Play Week - A Director's Note

Well it's here...dress rehearsal and production week! It would be a bad jinx to say whether things were going particularly well or particularly poorly at this point, so I will say instead that things are, indeed, going. And they will continue to go until Friday night when we open...and then they will need to continue to go all weekend through three performances!

So, as I'm not talking about rehearsals, I'll talk about putting this show together in hindsight, which, as always, comes in the form of my director's notes.

When I first started directing, I wanted to do Neil Simon’s “Fools.” It was one of the very first shows I thought about staging, but the thought of building a balcony scared me away from the script! Eight productions later, I haven’t gotten any better at building balconies; however, as it will be the last all-school play at Pine Island before the new theater opens, it seemed the perfect time to pull the script from my director’s wish list, and put it in the capable hands of my student actors.

When I recently shared with someone that this show was on my shows to direct bucket list, they asked why I didn’t save it for the new space. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to hold off on a main stage production that you’ve looked forward to doing until you have a main stage to actually do it on?” they asked. It is a fair question, and one that makes sense. It’s also one that touches on the heart of the same lessons learned from “Fools.”

If we only ever did theater where we had the best lighting, and the best sound system, and the best costumes, and the best stage rigging, and the best set designers, and the best balconies…very few people would ever get to do theater.

If we only did theater in spaces deemed “theaters” with plush expensive curtains, and slick black stage floors, and orchestra pits, and insulated sound booths…very few people would ever attend a “theater.”

If we reserve “good theater” until all those conditions are met, or one of those spaces is available, we will miss out on a lot of “good theater.”

Pine Island has a good theater program, and they’ve grown it in a space that’s less than theatrically ideal. The new performing arts space will be an amazing and tremendous addition to the school and community, and I’m as excited as anyone to get in there and start creating. But “Fools” doesn’t need to be flashy. “Fools” can be done just as well on a gym floor as an opera house stage. “Fools” is a fun story to tell, whenever and wherever it’s told.

So I pulled it off my wish list…not early, but at the right time. It’s not the right show to christen the new stage. It’s the right show to send the old one out in style. Enjoy the show!

Kate Laack – Pine Island High School Director

Happy Trails,