So Do We all: Phyllis Pancella talks piano tech, life and musical cuts!

Me with the "pastiera" (Neapolitan Easter pie) I made to celebrate our final room run

What do sex and technical rehearsals have in common?  Okay, this may take awhile.  Tech first.

You’ve just finished room rehearsals with a run-thru in front of a small audience of volunteers and crew heads.  There was laughter, there was applause.  There was a strong sense that the show is working, and a strong sense that what you are doing is worth watching and hearing.  You even find yourself taking a few chances, adding some details, thinking ahead, because you are finally secure enough to take in the whole picture and can think on your feet enough to bring it even more to life.  You celebrate with a bit of pie, and you try not to cause a rotator cuff injury patting yourself on the back on the way home.

Well, kiss that goodbye, laddie-o, and welcome to piano tech.

During Friday night’s Act 2 tech, things got so dicey that at one point my nose fell off.  The guys had to change clothes six times in five minutes.  Unidentified Flying Objects swooped in and out over our heads.  During the Act 1 tech the night before, we had to stop rehearsing altogether for over an hour while it was determined whether or not the sand we’d been working with was safe.  Oh, and by the way?  We’ve had to make a few more cuts to make sure we get in under the allotted 3-hour orchestra call, so when you get a minute, could you please re-stage your aria in its new, somewhat truncated version?  kthx.

I have joked that whatever ego I had left after being thrashed about by the opera business for a couple of decades was unceremoniously destroyed by the birth and subsequent language development of my son.  So you would think that the inevitable chaos and quicksand of tech wouldn’t faze me anymore.  But it does.  In just the same way that I still sit down with a new piece of music and wonder how I will ever be able to learn and memorize the damn thing, I still come away from a piano tech feeling like an idiot.  I have forgotten how to move, how to sing, how to act, how to be funny, and I will never, ever remember how to do it.  It’s a one step forward, 37 steps back kind of night.

“But I thought everything was going well!  I thought I knew where I stood, and how everything would turn out!”  This is a vulnerable time for a lot of folks in the opera world.  But when, in the second act of COSI, Guglielmo wistfully observes, “It’s a different world from the one we’d dreamed of,” he’s not speaking of tech rehearsals.  He’s speaking of sex and romance.  He could be speaking of parenting, the economy, home renovation.  The fact that we can go from security to panic overnight (sometimes more quickly still), from confidence to uncertainty, and from hubris to humiliation, simply comes with the territory of being human.  Ask Homer.  What I feel during the tech process or what the lovers go through in COSI is a distillation of what everyone goes through in life and love-------I just think of the process of producing a live performance of opera, and other moments of intense discombobulation, as “Life Concentrate.”  

A friend shared an illuminating quote the other day that I thought suited the COSI plot awfully well------the year it was written bringing home the universality of this truth.  But you can substitute intimacy, failure, or piano techs for sex, and realize just how integral to the human experience it is occasionally to have the rug pulled out from under you:

"Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately. We could age respectably, get used to our privileges and think we understood what was going on. We might disappear into numbers and words alone. It is sex that creates a necessary havoc in the ordinary hierarchies of power, status, money and intelligence." ~ Alain de Botton on How to Think More About Sex (1936)

How best to consume “Life Concentrate”?  I have learned that, if I dilute it with the longview, with compassion for others experiencing the same thing, and with trust that if I keep my feet on the ground and do what needs to be done (and let others do the same) even while the world seems to be crumbling around me, something delicious can come of it.  Oh, and I’m better off if I don’t try to drink it while patting myself on the back.  

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Here are the answers to last week’s questionnaire.  While everyone is enjoying their current work very much, no one had any problem coming up with other interests they might turn into more full time occupations.  Well, except one:  Paul said his passionate hobby has always been opera and art song, and since he’s been lucky enough to make a living at his hobby, he’s never had a “back-up plan.”  He came up with his answer because it would give him a way of staying close to the work he loves, and close to the people who do it.

You can scroll down or go to “older post” to see the original names and occupations.  Here’s how they match up:  1C, 2F, 3E, 4K, 5I (which I made up based on previous conversations), 6H, 7J, 8D, 9M, 10L, 11A, 12G, 13B.

So Do We all: Phyllis Pancella gives us a last look in the COSI FAN TUTTE rehearsal room

Yesterday was our last day in the rehearsal room.  Next stop:  the Schubert Theatre!  My feelings about this moment in a rehearsal process have changed so much over time.  It used to be that I couldn’t wait to get out of the rehearsal room----usually windowless and stale, usually some inconvenient differences in dimension or layout that mean we’ll have lots of adjusting to do once we’re onstage, always the wrong acoustic.  And, since the time in the rehearsal room is when we are feeling each other out as an ensemble and feeling the piece out as nuts & bolts stagecraft rather than art, when we do the most stumbling around, the most trial and error (emphasis on error), the most breaking and mending-----it can be a minefield of vulnerabilities.  Too awkward.  Used to be I couldn’t wait to get onstage, especially in front of an audience.

Don’t get me wrong.  There’s a boatload of vulnerability that accompanies the raised stakes of being onstage.  But that’s the vulnerability that’s inevitably on the flipside of  power:  the power of impending live performance.  The one I’m talking about now is the vulnerability that is the other side of the intimacy coin.  We crave intimacy, but it can be rough to get past first impressions, past the stupid things we say when we’re trying to figure stuff out or remember things or experiment, past the tensions of a newly formed group of individuals who are simultaneously trying to make room for their autonomy, creativity, and priorities.  This is the time when everyone gets to hear the embarrassing grunts we each make in the midst of effort.  

But it’s this awkward intimacy, this often fraught connection in service of group creativity, that has become my favorite part of the work.  Is there anything quite like this kind of coming together of semi-strangers into a month-long Thanksgiving dinner?   Maybe a political campaign or the cruise ship “Triumph“.  But what we’re up to constructs and then dismantles itself many times a year for the duration of a career.  It is a very strange set-up, and creates a laboratory for studying human interaction.  It’s like a temporary zoo, in a way, in which animals from different territories and family structures are suddenly brought together into an artificial territory as a new family.  The first week, we’re basically sniffing each other and testing the zookeepers.  The second week, we’re working out how to share our food and play games together.  Just as we’re settling into a third week characterized by feelings of security and camaraderie, and we are finally figuring out how to maximize the advantages of our combined idiosyncrasies, we get put into a new territory.  (Uh….may be time for a call to the Metaphor Abuse Hotline….)

The rehearsal room period is when we have to learn about each other, because we all share the same space, the same bathrooms, the same lunch table.  We find odd little things in common:  Karen and I both like camping and reusing tiny containers; Stacey and I like pesto and Trader Joe‘s; Teri Jo and I like to make something out of nothing (prop garlic, anyone?);  Nicole and Caroline and I all enjoy thinking and talking about how the human mind works; and  Brett and I both see a 200 year-old stone wall and imagine the hands that lifted every stone.  This is where I discover that Matt is a genius at pie crust, that Paul could use “hirsute” in a sentence every day if he wanted to, that Caroline loves the color orange and will smile and mean it no matter how tired she is, that Sandy will give hugs to even the most awkward and bristly of colleagues, that David gets as excited about the Haymarket farmer's market as he does about hemiolas, that Tom makes quince jam from the fruit he grows in his front yard.

This is also where we find out who just got married, who’s about to get married, who did better the second time around, how different people feel about parenting, what it’s like trying to renovate a house while holding a family and international career together, what everyone’s amazingly colorful parents and siblings are like.  And this is where we get to observe process.  How early do people arrive to warm up?  Who dissects character before even learning the music, who has to learn some staging in order to completely memorize something, whose acting comes from their singing and for whom is it the other way around?  What do different people find funny?  Who finds discussions/arguments about text and diction (or comic timing, or vocal technique, or lunch) tedious or uncomfortable and who could do it all day?  How do we each define discipline, collaboration, respect, and experimentation, and what happens when those definitions clearly are at odds?  Oh, yes.  For a student of human interaction, and in the middle of a relationship story like COSI, that’s when it gets really interesting!

So, all of the people in the rehearsal room have come together for the same project, but  all come from different places and will move on to different lives and projects when this one is finished.  For me, the fascination is with the fact that this is absolutely the first and last time this particular combination of project and people will find themselves together in a single room----sort of like that amazing-but-unrepeatable meal you made from the weird combination of leftover beans & rice, dried up oranges, chicken breast, and an old gift jar of olive tapenade you had hanging around.  But things shift once we get onstage, and there is a reorganization of the temporary family.  We spend more of our time separate, preparing, girding our loins.  This shift is an exhilarating part of the process, culminating in the moment that the whole thing bursts forth from the stage into the laps of the audience.  But I’m glad we had our own private party for awhile, even if it was in a room with no windows and an acoustic that would make a lump of granite weep.  Hmmm….maybe I am ready to be in the theatre after all.

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Just to give you an idea of the kinds of things we discover about each other in the rehearsal process, I went ahead and asked everyone who has been a regular part of this period a question that came up casually in several conversations:  What would you be doing if you weren’t doing this?  I said they could respond as though they were starting over and couldn’t do opera, or as though they might make a lateral move in music and theatre, or perhaps as though they had all the money in the world but still wanted to work.  Want to try & guess who said what?

1. Paul Appleby                           A. Elementary school teacher, tour w/ Dr. Who

2. Sandra Piques Eddy                  B. Tornado chaser (meteorologist)

3. Matt Worth                            C.  Opera director

4. Phyllis Pancella                        D.  Theatrical writer

5. Caroline Worra                        E.  ESPN play-by-play, or the ministry

6. Thomas Allen                          F.  Elementary school music teacher (chorus)

7. David Angus                            G.  Travel agent

8. Nicole Tongue                         H.  Carpentry, painting (pictures, not rooms)

9. Karen Oberthal                        I.  Research psychologist

10. Brett Hodgdon                       J.  Lighting designer, nature photographer

11. Teri Jo Fuson                        K.  Humanist chaplain

12. Stacey Salotto-Cristobal          L.  Research librarian

13. Rickelle Williams                    M.  Opera super

Answers in next post!

So Do We all: Phyllis Pancella gives us a first look in the COSI FAN TUTTE rehearsal room

Although I feel I’ve just gotten off the plane, a week has already passed in which I’ve  done my first load of laundry, gained 5 pounds from just looking at all the Dunkin’ Donuts around, and, most incredibly, zoomed through the staging of two thirds of the masterpiece that is Cosi Fan Tutte.  What a week!

First, I should let you know that I haven’t been doing a lot of opera lately. When my son, now 11, hit first grade five years ago, I decided to stop accepting opera engagements during the school year for awhile, and stick with shorter concert outings. I have no regrets about that decision, but I also had absolutely no hesitation about chucking it out the window when the Boston Lyric Opera called.  Would I be interested in trying my first Despina, under the direction and with the Don Alfonso of the magnificent Sir Thomas Allen?  Um, let-me-think-about-it-yes.  I won’t bore you with the tedious realities of getting a household and middle-schooler ready for Mom’s first solo five-week road trip since 2000---lots of more interesting people have done it before me and would describe it better.  All I’ll say is that it turns out you can, in fact, help with homework and three-day-field-trip nerves via instant message. Walking the dog, doing everyone’s laundry and grocery shopping---not so much.

The smart, silly cast and the open, welcoming production and administrative staff made my re-entry very smooth, and I love spending time in Boston, even in the winter.  Despina herself was a little less cordial, with high notes in all the wrong places, but I figured I’d compensate for any shortfalls in vocal beauty with whatever comic voices/accents I’d do for her Doctor and Lawyer disguises. What I didn’t expect was how I’d feel when I trotted those things out in front of my colleagues at our first musical rehearsal.  

My heart actually pounded a little in anticipation of the Doctor’s entrance, and I felt this odd, warm sensation begin in my face.  Good grief!  Was I blushing??  A middle-aged Midwestern lady, 25 year veteran of the opera biz, mother of an 11 year old boy fercryinoutloud, blushing?  Did I blush when our Peerless Leader compared one of Mozart’s Cosi duets to worm copulation? No. Did I blush the next day at my costume fitting when the stitcher asked me to please hoist my breasts up as high as possible so she could make the right markings on the corset mock-up? or when John Conklin pointed to my shoes, and, thinking they had been pulled from wardrobe stock, said, “Well those would be perfect, since they’re so unfashionable”?  No.  Man, you just never know where you might still have buttons.  I love comedy!  I work hard at comedy!  But trying to make people laugh can make you look really, really stupid, and there‘s no bigger anxiety-trigger than that for me. You know what? I’ll probably get nervous singing in front of the chorus for the first time, too.  Always have.

English as a second language.  The single task on which we’ve spent the most rehearsal time thus far is language.  Why all those hours?  This Cosi company comprises a conductor and director/Don Alfonso from the U.K., and five other cast members from the U.S.  We are performing an opera written in Italian, that takes place in Naples in 1790, in a translation written in 1922 by an Englishman, revised by another Englishman in 1970 and again in 1988, for a Boston audience in 2013.….I think you might be getting the picture.  Of course, the ultimate goal is to communicate to this particular audience in this particular time and place the power of this piece.  Honoring that goal requires us to honor the original creation above all else, and we share a common desire to do just that.  But we all come from different backgrounds and with different pet peeves.  

David Angus is the Diction Police, with a special affection for punctuation.  He intentionally avoided writing the translation into his orchestra score so that he could discover whether or not he could understand the singers, who all have different regional dialects and different preferences when it comes to sung English diction (wish I had audio to share from the great “tooter” vs. “tyewtah” debate) and who are, by the way, mostly from a different country than he is.  Paul Appleby and I are both inclined to be the Grammar Police (“Ah, the subjunctive!”  “It makes no sense to combine the mechanical with the abstract.” “How did they get away with a subject-free sentence?”) and quake whenever the translator finds the wrong spot to put a preposition in (sic).   Then there are the changes we’re all making in the interest of singability:  e.g. maybe a sweet young soprano could sing the suffix -ing on a high G, but this well-worn mezzo can’t!  

The timeframe is a puzzle for some. Yes, the production design places us in 1790 (sort of), but which archaic words enhance meaning and which obscure it?  (So far, chary is out, and trepidate is hanging by a thread.)  And then there are the Britishisms:  “takes the biscuit” instead of “takes the cake," "I’ll crease myself with laughter,“ instead of…what?…“I feel my sides are splitting?“  Ah, which ones to keep, which ones to jettison, and why.  It is a messy, imperfect process that is alternately galling and hilarious (I‘m happy to report that “You dirty basilisk” has entered our rehearsal lexicon), but which ultimately clarifies our intentions and priorities as actors.

Nicole Tongue, our assistant director, Karen Oberthal, our stage manager, and Brett Hodgdon, our coach/accompanist are madly scribbling the alterations we’re making in rehearsals, while making good suggestions of their own.  Mr. Allen will eventually have to pull the plug on all our, um, contributions, so that timing, diction, and surtitles (never mind memorization) may be finalized.  At that point, since we‘ve all grown rather precious about our language of origin, we’ll each have to swallow hard about some final text decision that makes us cringe or worry.  But for now, our job is to argue about every single tree, so that our audience will be able to see the lush and complex forest that results.

Why do it in English in the first place?  Ah, I’ll leave that to you to discuss.  I’m just the maid.

~Phyllis Pancella