated computer system (and a human operator who ran the system).  The motors for the system are the same motors we use to drive the two houses in A Christmas Carol.  In the pictures at right, you can see the turntables as they were first installed in the Berlind Theatre, prior to the plywood flooring being built on top of them.  You’ll notice the Herringbone sign and the door frame, which sits on its own rotating circle platform within the inner turntable.  At center is a plug, which is stationary.

When I took these photos, the production staff was testing out the turntable mechanism.  During the production, each turntable cue was called by the show’s production stage manager (Cheryl Mintz) over headset to the turntable operator, who then executed it.  There was also a warning light that she could turn on remotely to tell him to get ready, and then could turn off when it was time to run the turntable at its programmed speed and to its programmed destination.  To make things fun, the production staff installed the lightbulb for the cue light inside a pink flamingo—so during tech there was a pink flamingo in the audience section that kept lighting up right before any set pieces moved.  It was a bit disconcerting at first, but you got used to it quick!  During performances, the flamingo (and the operator) moved backstage.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

BD Wong in Herringbone, photo by Rich Termine

As I’m sure you know, there were five entries in our Herringbone Haiku Competition this year, each exhibiting great humor, accuracy, and mastery of the haiku form.  Because of the strength of most of the entries, I’ve decided to announce both a winner and a runner-up (who will be given the prize—a pair of free tickets to any Theater Series production this season—in the event that the winner fails to claim his or her prize.

The runner up is Lanny Baugniet, whose Haiku won points for alliteration and accuracy in describing the plot of Herringbone in only 9 words, with his excellent haiku:

Dazzling dancing frog
Elicits bizarre revenge
On killer chicken

We enjoyed Lanny’s Haiku on many levels, and thought it a fine piece of writing.  But the winning Haiku showed a level of artistry, wit, ability to quote Sondheim, and downright mastery of the Haiku form while also creating a spot-on description of the dramatic arc of Herringbone.  I give you Freddy’s brilliant and contest-winning Haiku:

The practical frog
Having no legs of its own
Borrows another’s

Hearty congratulations to all who participated.  Freddy, we’ll be e-mailing you soon to set up your free tickets.  If you missed the contest cut-off, and still want to share your Haiku brilliance, feel free to post a Haiku in the comments section below.  You won’t win anything, but we’ll enjoy reading your Haiku anyway.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

BD Wong in Herringbone, photo by Rich Termine.

BD Wong recently sat down for an American Theatre Wing “Downstage Center” interview for a podcast and for XM Satellite Radio. In the wide-ranging conversation, he talks about Herringbone, M. Butterfly, You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown and a variety of other topics. I think it’s a neat interview to listen to whether or not you’ve seen Herringbone yet (although if you haven’t, you don’t have too much time left, so buy your tickets soon!). Links to the audio feed of the interview and a downloadable podcast version are below. Enjoy!

From Herringbone. Original air date - September 26, 2008 Running Time - 59:12.

If you enjoyed this episode of Downstage Center you may want to:
Subscribe to their podcasts

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

BD Wong in Herringbone.  Photo by Rich Termine.

A tap-dancing kid
And a murderous midget
Don’t bring young children.

Have you seen Herringbone?  Were you inspired to write a haiku?  Well, now is your chance!  This next one is inspired by (and uses only phrases from) Simon Saltzman’s review of Herringbone in CurtainUp.

Oddly compelling
Horrific and light-hearted
Tour-de-force for Wong.

Yes, today marks the start of the Herringbone Haiku Competition.  Submit a haiku about Herringbone by clicking on the “comments” link below.  The writer of the best haiku (as determined by me), will receive a pair of free tickets to a Theater Series production of his or her choice.  Points will be given for humor, accuracy in describing Herringbone and appropriate use of the haiku form.  Multiple entries are encouraged.

The dancing is great
And the music’s real catchy,
A wee bit bizarre.

This is social media at its best, folks.  Have fun!

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

McCarter Literary Manager Carrie Hughes recently conducted an interview with Skip Kennon, composer of Herringbone. Here are some excerpts of their conversation:

CH: How did you get involved in this project?

SK: Many years ago Ken Marsolais and Colleen Dewhurst held an option on a small musical of mine. They also held an option on Tom Cone’s one-act play Herringbone and proposed to Tom that he make a musical of it. When Tom said let’s pursue the idea, Ken and Colleen approached me and asked me if I was interested in doing the score. After I read it, I said I’m crazy enough to do the music but I’m not crazy enough to do the lyrics—but I know someone who is. I proposed the lyric writer Ellen Fitzhugh and we auditioned for Tom and the rest is history. By the way, Tom’s play only got us to the Hollywood segment, the rest of the story was arrived at through collaboration and of course Tom’s approval—with a few of the older characters and scenes dropped along the way.

CH: What makes the story of Herringbone good material for a musical?

SK: Characters who have big wants and great needs and big obstacles to achieving them and getting them met. Also lots of events and ups and downs. One arc plays, movies, or stories usually don’t make good musicals because you need twists and turns to create new situations to write a varied score.

CH: Can you talk about the challenges and rewards of orchestrating a piece for only three instruments?

SK: Herringbone is a musical in the form of an act. Acts are usually performed with piano, bass and drums and sometimes small bands. Colleen and Ken promised me that after the first production of Herringbone at the St. Nicholas Theatre in Chicago I could have a trio.

At St. Nick’s we only had piano—there was no room for anything else. Too bad, because bass adds a bottom and a buoyancy and percussion adds groove and drive. And all three together sound like a classy act like at the Algonquin or the Carlisle. To me, piano alone sounds like a rehearsal—not a performance—and it looks like the producers are cheap. I didn’t get my trio at the New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons. It was a tiny stage and again there was no room. And I believe the lukewarm critical response to the score at Playwrights was reflected in that incompleteness. The last three productions I’ve seen of the show have used the trio and the score really came alive. “Orchestrating” is too high falutin’ a word for what I did. I just added the drums that were always in my head when I was writing the music and wrote out the bass part that is inherent in the piano score which doesn’t change in either the solo or trio version.

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BD Wong in Herringbone. Photo by Richard Termine.

Have you seen Herringbone? What did you think? Do you agree with the newspaper reviews, or disagree? Favorite parts of the show? Things that weren’t to your taste? Post a “citizen response” or read what other people are saying by clicking on the “comments” link below. We can’t wait to hear what you think!

If you want to include your picture with your review, email it to me and I’ll make sure it gets attached.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

McCarter Literary Manager Carrie Hughes recently conducted an interview with Ellen Fitzhugh, lyricist for Herringbone. Here are some excerpts of their conversation:

CH: How did you get involved with Herringbone?

EF: I’d just moved to New York from Los Angeles and met up with Skip, whom I’d known from the L. A. BMI-Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop. He said he’d been offered a one-man play for musicalizing and asked if I’d be interested in reading it to see if I wanted to write the lyrics.

CH: What were your first impressions of the piece?

EF: As I was reading Tom’s play, I recognized almost immediately that it was like nothing else in theater. I’d stop reading intermittently and pace around, mumbling to myself, “Nobody else gets to do this… nobody… nobody but me gets to do this….”

CH: As a lyricist, how do you collaborate with the book writer (and composer) on creating characters?

EF: The Herringbone characters were already created, but to weave them through an adventure which would now be told in song as well as book has required innumerable hours… weeks… years?… of intense discussion, role-playing, insistence, compromise, faltering, discovery, moodiness, congratulations and just about every conceivable kind of creative interaction.

Herringbone wasn’t unique in being developed through this sort of collaborative heaven/hell, but it was unique in that each creative participant seemed “possessed” by the desire to come up with something even more theatrically outrageous than any of the rest of the crew could imagine.

Initially, these sessions often involved not only Tom, Skip and me, but our original director and choreographer, Ben Levit and Ted Pappas, respectively. Soon, our actor, David Rounds, was a contributing force, as well. That’s a lot of “Yeah, well wait’ll ya hear THIS idea!” going on, and from quite diverse perspectives.

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As we gear up for our technical rehearsals (with lights and sound and costumes), I wanted to share a few thoughts on Herringbone. As many of you know by now, Herringbone tells the story of a precocious young boy whose family throws him into the adult world of vaudeville to help them through the Depression. Like all “play-within-a-play” pieces, Herringbone raises quite a few questions about the nature of performance: how does the emotional content of the performance affect the performer? How does a performer’s personal identity influence the tone and direction of the piece? How does the act of telling a story impact the meaning of the story itself?

In McCarter’s production of Herringbone, Roger and BD have worked with the design team to highlight these moments of meta-theatricality. Rather than using vintage props, for example, we chose to use contemporary flashlights, rulers, etc. to emphasize the narrator’s distance from the story. Did the narrator character (named Herringbone) actually live through the events he takes us through, or is the story a figment of his imagination? Even if the story is true, what are a performer’s motives for telling an emotionally draining tale? What does he receive from the experience of performing in return? These questions have been on our minds throughout the rehearsal process and hopefully will intrigue you as well. To further discuss these and many other questions hang around for one of our post-show discussions with the artists!

Posted by Sarah Wansley, Directing/Producing Intern at McCarter Theatre

BD Wong

Well we didn’t have a run-through, but it was a very good day!

I could barely believe it, but painters came to my apartment this morning at 9 to finish a long awaited paintjob in my bedroom.  So I had to get up earlier than I wanted to in order to let them in and give them keys, etc.  Then (welcome to my insane life), while I was showering, I remembered I had made an appointment with a gym trainer for this morning!  Trainer Rob Morea is also a good friend of mine who I usually see regularly when I’m not rehearsing, and I wasn’t exactly all that hot to work out this morning, but I’ve really been missing him.  So I kept the appointment, and had to show up late ‘cause of the painters, rushed to the gym, and Rob took me through a serious abs workout that I really do need for the show.  I find that I am really accessing my “core” a lot, and whenever I go to the tumbling guy, Mookie, I realize how soggy my core really is, so we concentrated on that.  Truth be told, I was kinda tired.  But this is not really that out of the ordinary for me.  Squeezing a million things into one day, or cramming a lot of characters into one play.  I left the gym with a sense of satisfaction, but also hadn’t had time to have a proper breakfast.

Dan and Roger and I were on a train to Princeton Junction that was late leaving the station, so we missed the Dinky shuttle to Princeton and kind of tumbled into rehearsal a bit all over the place.  I had a good solid nap on the train, and I ate something before rehearsal began, and we began immediately with the end of the first act (we ended with it last night and wanted to polish it today) and it’s arguably the highest energy scene of the show.  So I had that “how am I going to get it up for this?” feeling, but really, you just have to do it.  The music starts playing and you just start doing it, and before you know it it’s over and you’re winded and actually kind of satisfied.  We did some major discussing and finessing the scene and I think it’s pretty good.  It’s one of the few scenes in which all five of the principal characters are interacting with one another in an extremely complex, chaotic way.  The first act comes down with a pretty dramatic event, and this event, an event that turns the tide of the Nookin’s family’s journey (and all of the relationships within that family) needs to have a larger-than-life feeling powerful enough to makes the audience feel that any intermission is too long.  So we asked some good questions today, and are closer than ever.

Today we were visited by associate sound designer Leon Rothenberg (you might recall his associate Scott Lehrer came yesterday).  He came to observe whatever we were working on.  Scott and Leon are both affable, easy going self-professed “sound nerds” whose knowledge of both the science of acoustics and the power of music and sound effects is excitingly deep.  They both quietly observed as I stumbled through each scene, and neither of them got to see enough, but I do have some satisfaction that between the two of them they have seen the whole show!

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BD Wong

This was a super intense day. I spent the night in Princeton, and blogged while watching the convention. Planning to sleep till about 9AM, I woke up at 7:30AM to the sounds of demolition outside the bedroom window. I was too disgusted to even check what it was, but there was a bunch of loud guys knocking something down with sledgehammers. After squelching the impulse to pull up the blinds and flash them (someone’s always got a camera phone and access to YouTube), I got up and ate pineapple and cottage cheese and showered and brushed my teeth and went to my fitting.

The fitting was pretty cool. The goal is to create a fashionable, performance friendly outfit that references a period Vaudeville look but seems somewhat current, modern and not too costumey. It has been a long journey, beginning with William doing some incredible research, clipping hundreds of pictures from the latest runway magazines. This crew is great, and loves a good challenge. So the task today was to narrow down the looks and fabrics and we did that pretty successfully, but there are still some tricky parts. Everyone’s ideas about the vest make it a true collaboration. So far it is the centerpiece of the outfit. The shirt is a very modern, very bent take on the period shirt you would wear with a tie and vest (no spoilers, please), as is the necktie. What remains are the trousers and shoes. Cynthia Thom, costume department head, shopped probably more than 30 pairs of shoes online and we have slowly whittled them down to a few finalists. The fabrics swatched for the trousers were very difficult to narrow down, and because the set is very dark, everyone is concerned that too dark a fabric will cause the lower half of my body to get lost. At one point Jenn picked up one of the sheets of paper with a bunch of swatches stapled to it looking for a new alternative and zeroed in on something novel and bold. We loved the look of it and the soft feel of the fabric, then Jenn lifts up the swatch and reads the notes written underneath, and says, “No wonder! A hundred bucks a yard! Cashmere!” The upside: knowing your associate designer has impeccable taste. So we finished the fitting with a pretty good fit and shapes for the vest and fabric finalists for the pants and some favorite shoes. Bill Kirby from McCarter sound department came to discuss the mike packing (a whole other affair, an elastic undergarment type thing needs to be conceived and built to accommodate 4 microphones and 3 battery packs). Everyone was good-natured and in a great problem-solving mood, and I definitely enjoyed the process, but I was actually still groggy. (I think I am tired from rehearsals and sleeping very deeply and it takes a lot longer to fully wake up than usual.) At one point, Jenn Jacobs said, “why don’t we ask Roger what he thinks of it…” And I stared at her, no lie, paused for a few seconds, scrolling through the mental rolodex of all the wonderful new McCarter artists and staffers I’ve met, and said, “Wait, who’s Roger again?” We had a good laugh over that one.

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