The Bill Raiten Blog

Every theater group goes through this: last week before you open, there’s ALWAYS something else on the set that can be improved, painted differently or whatever, and all the actors are worried about dropping a line somewhere and messing things up.  A couple of last-minute rehearsals to “fine tune”, dress rehearsal (to make sure *all* the little things work out the way they’re supposed to) then you’re on.  Finally!

That’s the beauty of live theater though: things can go wrong (and often do); it’s not like a movie where you can keep doing takes until you get the perfect shot.  If something goes awry the actors have to recover on their own and if they’re good (or lucky, or both) no one in the audience even notices.

NST has taken on a lot so far this year.  We’ve performed “On Golden Pond” in Blue Hill, moved it to the Grand then stored the set until the reprise (last weekend in June at the Reach Performing Arts Center BTW.)  We’ve performed “Lettice & Lovage” in Blue Hill, moved it to the Grand then reused a lot of the set components to construct the set for “Laughter On The 23rd Floor.”  “Laughter” will also move to the Grand and the plan is to move the set back to the Town Hall for a summer reprise some time.  All this work wouldn’t be possible without the selfless help of a lot of dedicated volunteers.  Thanks everyone!

There’s always a lot of details that go undone until the last minute and that’s what this week is all about.  It’s pretty stressful but all worth it when opening night arrives.

Well we haven’t been very good at keeping this blog up-to-date, so I guess it’s my turn to add something.  NST has been very busy the last few months, producing “On Golden Pond”, “Lettice and Lovage” and now, Neil Simon’s classic “Laughter On The 23rd Floor.”

Neil Simon is so clever!  When you read his stuff it’s easy to laugh out loud but then you have to look around quickly to see if anyone noticed you.  Of course, that’s what this play is all about.  Early in his career Simon wrote for Sid Caesar’s “Your Show Of Shows” which was a weekly 90-minute comedy show performed live in the early ’50’s.  I can’t imagine how difficult (and fun) that must have been.  “Laughter” is about the “writer’s room” where people were constantly writing jokes, trying to outdo one another (you know, looking around to see if anyone noticed you.)

Rehearsing is fun, especially when everyone knows their lines and the director (Bill in this case) can start to see ways to better convey the playwright’s intentions to the audience.  We experienced this last weekend when one of the actor’s changed his energy level in a particular scene in a particular way: this carried over to everyone else and the whole thing really came to life.  It was “good” before - now it was “great”!

Sid Caesar’s writers were first class, top of the line professionals, who evidently were all a bunch of real lunatics.  The characters in “Laughter” were based on the real-life writers, like Neil Simon, Mel Brooks, Larry Gelbart, Carl Reiner, etc.  It can be argued that these writers defined modern American comedy.

Only one more weekend of rehearsals, tech week is coming up (to set lights and any other effects) then Dress Rehearsal, then we open.  Hope to see you there!