Rochester Civic Theatre just completed their 60th season with a production of Four Plays for Coarse Actors. Over the course of the show, the actors put on four different plays – two per act – ostensibly as a church fundraising activity. A wide range of problems ensue, including less than remarkable acting or singing, prop problems, set piece problems, and on and on.
The director, Greg, likes to point out how he has witnessed nearly every problem they encounter – for real. I know he has some remarkable stories. Lynne has a few of her own (that Italian play). And I’ve witnessed some myself. Anyway, it was a hoot.
I had quite a range of sets, lighting, and costumes to shoot, pretty much covering the gamut I usually see.
Lots of full stage activity, but I was able to zoom in from time to time for a good close shot.
We had moving, sometimes sparse set pieces as well as box sets. That was handled rather cleverly. Box sets are usually unmoving, there for the duration of the show. But, obviously walls and such had to go away for some of the “plays.”
There were some good compositions that work pretty well in photos.
One of the funnier characters was this table which began losing legs forcing the actors to replace them. This leads to lots of (scripted!) improvisation as the players search for a way out of the scene while dealing with holding up the table. Real problems like this are often the topics for conversation when theatre people get together.
The final play is a Shakespearean knock off, sort of like Midsummer Nights Dream, but not. It had cool lighting, lots of colorful costumes, and a flying actor.
That made for some fun photos including this one from near the end of the show.
Greg had another little idea which I learned on the day of the shoot. He wanted to do the cast and crew photo as a composite containing the “casts” of each of the four shows. Okay…
All the cast for all four plays along with the crew!
