No Child Chicago - the remount

ur first preview in Chicago went great here at Lookingglass. As stated, I’d say it may have been the best I have ever seen the show received.

Some things that I think made it an easy put-in:

1) On Day One, Mark Barton focused with an excellent team. This made us ready to go on day two without delay.
2) On Day Two, Nilaja did a runthru for the stage manager. After working with the excellent Tom Taylor for over a year, it was good for Nilaja to perform this for Sarah Gmitter, who is proving to be excellent. While Nilaja ran through for spacing and cobweb-removal, Mark wrote cues with Nilaja onstage and called cues from the board, where possible.

3) On Day three, Tuesday, we had our ten out of twelve. Mark and I both maintained that if we needed all 10 out of 12, then something must have gone terribly, terribly wrong. We finished our 10 out of 12 with two hours to spare. Sarah the stage manager was excellent, and ran a crisp tech. Sound always takes longer, and there was some delays, as there always is, getting sound up to speed.

4) At the end of day three, the last our of the 10 out of 12, (or 8 out of 12) we ran through the show. The performance was close to how I would want to see the show. A few timing glitches here, some tentativeness here and there on calls, but otherwise, right on the money.

5) On day four, the day of Preview, we had a runthrough at one o’clock, and continued to work on cues without Nilaja afterwards. This lasted till about 3:30-4 pm. So while we worked, Nilaja rested.

What would make our next put in easier? I would say the one additional requirement would be to have the sound designer and board operator present for that first run through on Day 2 with Nilaja. This way, they’d get used to the story before the tech.
The stage manager also advised creating a video of the performance with tech – she felt that really would help her call cues with the right exactness, but I know there are restrictions imposed by the unions.