As "The Third Story" Wraps Up, a Look Back

Posted by Carl Andress, Director—

When I was a kid, I first became infatuated by the theater because I was fortunate enough to have parents who were infatuated by it. This love affair with make believe worlds continued to grow in my heart as I got older and was allowed to take part in local theater productions where I grew up in Nashua, NH. To this day, I vividly remember every "load-in weekend" that we had with the Nashua Actorsingers at the Elm Street Auditorium (a 1,600 seat theater!) as the best holidays I could imagine. To be a part of all the bustle of lights being hung, scenery being painted and costumes getting fitted filled my head with the smell of the greasepaint -- most certainly bitten by "the bug." I was always right at home and to this day, I continue to look forward to the load-in and tech rehearsals with great anticipation. Everyone is focused and working very diligently to stay on schedule and solve all issues that arise. But there is also a tremendous amount of fun and joy to be had by all, even as tensions mount and public performances get closer. Below are some pictures I was able to sneak during breaks during the tech rehearsals for MCC's The Third Story at the Lucille Lortel Theater. Great fun was indeed had by all!

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Here's the set as seen from the balcony of the Lortel. We had just placed the furniture on the stage so that lighting designer, David Weiner could focus his instruments... hence all the ladders and scaffolding. All the pieces, starting to come together...

This is one of the first moments during tech when David Weiner showed me how he would light scenic designer David Gallo's incredible two-sided, hand-painted backdrop with LED strip lights. Dave Gallo and I found inspiration for the design of The Third Story from the great American scenic designer, Jo Mielziner, of whom we both are great admirers. We make use of one backdrop in the play, upstage of what we refer to as our "boarding house scrim walls." This drop is painted on two sides. Why they don't bleed together has something to do with a starch treatment -- old school theatrical know-how! This is how Mielziner achieved the sudden appearance of "Bali Hai" in his designs for the original production of South Pacific. When our drop is lit from the front, we are in our "reality" or "home base" -- Omaha, Nebraska -- where Peg and Drew, our protagonists, exist. When the same drop is lit from behind, we go into "the movie world" -- into the imaginations of our play's screenwriters and the movie that that may write together after the action of their story reaches it's conclusion.

Here we see "Omaha" in silhouette as the drop is lit from the front, a look we occasionally use in the show for transitions into and out of our three stories. Here it's great to see our scrim walls. When these are lit from the front, you can see all the realistic details Dave Gallo painted in, such as a radiator, pictures on the wall, stained wall paper, etc. When the scrim walls have no light on them from the front, they become transparent and you only can see the architectural details which are partly structural framework as well as solidly and intentionally painted in. Another technique pioneered by Mielziner in his designs for the original productions of such plays as Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire.

Here, we are upstage of the two-sided drop, experimenting with how the LED strip lights would make people look in photographs! Kelly Glasow and Paddle Henson, our crackerjack stage management team, pose for the director...looking like characters in a Toulouse-Lautrec painting! 

Here we see Sarah Rafferty as "Verna," Scott Parkinson as "Zygote," Charles Busch as "Queenie Bartlett" and Jonathan Walker as "Steve Bartlett"  working through the staging of a scene, alternately referred to as either "The Slap Scene" or the "Damn Her! Scene" for the first time in costume, on set and in light. Sarah and her dresser weren't quite sure if the little hat costume designer Gregory Gale had given her to wear here would actually stay on her head. After a few slaps, Sarah was able to make it work! Shortly after this shot was taken we undoubtedly were ready to grab a bite to eat on our dinner break during this first "ten out of twelve" -- meaning on a given day we would rehearse for ten out of twelve hours, with a two-hour dinner break. We often found ourselves at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame right around the corner from the theater. Those dinners during "ten out of twelves" make for some of the best show-biz memories one can have.