Doug Kerr
Well-known member
New Mexico State University Alamogordo (NMSU-A), a satellite of New Mexico's second-largest state university, is the community college serving Alamogordo, N. M. and the surrounding area. The Theatre on the Hill is a community theater company operated by the college. It mostly performs in the college's Rohovec Theater, a comfortable 250-seat house.
This year's spring production, entitled "The Secret of Pirate's Cove", is, as is customary for the spring show, specially intended to appeal to a range of audiences including young people, and the cast includes a number of talented young actors. Special matinees will be held for students from the area's schools.
Rehearsals for the show have just begun. Here, during the second rehearsal, we see the director's table, which is set up during rehearsals in the theater's cross aisle/expansion seating area.
Douglas A. Kerr: The director's table
Left: Julie ("Juls"), a student in the college's Theater Arts program and assistant director of this production.
Center: Connie, Associate Professor of Theater Arts at the college, head of the Theater Arts program, "general director" of the theater company, author of this production, and last but not least, director of the production itself.
Right: Bob, assistant to the general director, designer of the set for this production (and in fact for many others), and an actor in the show, playing the role of Barbeesh, an irascible "retired" pirate and patriarch of the fading "pirate culture" in this little port town.
On stage, to our left of Juls: One of the young actors, still "on book" - reading her lines from the script (as were all the players, as this is only the second rehearsal).
Just above Connie's head, seated: Rod, the principal lighting and sound technician for the theater company, but in this show playing the part of "Greybeard", another retired pirate and captain of a merchant sailing ship that has just come into port.
While this rehearsal was underway, I was much of the time in the lighting/sound control booth, making final modifications to the theater's lighting control system to complete the cure of a long-standing malfunction in the control of the house lights. But that's a story for another time.
Doug
This year's spring production, entitled "The Secret of Pirate's Cove", is, as is customary for the spring show, specially intended to appeal to a range of audiences including young people, and the cast includes a number of talented young actors. Special matinees will be held for students from the area's schools.
Rehearsals for the show have just begun. Here, during the second rehearsal, we see the director's table, which is set up during rehearsals in the theater's cross aisle/expansion seating area.
Douglas A. Kerr: The director's table
Left: Julie ("Juls"), a student in the college's Theater Arts program and assistant director of this production.
Center: Connie, Associate Professor of Theater Arts at the college, head of the Theater Arts program, "general director" of the theater company, author of this production, and last but not least, director of the production itself.
Right: Bob, assistant to the general director, designer of the set for this production (and in fact for many others), and an actor in the show, playing the role of Barbeesh, an irascible "retired" pirate and patriarch of the fading "pirate culture" in this little port town.
His character name is a play on the French word "barbiche", meaning "goatee", with which Barbeesh is well equipped, it having been grown specially for this production.
On stage, to our left of Juls: One of the young actors, still "on book" - reading her lines from the script (as were all the players, as this is only the second rehearsal).
Just above Connie's head, seated: Rod, the principal lighting and sound technician for the theater company, but in this show playing the part of "Greybeard", another retired pirate and captain of a merchant sailing ship that has just come into port.
While this rehearsal was underway, I was much of the time in the lighting/sound control booth, making final modifications to the theater's lighting control system to complete the cure of a long-standing malfunction in the control of the house lights. But that's a story for another time.
By the way, "on book" has a second meaning in this context: used to describe a person, rather equivalent to the "script supervisor" in a film production (earlier known as the "script girl"), who follows the script assiduously during rehearsals to note any discrepancies in the production (possibly, in intermediate rehearsals, when the players are "off book" in the earlier sense, acting as a "prompter" and feeding lines to players who cannot remember a line.)
Best regards,Doug
