This is the first in our Take Flight In Rehearsal video series. We’ll be posting more in the next few days.
In this video, shot during rehearsals for Take Flight, Stanton Nash (Wilbur Wright), Benjamin Schrader (Orville Wright), and director Sam Buntrock discuss The Wright Brothers’ role in history and in the production.
Posted by Lauren Medici, Marketing Intern at McCarter Theatre.
Early in the rehearsal process for Take Flight, we realized just how exciting this show was shaping up to be. Not only is it a brand new musical—a thrilling undertaking in itself—but it’s also got a legendary writing team, a ridiculously talented cast, and a visionary director. We decided that all of this had to be documented.
So a few weeks ago, we asked a photographer to come shoot a full day of Take Flight rehearsal, documenting everything from scene work to staging to musical sessions. We ended up with over 700 images from the day.
Here are just a few of our favorites; head over to our Facebook page for more!
Lindbergh’s Rehearsal Log
Days: 14-17
Weather: Varied from scattered showers to springtime sun, perfect for making the flowers bloom
Hours of rehearsal: 98-126
Days until first preview: 14
Number of stage managers and assistants it takes to rehearse Take Flight: 7
Number of assistants assigned to the stage management assistants: 2
Sets of fresh flowers stage management has placed around the rehearsal hall since we began: I’m not sure! There are always fresh flowers in the room! Its amazing!
*Note: I have fallen off the rehearsal log blog wagon! This week has definitely been the thickest so far as we worked hard to finish blocking the show so that we could have our first “stumble through.” We call the first run through of a show on its feet a “stumble through,” mostly so that we will feel safe to make mistakes and won’t feel pressured to make it perfect. Language is very important in these circumstances. Terms like “run through” make actors jittery. It would be like your boss calling you in for a “meeting” rather than a “chat.”
*Note: We also had second costume fittings this week and the looks in this show are going to be incredible! They had a custom leather flight jacket made for me that I never want to take off.
*Note: Sally the cat finally reappeared! A few cast members questioned my sanity when they read the story about the cat that stalked toward me one day after rehearsal. But the cat finally returned and this time I snapped a photo of it in the bushes. Its difficult to see her, but think of it as a “Where’s Waldo.” Do you know this cat?
*Note: I don’t want to ruin any surprises about the show, but we’ve had some special rehearsal sessions this week to work with set pieces that may or may not leave the ground. I’ll leave it at that.
The Cat hiding in the bushes outside the Berlind. Can you see him?
Posted by Claybourne Elder, who plays Charles Lindbergh in McCarter Theatre’s Production of Take Flight
Day: 13
Weather:
Hours of rehearsal: 91
Days until first preview: 18
Piano keys in use during a normal rehearsal day: 240 (two full-size pianos and one keyboard)
Hours Lindbergh slept before his transatlantic flight: 2
Hours it took to fly from New York to Paris: 33.5
Rio Rita was a Broadway smash hit and was later made into a film.
*Note: One of Lindbergh’s biggest battles as he crossed the ocean was staying awake. He had been waiting for 8 days for the weather to clear so that he could take off. And after 8 days of spending most of his time waiting at the airfield for news, he decided to go into New York City for the evening. While in the city he got the word that the weather over the ocean was clearing and that he would be able to take off in the morning. There were still several hours of preparation to complete before he could take off, so he rushed back to the airfield to work and ended up hardly sleeping the night before his flight.
And what did he do that last evening before he took off to cross the ocean? Why did he go to New York City and risk missing his pocket of good weather? He was at the theatre!! He went to see Rio Rita at the Ziegfeld Theatre and was allowed to go backstage to meet the stars. And now it’s almost as if this musical is his Promethean struggle, night after night of performances reminding him of those hours he battled with himself to stay awake because he spent a night at the theatre.
*Note: We are getting dangerously close to finishing a first sketch of all the scenes in the show! We’ve been taking our time to really explore and try things when we feel the impulse. Slowly carving away to discover what lies beneath. I suspect that tomorrow we will have the whole show blocked and we’re all very excited!
Posted by Claybourne Elder, who plays Charles Lindbergh in McCarter Theatre’s Production of Take Flight
Day: 12
Weather: A little overcast in the evening, but a beautiful sunny day again!
Hours of rehearsal: 84
Days until first preview: 19
*Note: Today marks the end of our second week of rehearsal. We’ve learned all the music, done table work, staged individual scenes, had costume fittings, seen design presentations on the set and visited the theatre. But today for the first time we started staging the parts of the show with the entire company. This show presents a particular challenge in that it is the melding of three separate stories with their own specific styles. To allow for the styles to develop without bleeding into the other two, we have been rehearsing our “arcs” separately. For example, the Wright brothers will meet in the morning for a few hours to work with the director while in another room Amelia Earhart is rehearsing music and in yet another room the Lindbergh arc is working on choreography. Then we all switch splitting our time with the music director, director and choreographer. So we were definitely excited about being all together today and it was great to have the energy of everyone in the show bouncing off each other.
*Note: During lunch some of the cast played frisbee on the lawn while others lounged and chatted. Princeton is beautiful!
Posted by Claybourne Elder, who plays Charles Lindbergh in McCarter Theatre’s Production of Take Flight.
Lindbergh’s Rehearsal Log
Day: 11
Weather: Sunny
Hours of rehearsal: 77
Days until first preview: 20
Number of photos taken during rehearsal today for publicity: over 700
*Note: Here’s a Wright Brothers themed game to get you through your day:
Let’s make it a little competition. Post your top score in the comments (honestly) and the winner will receive a show poster signed by the whole cast when he or she comes to see the show!
Posted by Claybourne Elder, who plays Charles Lindbergh in McCarter Theatre’s Production of Take Flight.
Lindbergh’s Rehearsal Log
Day: 10
Weather: Sunny skies
Hours of rehearsal: 70
Days until first preview: 21
Pairs of rehearsal shoes in hall: 14
*Note: After your first costume fitting, the shop usually brings a few pieces of your costume, or ones like them, to the rehearsal hall so you can practice moving in them. As we’ve been staging the show this week, the wonderful staff here at the McCarter have been bringing in costume pieces and putting them on shelves organized by our names. We look a little strange in our period hats, shoes and jackets over our t-shirts and sweat pants, but its really helpful to learn how your costume feels before you have to spend every night in it. It’s also very helpful in character development to remember the time period that you’re working in while you’re creating the show.
*Note: The United States Army was trying to develop an airplane in 1903, but the plane wouldn’t fly. The New York Times wrote that maybe in 1 million to 10 million years they might be able to make a plane that would fly. Only eight days later two men were successful in flying the first manned plane. They were Wilbur Wright and his younger brother, Orville. They had made a propeller-driven airplane and it had stayed in the air for 12 seconds. It was called the Wright Flyer. They made three more flights that day at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Only five people were there to see the flights. The first plane they had built was a glider that measured 16 feet from wing tip to wing tip. It cost them $15 to build it. The gasoline-powered plane they flew at Kitty Hawk cost them less than $1000 to build. They learned to love to “tinker” from their mother. She was always fixing and repairing things. The boys earned money by making home-made mechanical toys. When bicycles became popular, they opened a bicycle shop.
Posted by Claybourne Elder, who plays Charles Lindbergh in McCarter Theatre’s Production of Take Flight.
Lindbergh’s Rehearsal Log
Day: 9
Weather:
Hours of rehearsal: 63
Days until first preview: 22
Number of props used in the show (so far): 124
*Note: This week’s rehearsal got pretty busy and so I fell a little bit behind on the log blog, and for this I apologize. But with the addition of these three entries, I will be caught up and you will be up to date! Don’t miss the Wright Brothers competition as part of Day: 11.
*Note: I was chatting in rehearsal today and mentioned to one of my cast mates that I’m red/green colorblind. Usually when I mention this fact to people they start pointing at every red and green thing in sight and asking me what color it is. I laugh when people point to something red or green and say “So, can you see this?” As if I’ve somehow managed to live my life only seeing half the things in the world and struggling to find those that have been rendered invisible by my colorblindness. On this particular day, however, that was not the case. However, it was brought up that I wouldn’t actually be allowed to fly a plane. And its true, colorblind people aren’t allowed to fly planes. As part of your pilot’s license testing, you have to be able to identify colors of signal lights, flares and map symbols. So I guess I won’t be giving up acting to become a pilot!
Posted by Claybourne Elder, who plays Charles Lindbergh in McCarter Theatre’s Production of Take Flight.
Lindbergh’s Rehearsal Log
Day: 8
Weather: Overcast, scattered showers
Hours of rehearsal: 56
Days until first preview: 23
Number of days it took to build the Spirit of St. Louis: 60
Number of seconds it took the Spirit of St. Louis to take off for the first time: 6.5
*Notes: Today we had a music brush-up rehearsal and we started chatting about the music that underscores many of my scenes in the show. To my amazement our music director told me that our brilliant sound designer, Ken Travis, has taken an actual audio recording of the engine of the Spirit of St. Louis and put a pitch to it and it will be playing along with the orchestrations! How incredible is that?!
*Notes: A few facts about Amelia Earhart:
Earhart was called “Lady Lindy” because her slim build and facial features resembled that of Charles Lindbergh.
Earhart refused to don typical flying gear—she wore a suit or dress instead of the “high-bread aviation togs,” a close-fitting hat instead of a helmet, didn’t put on her goggles until she taxied to the end of the field and removed them immediately upon landing.
She developed a friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt, who wanted to learn how to fly. Earhart had planned to teach her, for which the First Lady even got her student permit.
Earhart met Orville Wright at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in 1937, the same year she disappeared.
Earhart had such an impression on public that people often wrote and told her about naming babies, lakes and even homing pigeons “Amelia.”
The United States government spent $4 million looking for Earhart, which made it the most costly and intensive air and sea search in history at that time.
She was the 16th woman to receive a pilot’s license from the FAI (License No. 6017).
Posted by Claybourne Elder, who plays Charles Lindbergh in McCarter Theatre’s Production of Take Flight.
Day: 7
Weather: Sunny, clear skies
Hours of rehearsal: 49
Days until first preview: 24
Number of steps from my house to the theatre: 1184
*Note: I got online today to read up about flight in the early part of the 20th century. Today, we’re very disconnected from our flight experience. We get so used to planes that we forget that we’re up in the sky at all. Planes in the 1920’s often didn’t have roofs so the pilot and passengers were totally exposed to the elements. The Spirit of St. Louis had a roof but had big open windows. Lindbergh talks about wanting to lower his plane to bounce off the ocean waves hoping to send some water spraying into his face to wake himself up. For me, it made the danger of early flight so much more tangible.
My scariest in-flight experience happened recently: I was flying from Utah, where my family lives, back to my home in New York. It’s your standard cross country flight; 5 hours of sitting and enjoying a thimble of ginger ale and peanuts (if you’re lucky) trying to get interested in what are mostly terrible movies. I knew the flight was a little cursed before take off because I found myself sitting between two extremely tall men who were invading my knee space. I’m 6′2″, but these guys must have been over 6′5″. So I didn’t exactly blame them for spilling their ample leg length toward me, but I did object to the fact that I couldn’t put my tray table down without resting it on their knees. I went to my happy place: SkyMall magazine and was thrilled when a woman showed up and told the giant on my left that he was sitting in her seat. As our row re-situated and my compacted body expanded slightly, the rest of the plane filed in, including a woman with twins who plopped down directly in front of me and someone with a cat in a bag who sat directly behind me. I realize in both of those situations there are success stories and failures. I have two very well behaved twin nephews who I’m sure would be nothing but delightful on a flight. They would sit and color and the flight attendant would give them little gold wings. And I have a dog, but I have many friends with cats that seem so mellow that you could stuff them in any sort of bag and push them under a seat and they wouldn’t make a peep. Think of the extreme opposite of these two situations and you’ll have a picture in your head of what I was dealing with.
After about two hours of listening to the the miserable cat howling and the children struggling with their poor mother, things settled a little. Then the captain announced that we would be hitting some turbulence and that we should take our seats and buckle up. How many times have you heard that? How many time do you actually take it seriously? A few minutes later the plane shook violently. One of the flight attendants ran down the aisle to get into her seat and buckle herself in. The whole plane fell silent. Even the cat was quiet. Then the plane shook even more vigorously than the first time, dropped for a few seconds and then shook us all like a cheap carnival ride. At that point something unexplainable happened to me. Me and the woman sitting next to me, who hadn’t said a word to one another, bent our elbows and firmly grabbed each other’s hands and held on tight for several minutes looking ahead all the while.
If Lindbergh had only known that he just needed to put a spastic cat under his seat and let a couple of twins ride with him he would have had no trouble staying awake. But he was firm in his decision that he would have to fly alone if his single engined plane was going to make it across the Atlantic. It’s difficult for us to understand the danger he was putting himself in. After imagining myself in his situation for a while, my research time was finished and I was happy to return to the land of commercial flying in the 2000’s.
Posted by Claybourne Elder, who plays Charles Lindbergh in McCarter Theatre’s Production of Take Flight.
