Technical Difficulties Can Happen On Stage Too

When you are watching TV and something bad happens at the studio, they put up a graphic saying, “Technical Difficulties – Please Stand By.”  Well, live theatre is a totally different animal.

During our run of Grosse Pointe Theatre’s The Music Man, we were lucky to only have a few technical glitches. Quick, where’s some wood to knock on? 

For our final Dress Rehearsal, Lighting Chairman Eric Leszczynski installed a brand new “gobo” light that projected moving clouds over the train in the opening scene.  That, and our movements on stage, made it look more like we were on a moving train. However, we discovered that the brand new light was hung too low.  We tried to change the scene – by moving very tall set pieces - to become the school gymnasium and bang! The top of the set wouldn’t pass under the light. Oops. The play stopped momentarily as Stage Manager Arlene Schoenherr came on to the stage with her headset to instruct someone to raise the light. Hey, that’s what rehearsals are for, right?

Once the show opened, it seemed that I was the one hit with the technical difficulties. 

Those of you sitting in the first few rows might notice that my role of Harold Hill had me constantly running around the stage. I worked up quite a sweat. I think I shorted out my microphone. Sound Chair Bill Tuthill had to operate about 30 microphones, but it seemed that mine was giving him major issues. My microphone died during three different performances! On the first occasion, it caused me to stress my voice a bit too much. I was in a panic the whole next day, wondering if my voice would hold up ... and if the new microphone would as well.

Technical difficulties are not always limited to the gadgets. Sometimes the brain has difficulties. On that same first day when my mike went out, I did the cardinal mistake of letting it bother me – and I dropped a line. That’s “actor-speak” to describe what happens when an actor is standing there with his mouth hanging open and nothing is happening.

Perhaps you were there that particular evening? I walked into the Library scene, said my opening line to Miss Marian (Jennifer Jones) and then stared off into the distance, drawing a complete blank. I knew where I was. I knew who I was. And I knew I was supposed to be talking. But nothing came out. Jen’s eyes grew wide as she tried to help me with my line, but she couldn’t pull it either.

Actors try to help each other out when one person “goes up” on a line. And usually, the person doing the saving is the one who looks like they screwed up. 

Luckily, Jennifer was able to successfully paraphrase her next line and get the scene going again. 

In my mind, I felt like I was standing there in the spotlight for about ten minutes. No amount of “picturing the audience in their underwear” would help at that point. But in truth, the whole scene probably lasted about five seconds.

At that moment I wanted to individually apologize to every member of the cast, crew and the audience. But that would’ve taken too long. Instead, I made a conscious decision to seriously amp up my performance. I flew around the stage like I never had before.

I had one other moment where I said something different to Rodel Salazar than I usually did. (Rodel played Harold’s friend Marcellus.) I ran back to Marian on the footbridge. Knowing that she had a long paragraph to say, I let my mind double check the script page we had just covered. I was unsure if I had said a line from the next scene, which would have been bad. Because then we would have to come back to it. I’d be saying the line again and the audience would think they’d entered one of those “Back to the Future” time loops. But no, I was okay. The next scene with Marcellus should be fine, I thought. Hmm, why is it so quiet? While I was going through all of those mental gymnastics, Marian had finished her line and was waiting for my reply. Ugh.The mind can be a terrible thing sometimes.

GPT’s own veteran stage and screen actor Mike Evans calmed me down backstage. With a laugh he said, “Happens to me all the time. You were great. No one noticed.” And true, when meeting members of the audience afterward, there was no mention of it.

The next day, we were turning in our scripts to be sent back to the publisher. Director Don Bischoff grabbed me and, tongue planted firmly in cheek, said, “Are you sure you don’t want to review the Library scene one more time, before you give your script back?” Real nice.

Okay, technical difficulties resolved. Now back to your local programming.

Tim Reinman portrayed Professor Harold Hill in Grosse Pointe Theatre’s successful – and Sold Out – run of The Music Man, which closed October 2. Contact GPT for information on the next show The Trip to Bountiful at the Grosse Pointe War Memorial’s Fries Auditorium, this November. Call (313) 881-4004 for tickets or on-line at www.gpt.org.