Process V. Product: Classroom Edition!

While I was directing Tempest in Hyderabad, I wrote a few posts about the idea of process vs. product. We know, for example, that "process-based" rehearsals are often more fun, but that "product-based" rehearsals often yield better results for an audience.

(For the uninitiated: "process-based" refers to a system which allows the actors in a performance to create "freely," without any fear of being right or wrong; while "product-based" refers to a system which focuses on eliminating certain choices in favor of better ones, and, while not necessarily dividing things into right/wrong, requires a director to say the dreaded word "no" to an actor -- often many, many times.)

I'm going to write about process v. product in terms of my current theatre production shortly, but right now I want to focus on the idea of process v. product in the classroom.

As a TA, I generally get a section or two of "Introduction to Theatre" every semester. It's the typical American gen-ed course, in which students are exposed to the barest fundamentals of a subject in the name of furthering liberal education.

Like many gen-ed courses in the humanities, this Intro class follows an almost entirely process-based method of teaching (and grading). Effort counts more than result, and participation is valued over content. Papers are graded on whether they answered every question in the prompt, but not on what those answers actually are.

(Incidentally, even though our students were told, repeatedly, that their grade was based on whether or not they addressed every question in the prompt, many wrote papers which did not answer -- or even hint at -- one or more of the questions. Baffling.)

Just as a process-based play is easier to direct, a process-based class is much easier to teach. Everyone feels great, lots of people get As, good times are had by all.

However, today I spent a few hours grading my students' "ten-minute play assignment." (The assignment was... um... to write a ten-minute play.) Because they fulfilled the structure of the assignment (they had characters, speaking some dialogue, with some stage directions) I sat and wrote "nice job! 100%!" on student plays which were, in fact, dismal.

I wished I had the time to sit down with my students and talk to them about what makes a successful play; how to create conflict between characters, how to create believable rising action, how to build to an appropriate climax and resolution. Even more than that, I wanted to talk to them about the very nature of storytelling. Why do we tell stories? What differentiates a story from, say, an anecdote -- or from a description of an event? (Many of these plays were just that: descriptions. Two guys sitting in a dorm room talking about girls and sports and cars for ten pages. No conflict, no momentum.)

I know that the assignment was pure process-based, intended to give students an idea of what playwrights do by having them write a play -- but if the product they turned in wasn't actually a play, then did they really learn anything by going through the process?

But we don't have time to teach them how to really write a play, because next week we're moving on to acting, then directing, then design...

I remember being infuriated at this when I took gen ed courses as an undergrad. I recognized all these easy-peasy courses as simulacrum of the real thing, and I wanted the real deal. I didn't want "Physics and You;" I wanted physics. Eventually, I gave up and decided I wanted to play Earthbound (and write a three-act opera based on Les Liaisons Dangereuses), and became grateful for any gen ed course easy enough to require no mental effort.

I know I've written about this before on this blog, but this whole thing... makes me sad. It also makes me feel like a really bad teacher.

People have been telling me, throughout my entire university career, that I need to spend less time worrying about product and more time experiencing the process. "Put that intellect aside; roll around in the unknown!" Lord knows I tried. I gave up what I knew made sense, and I rolled. But as I approach the end of my graduate career, I'm becoming more and more infuriated with anything that doesn't actually connect process to product. Let's lay it on the line, team: some products are better than others. How do we create them? How do we teach people to create them? That, at the end of all this, seems to be what's important.

I Want To Be A Consumer... But Not A Destroyer

Last week my graduate class had a special guest: one of the original founders of our theatre department.

Prior to his lecture, he wanted to get to know a bit about the current class of grad students, and went around to all of us asking about our backgrounds, what kind of theatre we liked, and where we hoped to direct after graduation.

I was the last to respond, hoping that he might skip me or something. After all, there were the other grad students saying things like "I'm going to start a theatre company in rural America and provide art to people who don't otherwise get that experience," or "I'm going to go to New York and take my chances in the big leagues!"

But he didn't skip me. "You're in your final semester? Congratulations! What do you plan to do after you graduate?"

I didn't let my voice waver for a minute. "I'm going to relocate to a major city, probably the DC area, and transfer my talents to a job in a private industry. I'd love something in PR or Events Management."

"Oh," he said. "Why not theatre?"

And then I got a little chicken. The truth is, I know enough about my skills to know that, while I am a competent director on my own merits, I am in no way set up for the competitive theatre world, nor do I want to spend my time working crap jobs and doing one of the "next step" options: assistant directing "for the experience," trying to start an unpaid theatre company, etc.

But I didn't say "I'm getting out of the theatre because I'm not good enough."

I said "I feel like I've become disconnected from the world, and I need to spend some time back in the world before I direct my next piece."

Which was probably an even dumber thing to say, because his next response was a very disappointed "Theatre... makes you feel disconnected?"

And as soon as he said it, I realized my response was truer than I realized. Theatre does make me feel disconnected from the world. It shouldn't, but it does. For three reasons:

1. The theatre artist's schedule is generally "work (or take/teach classes) all day, rehearse all night." The environment quickly becomes insular and restricting.

2. 90% of the plays performed in America, at both the educational and professional levels, are revivals of "classics." Often, directors attempt to spin these plays so that they have a contemporary relevance, but... putting Henry V in modern dress so people will be reminded of the Bush administration is barely groundbreaking. All of the productions of Henry V in the past eight years don't have the impact of a single showing of Fahrenheit 9/11.

3. Due to both schedule and monetary restrictions ('cause we don't make any money), the theatre artist cannot fully participate in the world around her.

And that's what I really want, and I didn't even realize it until I said it. I want to be a participant. I don't want to live like the former child Blue, reading her parents' copies of Newsweek to memorize details about film and literature (and yes, theatre) that she was thousands of miles too far away to ever see; nor do I want to live like starving artist Blue, in Minneapolis and surrounded by culture and opportunity but too underemployed to afford any of it.

I want to be a participant. More than that, I want to be a consumer. This isn't a popular statement to make, in lieu of environmental concerns, but I don't mean that I want to be wasteful, or consume beyond my needs.

I don't want a lot of shoes, but I want to be able to replace my shoes when there are holes in the soles. (While I had the foot cast on, I spent the entire six weeks wearing a shoe with a big hole in it because that was the only one which matched the sole height of the foot-cast boot.) I don't want to buy a lot of overpackaged, overprocessed food, but I do want to have money to socialize with friends in restaurants.

I want to take a yoga class. I want to find time to volunteer for something interesting and worthwhile (which I kind of did already -- just signed up for the American Democracy Project). If I make it to DC, I'm definitely finding some way of volunteering for Team Obama.

I also want to get a little closer to current technology. I have a secret fantasy of being able to become an early adopter, but I know it will take a few income-level jumps before I get to that stage. Right now I don't even have a phone that takes photographs. ^__^

Long story short, I want to be a participant in the world, not an observer. And theatre, as enjoyable as it is, makes me feel disconnected.

Which is strange, because historically theatre people are supposed to be the types who are engaged with the world and use their talents to spur social change. Did that stop happening, outside of theatre textbooks? Or... has it all been transferred to YouTube?

BBC Ballet Shoes: Pictures of Maeterlinck's Blue Bird

I'm going to bet that the upcoming BBC Ballet Shoes movie will not include Pauline and Petrova performing in Maeterlinck's Blue Bird.

It'll skip over it entirely, and focus on two performances: Alice in Wonderland (plot point: Pauline learns that she is not indispensable) and Midsummer Night's Dream (plot point: everyone discovers that Petrova is a bad fit for the theatre).

If I were adapting Ballet Shoes for the screen, I'd do the same thing. After all, Alice and Shakespeare are both household names, and very few people are familiar with Maeterlinck.

But since I'm still getting so much Ballet Shoes site traffic, and since everyone who's coming to this page through a Ballet Shoes-related Google search is familiar with Maeterlinck, well...

I directed a performance of Blue Bird last year. The same play that Pauline and Petrova did, with nearly as much dancing. Wanna see pictures?

Sweeney Todd: Sondheim With Its Throat Slit

Sweeney Todd is a movie musical which, I fear, will please nobody.

It won't please the nerdcore crowd looking for Tim Burton awesomeness along the lines of The Nightmare Before Christmas or Edward Scissorhands.

It won't please the kajillion tween girls who came just to see Johnny Depp (and there were plenty of them at tonight's showing, in gaggles of twelve with a lone harried mother attached as chaperone).

And it certainly won't please the Sondheim fans.

Strangely enough, it will fail to please each of these groups for exactly the same reason:

They stop the action to sing.

It's "talk talk talk talk action action action STOP LET'S HAVE A SONG."

And that's wrong.

It's wrong-wrong-wrong-wrong-wrong.

Sure, the songs are shot beautifully. Great camera angles. Lush, saturated colors.

And the music sounds lovely. Johnny's a crooner, and Helena's a surprising soprano.

But they stop for the songs. They don't treat the songs as if they had anything to do with advancing the story.

Let's take "A Little Priest." Burton shoots it with Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett staring through a greasy window, musing on the potential tastiness of the people walking around outside. Just to make sure the audience makes the connection, Burton even shows us the individual people; we see a friar, and then we hear Mrs. Lovett sing "try the friar!"

But that's not what the song's about. It's not a song about the people outside. It's a song about Mrs. Lovett trying to make Sweeney fall in love with her by proving she's as clever as he is. And how can she do that? Through idea and wordplay. So she spends the entire song wracking her mind to impress him; to make him pay attention to her.

(This is made most obvious in the bridge section, which Burton cut.)

But this film makes it a song about musing. A song about staring. A song about friggin' boring.

And all of the songs are like that. It's like no one ever considered why these characters are singing. "My Friends" is not a song about how beautiful razors are. It's a song in which Sweeney puts together a plan. We don't see him make that plan; we only see the beautiful razor.

As noted in Slate, the Johanna/Anthony story is truncated to its barest element. Boy meets girl, and... well, that's about it. All of the action-based songs (like "Kiss Me") are gone, and we get a rendition of "Green Finch and Linnet Bird" which is an almost continual shot of Johanna sitting at a window. But Johanna is trying to get free from Judge Turpin. Even while she sings, she is trying to get free. The song is antic, frantic, distressed. It's not sitting. Burton gave us sitting.

And that's why the audience -- a packed house -- began to squirm in its own seats.

Editor's Note: Please scroll down for video clips featuring the difference between an active performance of "A Little Priest" and Tim Burton's version.

Sweeney Todd: "A Little Priest," Stage Version

Here's a performance of "A Little Priest" that's action-based, rather than... um... "mood"-based.

The thing to watch with this performance is the way Mrs. Lovett reacts to Sweeney. You can see what she wants, when she gets it, when it is taken from her, and what she does to get it back.

Sweeney Todd: "A Little Priest," Burton Version

Here's a clip from Tim Burton's version. Note the window. This window-staring business goes on for the rest of the song.

BBC Ballet Shoes: I Can Do RP. Maybe I Should Become A British Child Actor!

In response to Niranjana's comment about the RP in the Ballet Shoes trailer, I thought I would share this article from the Times on how difficult it was to find young actors for Ballet Shoes who spoke RP.

(RP is "received pronunciation," or "an English accent the way Julie Andrews does it." It was, for many years, the required accent at Oxbridge, as well as the BBC. Yes, you read that correctly. If you were on the faculty at Oxbridge, you had to use RP. The accent was taught in schools.)

So the Times wrote an article about how sad it was that most young British actors only spoke Estuary English, or "an English accent the way the characters in Love Actually do it."

And -- sniff, sniff -- that means they weren't able to cast young unknowns in Ballet Shoes, but had to resort to -- sob, sob -- very famous movie stars.

Here's my question. Every American actor in every acting program in the country learns RP. Even I can do a fairly decent RP. Why aren't the British actors learning it?

(The Times article also includes the casting call for two of the three Fossils, if you're interested in reading. I always think casting calls are interesting, because they're rather like job descriptions -- vague and intimidating at the same time.)

More on Theatre and Education

An insight that came while I was brushing and flossing my teeth (and, btw, if you get a piece of floss stuck between your teeth, what then do you use to get it out?):

The myth of theatre is the myth of the broken convention.

The story of our namesake, Thespis, is the story of a broken convention. People were used to hearing actors tell stories as a chorus; suddenly, one actor stepped forward and began telling a story as a character.

And then it's a trail of broken conventions all the way through Corneille, Moliere, Racine; realism, A Doll House and "the door slam heard 'round the world," and then naturalism, with the shock of "recreating a working restaurant onstage;" then Brecht, Joan Littlewood, Robert Wilson, Joanne Akalaitis, etc.

For the musical-theatre dorks, there are the myths of Showboat, Oklahoma, Allegro, Company, and Rent, among others.

And so theatre students believe, fervently, in the necessity of breaking convention. Which means, sometimes, defying (or, more accurately, ignoring) technique, teachers, advice, the audience response ("they just didn't get it!"), and common sense.

I understand this. I've been there. I've... um... done that. But looking backwards, I realize how much time I wasted because I didn't learn the technique first. I didn't understand the purpose of the conventions beyond the most superficial, Wikipedia-esque level.

Art students spend time copying masterworks. Perhaps theatre students should have to learn to copy a particular performance. One that is difficult physically or emotionally; one that requires a lot of focus and specificity. I'd love to design a class around this idea. I wonder if it would... work.

On Mamet and Education

I went last night to see a student performance of David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago. (Which, despite its title, is not particularly "perverse.")

This is part my department's Student-Directed Production Festival; every year, at the end of the semester, the students are given the space (and a tiny, tiny budget) to produce... whatever they want. Tired of studying boring old Chekhov? Tired of being told by your acting teacher to do this, do that? This festival has become, like student evaluations, a way of "getting back" at the faculty.

And so we get Sexual Perversity; or Killer Joe, a play notable only for its gigantic bloodbath at the end, which was performed with enough fake blood to leave the classroom-cum-stage ketchup-red for weeks.

These plays, like high school musicals (and High School Musical), inspire a lot of good feeling in our students. They're fun. Like all plays, they require some work to stage, but they're relatively easy to put on. They're also intensely self-gratifying. They're the students saying "this is what I would do if I could do anything I wanted."

And they're usually awful, just as the Mamet was last night. The performance's lack of knowledge about Mamet rhythms and technique; about staging; about sexual chemistry, for that matter, was oh-so-apparent.

But it made the undergrads laugh because the characters kept saying "f*ck," "c*nt," and "p*ssy." Thus, it fulfilled its purpose and will be remembered fondly.

Now, the education part.

When I was a first-year grad student, I also staged a Mamet piece. My adviser let me pretty much alone because he wanted to see me "explore." So I explored.

My actors and I explored so much that it became the longest, most subtext-laden performance of Speed-the-Plow anyone had ever seen.

Afterwards, another faculty member caught up with me in the student lounge and performed, for me, a short Mamet monologue.

"That's how you do Mamet rhythms," he said.

"Got it," I said. (I'm a quick study.)

He looked a little perturbed. "Why didn't anyone talk to you about that before you staged the play?"

I didn't know, then, why no one had mentioned it; but now I'm beginning to understand. Because theatre education is about exploring impulses rather than reining (or training) them in; about breaking away from the masters rather than trying to copy and understand them; about feeling rather than discipline.

Yes, you need feeling. Of course you do. But the more I study and direct performances the more I understand that discipline and specificity are the two most important things a play needs, more important by far than anything else.

It's like a piece of music. Before you can add your own style, you have to learn how to play the note at the right pitch, with the right duration and intensity. Even the great jazz improvisers are playing within a very specific framework.

When I was in Hyderabad, I asked myself the question "which is more important in theatre? the experience, or the final product? and how does the audience factor into this?"

I wrote that I loved working within a "process" framework (exploring the experience, playing), and my casts responded very well to this kind of direction, but it "always felt a bit like cheating."

Now I understand why. After watching my university's Student-Directed Festival, I 100% understand why.

The point of theatre isn't that you play. The point of theatre is that you produce.

But this is not what our students seem to be learning.

A Tempest of Pictures

The chorus of Ariels sink a ship. Totally did not steal this idea from Peter Brook. Not one iota.

Miranda and Ferdinand make censor-safe love (no kissing!) while Prospero and an Ariel watch.

Trinculo and Caliban. I love this shot.

The magical banquet, and moveable feast.

Group photo. Obviously. ^__^

Yay! Show!

Well, we had us a show.

The house was packed. People were sitting in the aisles. My students were energetic, and (thank goodness) focused. They held for laughs. They didn't forget any props. They told their story neatly and succinctly -- and with a bit of flair, too!

Afterwards, there were two kilos of ladoos waiting for them. (That comes out to two per student, but it sounds better by weight.)

I want to post pictures. I desperately want to post some pictures. But I know I should ask their permission first, and I don't know how to mention "I want to put your faces on the internets" without mentioning where, and... so... yeah.

In the meanwhile, you may have my picture. In the sari, of course. The face is my "you have a show to prepare for, why are you taking this time to take my picture!" face. ^__^

Oh, and to the right you can see Prospero's winged staff. The one the students built, after all. Doesn't it look great?

Opening Night

Well, we're getting our little show off of the ground today.

The team has done so much in this past week, and they've finally pushed the show towards something that is, if not "artistic," then at least capable and entertaining and -- most importantly -- well polished.

(Though I haven't been able to completely stop the squirrely-ness; one of our actors last night did not have his costume -- at our final dress rehearsal -- because he had worn it home from rehearsal yesterday without thinking about it and then left it wadded in a ball on his hostel room floor. Um... *facepalm*)

I'm actually very proud of this show. I think prouder of it than any show I've directed. Certainly I've had to work harder, and improvise more.

And these students have come so far. You wouldn't believe it unless you had been through the process, but they've made so much improvement.

They'll have a good show tonight. They deserve it.

Director's Notes for Tempest

One day to go.

Here's what I wrote for the program:



The Tempest in India.

No. Better still. The Tempest in Telugu in India.

No. Better yet. The Tempest, in Telugu, with an international cast and an American director, created improvisatorially, adapted into the vernacular, costumed in the hodge-podge of our contemporary world, built on a very small budget, staged here, at [mumble mumble mumble] in Hyderabad, here in India.

Everything you see tonight has been created by the students you see performing. They have not only been working as actors, but also as set designers, light board operators, props builders, scene painters, etc. We have worked very hard to bring our talents and influences – culled from America, Iran, Iraq, Andhra, and India across the country – into a cohesive whole. We have spent many hours (over a month of hours) studying and preparing Shakespeare’s complicated text for you, our audience. It has been very hard work, but a labor of love, as they say.

We hope you enjoy our Tempest. Thank you for joining us tonight, at this play.

Come See The Show!

The Tempest will be performed this Friday, Oct. 5, at 6:30 p.m.

If you are in the greater Hyderabad area and would like to come, please email me at prettybluesalwar AT hotmail DOT com and I will give you details on location, etc.

Rock on.

"You will be the twelfth in a long line of governesses, the last of which stayed only [checks paper] two hours."

Transcript of a conversation between myself and my departmental advisor (“A”):

A: What time should I stop in to watch you rehearse tomorrow?

Me: Well, we start rehearsal at 9 a.m., which means the students will start showing up by 10, so… any time after that.

A: You are lucky that for you they are only late by one hour. It means they like you.

Me: Really? But I asked the other faculty, and the students are never late to their classes.

A: Those are classes. Yours is a performance workshop, and you are only visiting the university. But you are doing very well. You see, we’ve been trying to have guest directors for a while now, but they have always had problems. The last one who came could not even stage his play, because the students decided to stop coming to his rehearsals. So… do not worry about this one hour lateness. In a few days we will have a play. That is what is important.

Thanking My Students, Part Two

Now that I have "singled out" a few students who have worked exceptionally hard, I want to also note that the entire class has, just in these past few days, improved considerably. I think it has something to do with the old cliche that nothing ever happens in the theatre until the week before production. (Makes me wonder why we have all those other weeks of rehearsal, especially at such miserable -- or nonexistant -- pay.)

I've tried to analyze it and I think the moment when I grabbed some paint and slapped together a staff for Prospero (because it needed to be done, and my students weren't doing it) was actually a turning point. They immediately swarmed around me to protest that they were going to do that, and I told them that they hadn't done it yet, and it needed to be done now.

It felt afterwards, and still feels, like my worst moment as a teacher. I wasn't thinking like a teacher, and I wasn't even thinking like a director (there's a very specific hierarchy in the theatre about who does what, and one of the rules is that the director does no actual build work). I wasn't thinking about how my actions would impact my students, or whether I would teach them anything. I was just "these fucking props aren't getting made" and so I went to make them.

And after that the students started showing up outside of class, working late, etc. They were led by a few individuals, some of whom I mentioned in the last post. On the first day, as I noted, there were two students; on the second day there were six; and when I came in this morning they were all there, all working.

So... why did the one thing I did that seemed anti-educational (and, in fact, asshole-worthy) turn out to have the biggest effect?

And, to my entire class: thank you.

Thanking My Students

I only learned, when I got to India, that saying “thank you” was an American thing. I say “thank you” automatically, to waiters and store clerks and everyone – and, of course, to my students, who like to tease me about saying it. Every time I say “thank you” in the rehearsal hall I hear my students parrot it back, imitating my accent and giggling.

But I have a few special thanks for a handful of students who have really worked hard; above and beyond, as they say. Without them, there would be no show whatsoever.

To Student #1: You have risen to leadership without trying, simply because you saw that the work needed to be done and you took the initiative to do it. Now the entire group looks to you. You took charge and built the majority of the set, and delegated what you could not build yourself. At the beginning of the workshop I gave you a very small part in the show because you seemed shy and hesitant to take risks and make big acting choices. Now you are no longer shy, and your talents are very clear. I would like to ship you to the National School of Drama in Delhi and have them train you to become a first-class technical director.

To Student #2: You grab my attention every time you step onstage. Your commitment to your work shows both in your focus to your part and in the millions of questions you ask me after every rehearsal, many of which reveal parts of the play I hadn’t thought about before. You’re the kind of actor who forces me to work harder. Keep at it.

To Student #3: If I had to do it over again, I would cast you differently. Maybe. The trouble is that you’re one of those “triple threat” types – in addition to being a strong actor you’re also an extremely strong dancer and musician. So of course, looking at the needs of the group, I chose to make you the leader of our chorus of magical spirits, because it was a role that demanded rhythm and movement. I know that disappointed you. You would have been good in many of the principal character roles as well. Thanks for choosing to work hard with the part you were given.

To Student #4: You showed up two weeks after the start of class and wanted to be a part of the show. So I made you “assistant stage manager,” a role which is pretty much a title that allows you to watch the rehearsals. Then, when my assigned stage manager took on a different project and stopped coming to rehearsals, you stepped up. You’ve been an invaluable help since.

To Student #5: I know you stayed up until midnight for three days straight translating the script for us. Thank you.

To Student #6: Your Thermacor sculptures are lovely. I’m sorry I thought you were working too slow and tried to take your props away from you. I didn’t know then that you would decide to put so much extra time into what you were making. The finished product is absolutely worth it.

In Praise of Simplicity: Or, Dean and Carra Might Be Right After All

There’s an old directing textbook called Fundamentals of Play Directing by a couple of guys named Dean and Carra. It’s standard reading in most directing courses, and it’s about as dull as a book can be. It lays out a series of aesthetically pleasing ways to arrange people on the stage (most of which involve triangles), and explains that successful directors should use these positions only.

My classmates and I all read this book holding gigantic grains of salt. After all, it was over sixty years old. Contemporary theatre was loose, free, natural, postmodern; people could turn their backs to the audience and roll around on the floor and move in sinuous curves and do anything they wanted! It wasn’t all this triangle mumble-jumble and these series of strict positions.

Due to a combination of the language barrier and the fact that my students don’t have a lot of experience moving around on a stage (I had to convince them that it was okay to “cheat;” that the audience would still understand that they were talking to their scene partner, and even still I’m not sure they all believe me), I found myself blocking very simply. In… a lot of triangles. Position-cross-position.

About halfway through I realized that I was using Dean and Carra’s rules and then I began to apply them specifically. Get the person in power to the position of power, and don’t try to postmodernally “trick” the audience by placing them somewhere else.

Damn cleanest show I ever blocked.

Pictures of Stuff

Here are some pictures I took today during a Tempest work session.

Because so many students needed roles, I split the role of Ariel up into a chorus of magical spirits. They're all wearing dhotis, and these lovely masks (shown here waiting for the paint to dry).


My Iraqi student has been working non-stop on his Thermacor creations. I had written earlier about how frustrated I was that it took him two hours to build one goblet; little did I know that he would work through the night and that I would come back the next morning to find the entire set done. He gets major, major props. (Yes, pun intended.)



This is the rock that the rest of us built. After it was finished, my Iraqi student said "um... may I make a better one?" I said "please, if you have time." He assured me he would make time. I've no doubt. ^__^

More Praise For The Team

The goblets and dinner (my Iraqi student carved an entire chicken out of Thermacor!) are finished.

The magical, complicated staff (that I said would take too long to make) is half-done.

They've figured out that they'll have to do this on their own.

And I've been reminded, once again, that nothing really happens in the theatre until the last week.