All About “Next Fall”

Greetings from Next Fall rehearsals!  We’re in the middle of our third week of rehearsal.  It’s been a wonderful journey exploring this beautiful play and working with such talented actors under the fearless leadership of our director, Seth Gordon (aka The Hitmaker).

We’re all atwitter here because we moved into the theatre today!  After two and a half weeks in the rehearsal hall behind the theatre in Webster Groves, today we’re playing on the actual set in the Grandel Theatre in Grand Center.  Tech is a tedious process of learning how the set works and figuring out lighting.  The first part of today has been a little jarring for the actors because now we’re being asked to speak much much louder than we did in the rehearsal hall.  But in this theatre sound travels differently and obviously it’s a much bigger space.  We have to make sure every single audience member can hear every word!

Jeffrey Kuhn (Adam) and Ben Nordstrom (Brandon) in Next Fall

The set is amazing.  It’s so fun to rehearse for so long in an empty room and then walk into the theatre and see this beautifully grand structure that we’ll get to play on for the next three weeks.  Today, we are primarily focusing on scene changes and making sure all of the furniture can get on and off stage smoothly and safely.  Shout out to our awesome stage crew of Webster students!  We run through a scene once quickly and when we get to the end of the scene, we stop, discuss whom is doing what and how, and then we slowly walk through it.  Then we do it two or three more times to make sure it’s smooth.  We move on to the next scene, whip through it quickly, then stop at the end again, discuss the next change, and work it multiple times.  And on and on…

Tomorrow (Sunday) is a super long day for everyone.  The actors are called from 12 noon to 12 midnight, which means the crew will be here even longer.  They arrive before we get here and leave after us.  We will get into our costumes for the first time tomorrow also. Monday will be our day off to rest, run to the grocery store, and do whatever else we may need and then we’re back again on Tuesday from noon to midnight.  Wednesday afternoon will be a bit of last minute tweaking and then we perform in front of our first audience Wednesday night! Yowza!  It’s a fast and furious process and we love it that way.

Come see us at the Grandel!

Ben Nordstrom

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