It’s Opening Night!

written by Elliot Huxtable

You’ll have heard the phrasing before - the stage is set, the cast is ready… But what does this mean? 

The cast of The Cherry Orchard

Well, on Monday evening we had our “get-in” - pretty much Ronseal, that’s when we got into the space for the first time. 

Thanks to Tim from the University of Kent’s School of Arts who was there to help me plot the lights - sometimes this can be a laborious and tedious process, but mercifully this was a simple show. We effectively have one lighting state for each act, a few changes between scenes, and one incredibly long lighting change during Act I (see if you can spot it!). This took us less than an hour to set up and programme, and, I hope you’ll agree, is incredibly effective.

Next up we had to run the sound effects to ensure the levels were all correct (we don’t want to blow anyone’s ear drums, but equally we want everyone to be able to hear what’s going on!) - again, this didn’t take very long.

The set arrived - mostly furniture and the like, but there is one large centrepiece that needed to be constructed - thanks to Gareth Winters, our wonderful set designer for putting this together both in his head and later for real. This has to be the first time I’ve ever had a set of working doors on stage, and I have to say, I like it!

Then Erica Ghimici and Charlotte Groombridge, our wonderful Production Manager and Managing Director, set all the properties (or props) for our actors - ensuring that they are all placed within easy reach of the entrance from which the actor enters. This is quite an arduous task - there are a lot of props in Chekhov’s naturalist classic, and they swap around quite a lot, so well done to this fabulous pair for ensuring they’re all present and correct.

Finally the actors arrive, and once they are in costume (all designed by the aforementioned brilliance that is Charlotte and Erica) it is time for a technical rehearsal - a complete run of the play with a focus on the lighting and sound effects (it being the first time that they’ve been added into the mix). Normally, this can be a bit of… well, frankly, a disaster. But this cast has been so wonderfully prepared, that it went incredibly smoothly, coming in at just about two-and-a-half hours including the interval.

This meant that we didn’t need our Tuesday rehearsal, and so we all managed to have a well-deserved evening off! Then last night, Wednesday, we had a full dress rehearsal - where we perform the entire play as if there is an audience… but there isn’t! For this to happen, everything I’ve just described must happen all over again (but quicker, because the groundwork has been laid) before the actors can do the performance.

Again, this went so unbelievably swimmingly that I cannot wait to share the results of all our hard work with you - please do join us for a wonderful evening of comedy and drama (dare I call Chekhov a dramedy?) - Thursday 10th to Saturday 12th April at the Aphra Studio, University of Kent.

Book here