FAULT LINES JOURNAL PART II

(Please see Part I for the first portion of the journal, if interested).In my opinion, one of the neatest aspects of participating in the production of the play was entering the "theatre world". Its neat seeing how actors rehearse and how the production people work and to see how the everything progresses to the actual performance with an audience. PLUMP had never really had to meet a deadline before, but here there was definitely a lot of work to get to the actual show.

We went to all aspects of the actor rehearsals--really to get a sense of how the underscore music should be. We went to the first read-through, with the actors, of Fault Lines. I came out of that super impressed by how good the actors already were even at this stage (granted, all of the actors are pros). We also went to one of the first rehearsals after all the scenes had been blocked (all stage movements by the actors had been determined--at least at a first draft level). We took beer. It was nice. The actors laugh a lot when they drop lines, etc. It was extremely laid back. I was especially impressed at how well the actors could concentrate on their scene--because there were always other conversations going on, because the director and production people had no problems having conversations while the rehearsal was going on. After every practice, the production staff would send out an email to the total production company, saying how it went, what props were needed, and other logistical stuff. It was very organized.

For the music, we decided to come up with a theme for each of the main characters, and for the play to have a theme. Characters Bill, Jim, and Joe each had a theme music associated with him, that was played multiple times. (Actually Bill was supposed to have theme a and theme b--wherein theme b was supposed to be a variation on "a", but sadder. The end results was a music not much like "a"). We wanted to serve the play, but to also have PLUMP-like music, where possible. We actually made one theme "Bill's Theme" pretty much like one section of a song we have called "Oso Nova". One theme was very funky--kind of in a "Shaft"-like way. The Joe theme and Fault Lines theme were closely related--mostly because Joe's dialogue often served as the theme of the play. These two themes, and the "b" theme referred to above which we called "Sadder", were very moody, kind of dark. One reviewer said PLUMP played moody music during the theme, and I think they were often referring to this. We also had some bell toll type stuff with bass and mallets on symbol. Al and Jason really had a big chance to play some cool crazy stuff through out. I felt Josh played the melody on the bass most of the time. And I played along with Josh on drums. Very cool. We had read through the script with the director, and marked the spots where we though we should come in and out. This evolved over the course of the rehearsals. Our spots coming in and out sounded really cool, and really served the drama going on the stage. Sound, or lack thereof, can really provice focus during a performance. Tune in for more.....