This Saturday we end the run of The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!, and tonight we begin the run of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.
It has been a busy week for the cast and crew of The Taming of the Shrew. The cast went through a good tech rehearsal on Tuesday night, bringing together cues for lighting and sound and changes of scenery. While the actors have been rehearsing on stage in the evening (and, yesterday—the Fourth of July—during the afternoon*), the scenic studio has been refining the set during the day.
The scenery, as you can see in the photos below, looked pretty much completed during the dress rehearsal, but there were still notes from that rehearsal that had to be addressed today, to really finish the set for tonight’s preview performance.
This morning, carpenters were on the set, working their way through a to-do list created by the designer and director at the previous day’s final dress rehearsal. The email had been transferred to a medium that would be difficult to misplace on the stage.
Here, on a stage full of paint buckets and tools, carpenter Sean Dumm paces around the small pool of water, testing its strength, looking for any weakness:
The upstage right post holds many items to indicate “place” in the performance: sculpted mailboxes, signs, coat-racks, and so on. Some of the items (especially the taller ones) exhibited a slight wobble the previous evening, so props master Nicolette Apraez here deepens the hole in the post, which will make the attachments much more stable:
Nicolette Apraez deepens the hole in the support post, used for props that indicate location in the show.
The previous rehearsal played well, and these “fixes” were not apparent to those of us caught up in the action of the comedy. Scenic design by Tim Barbiaux and costume design by Jason Orlenko in these shots from the final dress:
Rob Johansen (Gremio), Andrea Mellos (Bianca), Clayton Gerrard (Servant), and Ben Abbott (Hortensio) in the IFT production of THE TAMING OF THE SHREW.
Petruchio (Adam Noble) and his servant Grumio (Nicole Bruce) have a little master-to-servant discussion.
Katherina (Molly Case) talks about sibling rivalry with her sister Bianca (Andrea Mellos).
May the show break a leg!
The Taming of the Shrew opens tonight and plays at 7:30 p.m. through Sunday night. Then it will take a small break as the cast and crew change plays and prepare for the opening next week of You Can’t Take It with You. Both plays are in the Wells-Metz Theatre, and you can catch the schedule to plan your visit to the theatre on this page.
*So we could all watch the fireworks at night, doncha know…
