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Start planning for Scene Night well in advance—five weeks ahead is good, or right after the spring shows’ first weekend.
Pick a time for Scene Night, and coordinate with the Secretary to book a room. We usually try to get a medium-sized lecture hall, like 3-133 or 2-190. It can help to book the room for the entire day, so that groups can rehearse in there.
Start a thread asking members, Dartes, and participants of the current show for scene suggestions. Ask people to reply-all so that everyone can see the suggestions. Begin by starting a thread asking members, Dartes, and participants of the current show for scene suggestions. Ask people to reply-all so that everyone can see the suggestions. You may wish to recommend some guidelines for scenes: they should be 1-10 minutes long and can cover a wide range of genres and styles. Don’t worry about rights, as long as someone can find a script to work off of.
After about a week, or when you think there are enough suggestions, compile them all into a form much like this one. It helps to include links to the script for every scene, for reference. Feel free to trim down the list of suggestions a bit at your discretion, although you can also just include them all to gauge how much interest there is in for each one.
A general rule of thumb is that if one of the scenes up for consideration is a scene that the Ensemble has performed beforein recent memory in a mainstage show, you should check in with the people who acted in those roles originally before offering (unless they have already graduated and left the Ensemble) before offering it to someone else if they the original actors say no or don’t reply.
Send out the form and set a deadline for people to fill it out. Once the deadline comes, you’ll have to go through the results and decide which scenes to do and who will direct them and act in them. This is the hard part. Sadly, you probably won’t be able to make everyone happy. That’s okay—just do the best you can. Here are some relevant points to keep in mind:
- Aim for a 60-90 minute show; ten scenes is okay and twelve is probably pushing
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- it.
- Keep in mind which scenes can be cut down and which scenes cannot, and be sure to recommend these cuts to the relevant directors.
- Keep in mind which scenes are feasible in the little rehearsal time we have and which are not.
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- Scenes we have done recently are easy to do if most original actors are available!
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- On the other hand, if substitute actors are needed, you may need to assign a new "director" for the scene to help guide the new actors and keep the scene short. Even if no substitute actors are needed, it may help to assign one actor to be in charge of logistics for director-less scenes.
- If there’s not enough interest in a scene, don’t force it.
- If there’s too much interest in a scene, try to give the people who couldn’t get it something else to do.
- Respect people’s limits.
- Watch out for people who might be overestimating how much they can take on.
- Try to keep a balance of Shakespeare and non-Shakespeare.
- Think about who would be fun to see in which role.
- Once you’ve locked down a director, feel free to check in with them to see if they are satisfied with the cast you’re giving them, or if they have any casting ideas of their own.
In the end, use Use your best judgment, and don't hesitate to ask other officers for assistance or sanity checks.
Once casting is complete, send out the list of scenes, directors, and actors, perhaps like so. In your email, you should
- remind everyone when Scene Night is and when call time is (maybe 60-90 minutes before the show starts, to leave time for a transition run
- tell directors to
- contact their actors
- make sure everyone's using the same script
- schedule rehearsals
- look for
- a Sound Engineer, to play cues
- a Publicity/Program Designer
- someone to film the show
- otherwise generally helpful Tech Ninjas
If you managed to book the performance room for the entire day, send out a spreadsheet so that directors can book the room for slots of half an hour or longer to rehearse their scenes.
You should also coordinate with the Secretary so that scene directors could request room reservations for rehearsals before the show day.
As Scene Night approaches, check in with the directors to see how their rehearsals are going, and whether they need anything! In particular, you'll need them to
- place the final copies of their scripts in a Google Drive folder, so that someone can be on book during the show if an actor needs to call line
- tell you what set pieces/furniture they'll need, and how many (hopefully just tables and chairs)
- send you any sound cues along with some non-ambiguous description of where each cue plays
- verify how they want character names to appear in the program
Once you have acquired all of this information, you're ready to order the scenes. Once again, this can be rather logistically taxing. Some things to keep in mind:
- Check if anyone needs to leave early or arrive late for whatever reason, and satisfy this requirement first.
- Do your best to avoid actors having to appear in scenes back-to-back. This will likely be impossible to avoid altogether, so try your best to ensure that the instances in which this does happen are such that:
- the actor has few lines;
- the actor has a break within the scene before/after they have to come on again in a different role;
- or, if all else fails, the actor is okay with it.
- Use the furniture requirements to help you keep scene transitions smooth and easy.
- Switch around between Shakespeare/non-Shakespeare and other stylistic varieties.
- Think about what you want the first and last scenes to be. (It could make sense, for example, to begin with a strong Shakespeare scene and end with something fun.)
Email out the scene order to the directors so that they can double-check it before you email it out to everyone.
Finally, remind people to wear show shirts and dark jeans as the default costume unless they have something else their director wants them to wear.
When show day arrives, just do your best to help bring everything together. Good luck!(to be continued; if this has not actually been continued and you need this information, poke the previous Officer-at-Large)
Theater Arts Open House
This is like Activities Midway, but at W97. There is less of a pressing need to bring silly hats. The location is more intimate, and there are snacks (yay!), and since W97 is (a) specifically the theater building and (b) so far out of the way, generally anyone who shows up is actually invested in doing theater. Therefore, use this opportunity to get a conversation going with people about what kind of theater the Ensemble actually gets up to! As well as to snack.
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