This is Part II of McCarter’s look back at what some of the artists from 2007 are up to now. Click here for Part I.

Stick Fly
In just a few weeks, Stick Fly playwright Lydia R. Diamond will open her newest world premiere, Harriet Jacobs, at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company. The play is based on the life of Harriet Jacobs, author of the book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. This play, which opens February 8, is part of the Steppenwolf for Young Adults series. Lydia’s adaptation of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye has been receiving productions around the country, and was recently listed as one of the San Francisco Chronicle’s top ten theater events of 2007. The list also includes Argonautika, which recently ended its run at Berkeley Rep. Stick Fly was also recorded by L.A. Theatre Works, and will soon be available for ordering on their website.

Tartuffe
Tartuffe transferred to Yale Rep, in New Haven, Connecticut and ran through the month of December. it only just ended on December 22, so there hasn’t been all that much time for the various artists of the show to start new projects. The big news, however, is that actress Sally Wingert is slated to lead the cast of Wendy Wasserstein’s Third at The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Many of our audience members will remember Sally for her utterly fabulous turn as Dorine, the saucy maid who sees through all of Tartuffe’s cons. Sally is one of the great stars of the Twin Cities, and The Guthrie is one of the finest theaters in the nation (and where McCarter’s Artistic Director Emily Mann did some of her earliest work). There’s a great video of Sally talking about Third here.

A Christmas Carol
Since closing McCarter’s production of A Christmas Carol, director Michael Unger has started his next venture, directing The Happy Time at Arlington Virginia’s Signature Theatre. The Happy Time is an unfortunately forgotten musical by Kander and Ebb (Chicago, Cabaret, Curtains, etc.). It originally starred Robert Goulet, and sadly its claim to fame is that it was the first Broadway musical to close having recorded a net loss of over a million dollar. Nevertheless, the score is quite tuneful, and Signature, a theater that has recently won great acclaim for its productions of Sondheim musicals, is producing it as part of a Kander and Ebb celebration. Unger is in excellent company; the other festival directors are Eric Schaeffer (Signature’s Artistic Director) and Frank Galati, two time Tony Award-winning director of musicals and classics, and an Associate Director at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. The Happy Time runs April 1-June 1, 2008.

Let us know what you think! Post a comment below by clicking on the “comments” link.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

At any given performance of McCarter’s production of A Christmas Carol, there are at least 20 crew members backstage (or in the dressing rooms, the booth, or the wardrobe room) making the show come together flawlessly every night. And all 20 of them agree that Kerry is magic in the bedroom.

In fact, Kerry has been magic in the bedroom for three years now. What does that mean? Well each member of A Christmas Carol’s crew has a title that describes what they do, like: “Spot #1,” “Wardrobe Supervisor,” or “Child Supervisor.” Kerry’s title is “Magic in the Bedroom.” Kerry operates nearly all of the magic tricks that take place in Scrooge’s bedroom, including Christmas Past #1’s magical appearance, the trunk that opens and spits out a hat, and the flying cane (and many many more!). It takes her and a colleague about 30 minutes to set up the entire bedroom sequence before a show. With two new pieces of magic this year (the flying cane and the flame above the door right before Marley appears), Kerry often only has a few seconds between one cue and the next. If I had her job, I’d be a total stress-ball.

So next time you see Kerry shopping in downtown Princeton, turn to your friends and say: “Hey, I hear that girl is magic in the bedroom!”

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

A few months ago, when I was new to blogging, I wrote this post about the trap doors on the stage floor of the Matthews Theatre. The post proved very popular, and according to our web stats, we actually have quite a few readers who have come to the blog after googling “theater trap doors.” Ever since then, I’ve meant to write the sister post—about the trap room which sits underneath the stage—but I just haven’t gotten around to it until today.

The picture attached to this picture is the trap room, set up for A Christmas Carol. The entire ceiling of the trap room is made up of removable panels, each for a different trap. From the trap room, the beggar children enter onstage, the puppeteer who controls the Marley door-puppet enters, the entrance for Old Joe’s warehouse appears, Scrooge disappears at the end of Act 1 and the flaming tombstone arises. The big structure that you see in the picture is a set of platforms and stairs that allow people to go from ground level to ceiling level in the trap room (and therefore to floor level on the stage). Underneath the platforms is storage. On top of the platform, you can see a thick blue mattress-like thing - that is where Scrooge falls at the end of Act 1 (he basically rides the rug down a slide and tumbles onto the blue padding).

One of my favorite moments of backstage choreography that happens is during the Marley door-puppet sequence. The door flies in, a puppeteer comes out of the trapdoor behind it, operates the puppet, and scampers back into the trap. Onstage, the next thing you see is Scrooge open the door and walk off (over the trap). “But,” you ask, “how is he to know that the trap has been closed and locked?” Good question! The assistant stage manager (Hannah) stands offstage with a headset and a blue flashlight (actually the flashlight is black, but the light is blue). When the trap operator tells the ASM that the trap is locked, she flashes her flashlight at Scrooge, signaling him that it is safe to open the door and walk across the trap. If something delays the trap operator, Scrooge can fumble with his keys and the door handle for a while until he gets the all-clear.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

Every year, McCarter presents A Christmas Carol, and while lots of things change with a new cast and a fresh rehearsal process, some things are constant. The quiz below tests your attention to those unchanging minutae.

Answer the following 10 questions as best you can, and e-mail your answers to literary@mccarter.org. The first person to answer all 10 questions correctly (or the person who has answered the most questions correctly by January 1, 2009) will win two free tickets to see James Naughton’s late-nite cabaret concert on March 21. See end of post for contest details.

1. In the Christmas Past sequence, Scrooge’s older sister, Fan, sneaks out of her job at the mill to give Scrooge a present.What is that present?

2. What is the name of Scrooge’s business?

3. Which character in this production of A Christmas Carol says only one word?

4. How much money does Mr. Fezziwig give to young Marley and young Scrooge as a Christmas gift?

5. In this production of A Christmas Carol, we meet three of Scrooge’s employees. Who are they?

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Princeton News Network just posted a video interview with A Christmas Carol director Michael Unger and this year’s Ebenezer Scrooge, James A. Stephens. The video includes some neat video clips from the show itself, and also a great explanation from Unger about some of the concepts that shaped the design of the production. I highly recommend that you watch it!

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

Photo by T. Charles Erickson

The reviews for this year’s A Christmas Carol are starting to come in, and I must say they are positively glowing.

Here is my favorite line from Peter Filichia’s rave in the Star-Ledger this morning: “Stephens’ face is so fierce that one wonders if those mutton-chops he wears were just fleeced from a lamb whose throat he cut this morning.” Sometimes when you read a review, you can just tell that the critic had a lot of fun writing it… Filichia writes that Kathy Fitzgerald is “effervescent as a 19th-century party-animal” and the production remains “the most opulent show New Jersey sees all year.”

So what did you think? Post a “citizen review” of this year’s production of A Christmas Carol by clicking on the “comments” link below. We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre. Photo: James A. Stephens as “Ebenezer Scrooge” in McCarter’s production of A Christmas Carol.

Photo by T. Charles Erickson

As you may have read in my previous post, we have a new Scrooge this year. Well, turns out that James A. Stephens is a wee bit more athletic than we are used to in a Scrooge. So we ordered him a special flying harness for the flying scene, and he and director Michael Unger worked out a few more air maneuvers for Scrooge in Act II. They’re really impressive.

The picture at left was snapped during our dress rehearsal. The woman on the right is Ronica Reddick, who plays Christmas Present. The blur on the left is James A. Stephens. You will note that he is upside down. And backwards. Fancy, huh?

The flying in McCarter’s A Christmas Carol is done with the expertise and supervision of Flying by Foy, the premier theatrical flying company in the nation. They were founded in 1950 for a production of Peter Pan (the non-musical version) on Broadway, but became famous for flying Mary Martin in the 1954 musicalized Peter Pan. And they’ve been flying people in every production of Peter Pan since. Every year, they come to McCarter and set up their flying rig, which involves motors, pulleys, and all sorts of other shenanigans. This year we’re trying out a new harness for Scrooge, which allows for some slightly fancier tricks. Let us know what you think by clicking on the “Comment” link below!

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

Photo by T. Charles Erickson

Well, we’ve made it through week one of the notorious Christmas Carol student matinee extravaganza. While for most of the other main stage productions we have one or two student matinees, for A Christmas Carol we have three weeks’ worth—and in the Matthews Theatre, with pretty much all 1,100 seats filled for each performance, that’s a whole lot of students filing in and out of McCarter.

The massive organizational process that is involved with receiving more than 20 busses, unloading over a thousand students, and getting them all into their seats to get the show started on time, not to mention getting them all out of the theater and into their correct busses again once the show is over, is facilitated by the interns and organized by McCarter’s super-fabulous Education Department. But the secret we learned this week is that leading post-show discussions and organizing playwriting workshops is nowhere near the extent of the Education Department’s skills and abilities. Apparently they also have the capacity to…

CONTROL THE WEATHER!!!

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Well, we survived it. The tech and dress rehearsals for A Christmas Carol are over and we are officially in our preview phase of production. It all ran rather smoothly actually, even with the long hours. The best part of that portion of rehearsals, however, ended up being something that had nothing to do with the show at all.

Now, as those of you who have taken the train from Princeton to New York Penn Station know, the train ride back and forth between Big Apple and McCarter is not a hop-skip-and-jump ride. It’s about an hour and 20 minutes to get to Penn Station and some of us have another 30-45 minute subway rides from there. If we were to take the trains after rehearsals got out at 11:00 pm, only to be back for a 11 am call the following day, we wouldn’t be sleeping much.

The wonderful people at the McCarter treat their folks like family and, luckily, sprung to put the cast up at the Marriott Residence Inn. Many of us have often been on the road in national and regional tours, summer stock, regional theater productions, and various other performance outlets and are very acquainted with staying in hotels. When we all checked into this particular one, we braced ourselves for the usual non-descript decor, lumpy mattresses, teeny refrigerators and various other accommodations that are less than home-like. We all got our keys, boarded a few elevators and trudged off to different rooms on different floors. Expecting the worst we entered our rooms and saw… A FIREPLACE!!! Yes, you read that correctly. These rooms were not your run of the mill hotel fare. These were 2 bedroom suites with full living room and kitchen. And yes, the working FIREPLACE!!! Almost immediately we began calling each other all giddy and giggly. We felt like stars!

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A few days ago, I posted about loading in the set of A Christmas Carol. Every year, our information technology department makes a time-lapse video of the load-in. The crew watches it every year to teach the new folk the order in which things happen and to refresh the series of events for the returners. The camera sits in the back of the house, and records .5 seconds of motion video every 30 seconds. Therefore every second of the video represents 1 minute of activity on the stage, and every minute of video represents 1 hour of real time. The entire video is 24 minutes - from the first pieces getting brought into the theater through most of light focus.

It’s fun and educational to watch, especially if you like to skip around a bit (about 9 minutes in there is a really great section!). Sometimes you see a lot of people standing around doing nothing - that is because we have found it more efficient to have more people on-hand, even if they aren’t working every second. That way, if someone needs to move a ladder or lift something up in order to do the next job, there is always someone there to help - the process never gets slowed down because there aren’t enough hands on deck.

Enjoy the video! Post any comments or questions below, by clicking on the “comments” link.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.