Lydia’s Blog

I would like to amend past statements. Stuttgart is still one fucking hot shithole.

Today was day three of my rehearsals for a production of Hänsel and Gretel that I’ve never actually seen. I’ve learned this production from a book that alternates between empty and illegible…in addition to the dark, shaky premiere DVD. Apparently a lot of shit went south during the premiere, and the house veterans have a lot of fun telling me that what I’m actually staging is a mistake from the opening performance. Swell.

My task is to slap two casts that’ve also never seen this production before into this show in what amounts to three weeks total. Two casts, some seventy supers and a childrens’ chorus of fifty, that is. This kind of work combines several diverse circumstances that range from kinda lame to totally fucked.

At least in Graz on Le Grand Macabre, I could give some background and depth to the stage action by explaining the origins of individual scenes, drawing on the two months I originally spent supporting the creation of the production. “The original singer was a huge homosexual with a club foot, and so that’s why you stumble and fall, shrieking at this particular point….”

Now, all I can basically say is, “…well, it looks like Hänsel gets kicked in the shin here, but it might just be him stumbling over a broomhead misset by a props department ringer before the premiere…”

My singers are pretty cool and totally game however. They sort of have to be. We’re rehearsing in a space that hits temperatures of 104 Fahrenheit during the afternoon. No shit, I measured. For those who know the reference, it’s closest to the rehearsal hall in the back of Wolf Trap’s Filene Center, when the dock doors are shut for a sound test on the main stage. So far, we’ve only had two faints. Moreover, the space is over an hour from my apartment on public transportation.

The rehearsals are pretty severely undermanned as well. No conductor, no prompter, no stage manager. No in-house props or costume staff (I mean, it is a warehouse in the middle of nowhere with a glass ceiling during a heat wave…)

To be fair though, some five productions are being rehearsed simultaneously at the opera, in preparation for the current administrations departing festivities, as well as those of the incoming team. Everyone’s being tough about this and fuck it, so will I.

The one omnipresent figure in these rehearsals. His name is Guido. He’s a house technician somehow granted the unromantic task of moving heavy scenery alone in 104 degree heat.

Guido is an attractive man. Late thirties, probably. Hmm, I though at first, maybe Joolz isn’t totally insane when it comes to stagehands. I decided to hang out in the rehearsal room during the break from our first rehearsal day. Guido gave me a light and droned for a while about what a hard worker he is. Great, I thought. This will work out well.

He’s certainly very eager to please. Right from the beginning on the first day, he’d prepare and serve me pot after pot of coffee until I was shaking and seeing spots. Guido is maybe a little bit simple, I thought initially. Who cares, though, right Joolz?

The second day of rehearsal, yesterday, Guido pulled me aside and told me that the outfit I’d been wearing the day before had been a mistake. I wondered if I’d heard him correctly. Yes, he said…although a dropped, drawstring waist and high heels would seem like a good idea, particularly on a body like mine…a plain wife-beater, jeans and flip flops, as I was wearing during the conversation, would prove a wiser choice for more corpulent bodies, such as mine.

This was definitely not an instance of lost in translation. He used the German word for corpulent: corpulent.

I smiled and thanked him for his input, not knowing what else to do. He smiled, saying his honesty was a prized quality.

Later, my Hänsel and Gretel approached me, saying they believed the Guido was planning to prepare a huge salad for the next day’s rehearsal. I told them to calm down, and of course he wasn’t. They seemed relieved. That would have been weird.

Today, the two ladies, our pianist and I were greeted at a short, 15-minute break by a torso-sized salad, and a grinning Guido. We all ate together. I didn’t say much.

At the end of the strange, unexpected-but-yeah-kind-of-expected-but-you-know-salad-party, Guido announced that he’d be preparing a breakfast buffet for our rehearsal on Saturday. Would champagne be okay for all of us?

I’m not sure what I did when he made this declaration. I hope I said thank you. I probably just stared, though.

Fuck.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 21st, 2006 at 1:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.