`Don’t you feel special?” Thomas Schumacher asked the 2,300 or so folks gathered at the Cadillac Palace Theatre on Nov. 12 for the first Chicago showing of “Aida.”
Schumacher, the boyish, brainy president of Walt Disney Theatrical Productions, was being cheerfully sarcastic. “We have never run through the whole show without stopping,” he admitted, and warned the audience that this performance of the lavish Elton John-Tim Rice musical might be halted at any time during the evening.
The show did go on, without stopping, and the audience, dotted with family, friends and associates of cast and crew, gave it a standing ovation despite some ragged edges and a curiously clipped curtain call.
It was just another first night of theatrical previews, a nail-biting period lasting days or weeks. During previews, productions often undergo major changes, and the audience, paying discounted prices, becomes a major player, helping to shape the show.
Flip the calender forward to Dec. 8 and the final preview performance of “Aida.” By the end of this preview period, some major and minor elements of the huge Disney musical, already revamped after a brief run in Atlanta, had been altered:
– The box-like tomb set piece that was hydraulically lifted to “float” in blackness (and crashed to the floor the second night of previews, injuring the actors) remained safely stationary, with the effect achieved with lighting, not mechanics.
– Adam Pascal’s performance as Radames, the Egyptian captain who captures, then falls in love with Aida (Heather Headley), was stronger and more focused, making his shift in character more believable.
– A romantic scene under starry skies that the lovers initially played upstage, with Headley prone while Pascal leaned over, was restaged to feature the actors embracing downstage, in a more visible, striking position.
– In the final scene, Amneris (Sheri Rene Scott) stepped gracefully into a museum case set piece, facing away from audience. In November, she had stumbled backwards into the case, in a move that was clumsy and distracting.
– The bows were fully choreographed, with leads and ensemble members taking their turns for applause.
Due to open in previews on Broadway in late February, “Aida” will undoubtedly undergo even more alterations as it evolves in a process that is both challenging and crucial.
“The preview period is absolutely essential to a new play,” said Susan V. Booth, co-director with Regina Taylor of “Oo-Bla-Dee,” Taylor’s play about women jazz musicians in the 1940s that had its world premiere at the Goodman Theatre last March.
“When you’ve been rehearsing a play for three or four weeks, you develop a shorthand in the way you understand it,” Booth said. But when the preview audience comes in with fresh eyes, “they can see the forest for the trees. Meanwhile, you’ve been hitting your head against the individual trees, so your vision becomes less acute.”
James Sherman, author of “Door to Door,” now running at Victory Gardens Theatre, where he is a playwright-in-residence, said he believes the preview period is “the most important element” in the development of a new play.
At Victory Gardens, where five world premiere productions are presented each season, patrons at nine preview performances for each play receive audience comment cards in which they can answer questions such as “What particular moments are especially memorable?” and “Do any moments need clarification for your understanding or enjoyment of the play?”
According to Victory Gardens publicist Carrie Jaeck, playwrights, directors and actors pay close attention to those comments, which range from “Don’t change anything!” to “The ending is a bit flat. The last five minutes don’t have the sharpness or sparkle of the rest.”
Sherman, also the author of “Beau Jest” and “Romance in D,” said that while he reads the cards, what is most valuable is “finally seeing the show with the audience. My gut tells me what they’re responding to in ways I didn’t anticipate, and what they’re not responding to that I thought would touch them. It’s all very instructive, and I’ve been known to bring in large changes to the unsuspecting cast the next day and say, `Let’s try them tonight.’ “
Booth and Taylor made many changes during the 10-performance preview period for “Oo-Bla-Dee,” a technically complex show.
“With the technical demands of a play like `Aida’ or `Oo-Bla-Dee,’ ” said Booth, “you have this priority tree of things you have to figure out. Often the first two previews are less about listening to the play and more about making sure the mechanics of the production are smooth.
“You can sense when you’re leaving the audience too long in a blackout, or when a scenic transition is taking too long. When you had all the house lights on and were working on it in tech, maybe it didn’t seem so long, but now the audience seems restless so you have to tighten that up.”
Once technical difficulties are overcome, Booth, who is Goodman’s director of new play development, listens hard during previews to the audience “to get a sense of whether moments are sustaining or not.
“One of the things you listen for is restlessness,” said the director. “You can audibly hear when an audience is becoming impatient. There is one sound people make when they are unsettled by something in the play: You hear conversation. But when they’re losing interest, you hear programs. You hear pages flipping and people rustling around in their seats and it’s a good sign there is a lull you may not have wanted.”
The Goodman also invites audience members to post-preview discussions, and “that is an invaluable time to hear from audiences what was unclear and what wasn’t,” Booth said. She added she is “notorious for hanging out in the lobby during intermission, and when people don’t know you’re eavesdropping, they are wonderfully candid.”
Booth said she and Taylor were “very attentive to clarity issues in `Oo-Bla-Dee.’ You get a generalized sense of, well, this scene is feeling squishy. The audience is leaving us here.”
Trying to sharpen a “squishy” scene brings out the masochism in theater people, Booth added. “I assume it’s my problem as the director, the actors assume it’s their problem as performers, and the playwright is getting out the red pen. So, first you point the finger in your own direction and make sure you’re comfortable with the choices you’re making, then you look around at everyone else.”
Sherman trimmed the final scene in “Door to Door” after seeing the show with an audience. “In it, Deborah (Kim Wade) is expressing her appreciation for her mother (Cheryl Ross Mitchell), and she was doing that for a couple of pages,” said the playwright. “After a few previews, I could feel the audience was very connected to what she was saying and I realized that one page was all that was needed.”
Booth and Sherman agreed that they’re never certain about laugh lines until after the first audience sees the show. “Previews are absolutely necessary to let you know what’s landing and what’s not,” said Booth.
How do actors survive during previews when changes are being handed to them daily? Equity contracts allow for five hours of rehearsal daily during preview periods, said Booth, adding that “most directors take full advantage of that. You typically rehearse in the afternoon, the actors take a dinner break and come back for the performance.”
She added, however, that “at some point in the preview period, you have to concede to the actors’ need for stability. It ends up paying off for the playwright and director to start holding back from changes because actors are less tentative when they know, `This is what I’m doing because I did it last night.’ “
As for preview audiences, Booth called them “gapers. I think there is a certain allure to being there when the show is still forming. That tends to be the time when you hear the scene that isn’t going to show up in the published version and when you see the big turntable go halfway and stop.”
Booth said some theater-goers prefer seeing a show before the reviewers do. “We all like to think we make up our minds even after we read reviews, but you do go in with a predisposition. Walking in with no expectation other than, `Oh, I know this writer,’ or, `This theater usually puts on a good show,’ is a great way to receive theater.”
