The Cadi Corner

Hello all you savvy Totem Pole web surfers!  My name is Cadi and I am a production assistant here.  From the first rehearsal to closing night I help out with all our shows in a season. Our fearless artistic director, the fantastic Mr. Ficca has decided it would be great if I started to blog to give you an insider's view of the goings on at Totem Pole Playhouse.  So, here we go!

Yesterday we had our first rehearsal for our upcoming show, I Hate Hamlet.  All of our first rehearsals start with a table read.  All the actors sit around a table and read the play out loud for the first time.  We do this so that our wonderful director Carl Schurr, along with all the designers can get a feel for the play without risking paper cuts.  Also, our lighting designer, Michael Domue don't read good.  The table read was just hysterical, we are all in for a treat with this play I can't wait to get it on its feet and start making some theatre magic!

In addition to our first rehearsal, we had two performances of our current show, You Say Tomatoes, or if you're from across the pond, You Say Tomatoes.  The set for this show is rather large because Act I takes place in England, and Act II takes place in New York.  To achieve both looks we (the crew) have to rotate 3 revolves at intermission (to take us to NYC) and before the curtain rises on each show (to take us back to England). 

There are particular steps we all have to follow in an exact order to make the transition smooth. We must follow the instructions step by step so nothing bad will happen. 

Something bad happened. 

We turned one of the revolves out of order and so it got stuck on the English side.  We tried by sheer man-power to move it and a piece of the set fell off and hit our assistant technical director, the brilliant Melissa Miller in the face!  Who says theatre isn't a contact sport?  Don't worry, she's ok.  And we all learned an important lesson today about following instructions!  This blog is brought to you by the letter W ( for worker’ comp).

(ATD Melissa Miller shows off her killer scar)