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.

Creating a Monster

Posted by Scott Parkinson, actor -

The Third Story is a loving and zany homage to the movies. In one of the play’s subplots, a storyline that turns out to be the first draft of a “lady-scientist-meets-Queen-of-the-Mob” screenplay written by our leading characters, we meet Zygote. There is one short stage direction that acts as our introduction to him: he is an “ageless” being, “eerily beautiful” and “frightening”. Beyond that description we glean from the script that he is a botched laboratory experiment grown from a test tube, dependent for survival (or so he thinks) on a secret formula that helped him age thirty years in three hours, that he was designed to last only a decade, that he is angry about the circumstances of his “birth” and his creator’s inability to show him true love and care, and that he possesses a distinctive anatomy that includes seven nipples and a “very original intestinal tract”...(more)

Opening Night Photos

Click here to view photos from the opening night party 

for The Third Story on Broadway.com. 

Down Front again with the Lady in Question

Posted by John Catania and Charles Ignacio, Filmmakers—

Actors and directors who have been fortunate enough to be part of Charles Busch’s long career came to know us lovingly as “the documentarians” (first coined by actor Julie Halston), for our work producing and directing the feature length documentary, The Lady in Question is Charles Busch. From 2000 to 2005 we dogged Charles and the people in his life to find out the real story behind the talented writer/actor/director/leading lady who we felt was one of the greatest and most enduring theater artists of our time.

We first came to know Charles Busch through the TV lens when as producers we turned to him often throughout the 1990’s to contribute his talent to the long-running PBS series "In the Life." So when Charles was set to open his first Broadway venture as a playwright in November of 2000, The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, we came to him with our documentary idea and started our cameras rolling. We hardly knew what we were in for that mild autumn night as we discovered over the next several years that the man beneath the wigs was far more complex, charming, driven, and devoted than any of his celebrated heroines.

Photo: L-R, Charles Igancio, John Catania and Charles Busch.

Now that he brings a new work to the stage with The Third Story, we welcome the event as another highlight in our theater-going lives, and we only regret that, having completed our film about his life and work, we were not there behind-the-scenes to document the process of another Charles Busch production. We always knew during our five years on his story that we were witness to the workings of a national treasure, and whether we were hearing his side-splitting and sometimes wrenching life-stories unfold in his Village apartment or backstage at some dusty New York theater, we had the time of our lives. We think that fun spirit of discovery is captured in our film.

After finishing The Lady Question is Charles Busch we traveled the film festival circuit with Charles to take questions from audiences eager to learn more, many of them wondering how he was able to break out in NY Theater in the 1980’s against impossible odds. We conducted our last post-screening discussion some two years ago, and so we are thrilled to once again be down front with the inimitable Charles Busch on February 10th in a post-performance discussion after The Third Story with MCC Theater. As Charles' story continues we can't wait to take our place in the darkened theater among his eager audience.

Score!

Posted by Lewis Flinn, composer—

The music in The Third Story is an exercise in theme and development.  The first trick was composing a theme, a short melodic hook, that sounded at home in all the various worlds of this play - a nineteenth century Russian fairy tale, a 1940's Hollywood gangster film, and the lab of a mad scientist.  It needed to be able to be reinterpreted for both romantic scenes and action scenes.  Once that melody was discovered, the next trick was making it all sound authentic (not a pastiche) and believably orchestral.  Of course, there is no budget to hire an orchestra, so it all had to be done by me on my computer, using samples of real players and some music production tricks.  Finally, there was the challenge of the scope of the score - there are over 120 music cues, ranging from short transitions to long underscores.  The latter is often compromised of several overlapping elements that blend in and out at particular points in a scene so that the music remains specific to the dramatic moment.  Just like a real film score.  Hopefully.

Click here to listen:

Slap Happy

Posted by Sarah Rafferty, actor—

I must admit, I leap out of bed every day in anticipation of being slapped around by Charles Busch in "The Third Story." Seeing this photo in the New Yorker made my day. The cat is finally out of the bag. Charles Busch is a brute and a bruiser.  I'm afraid, though, that this fabulous photographer must have Photoshopped my flying prosthetic tooth out of the shot.  (And to think, neither Charles nor I could get an audition for "The Wrestler"!) 

'The Third Story' - Playwright's Note

Posted by Charles Busch, playwright-

Writing and storytelling have always been a major part of my life, even though my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Laspina, refused to tack any of my stories on the wall with the other kids’ work. My spelling was awful, my grammar hopeless and my penmanship illegible. Still, she was forced to admit, my stories were the most creative in the class.

Where did I get this love of narrative? At a very early age, I began watching old movies on television. My father loved romantic films, and together we shed a tear over Greer Garson and Ronald Colman in Random Harvest and Bette Davis in Now Voyager and Norma Shearer as Marie Antoinette. Like most kids, I also loved fairy tales. The Disney animated Sleeping Beauty was an early obsession of mine. The stories that so perplexed Mrs. Laspina tended to combine the Brothers Grimm with Warner Brothers. There was usually a gentle Princess who was kidnapped away from her enchanted castle and ended up a hard-boiled dame working in a whorehouse...(more)