BWW Blog: Samantha Tirrell - BACKBEARD, Becoming

We are about to enter our final week of rehearsal for Backbeard: A New Musical at the Theatre Institute at Sage! This Friday, we will begin technical rehearsals for the show, and we open for school groups next Wednesday, June 1st. It will be an exciting last week as the final details are hammered out and we finally see the results of our efforts come to fruition.

Last week, we journeyed over the bridge into Watervliet, NY to hold Backbeard photo call on one of the city's docks. The closest shoreline is about three hours away from us, so the Hudson River became Backbeard's seven seas for the sake of convenience, but being by the water with four pirates and a couple crates full of pirate-y props was enough to remind the production team how exciting this project is and will continue to be as we get more opportunities share it with others.

Photo call is always one of the most thrilling parts of a rehearsal process. For the actor, it is exciting to finally play and pose in their full costume pieces, giving them a better idea after weeks of rehearsal how their character will change and transform with wardrobe pieces, with this knowledge assisting them as they move forward in rehearsal. For the production team, photo call offers a small taste of what the show will feel like in its final stages, when the major technical and design elements have been cultivated and completed. And for costume designer Lynne Roblin, photo call is an opportunity to view her work more objectively, standing back and seeing several actors in costume together at once handling props and posing as pirates, which will allow her to fine-tune her work in the final stretch of time before technical and dress rehearsals. The first rehearsals after photo call are always full of an energy that maybe was not there before, as the actors are reminded of how close we are to performance and how much work is being put in beyond what they're seeing in the rehearsal space.

We also started recording video for the projection design last week! When Backbeard receives his threatening edicts from the Pirate Council, we will see Backbeard reading them but we will also see and hear the Pirate Council delivering the edicts over Backbeard's head. The harmony between the set design and projection design rests heavily on three sails which will be hung above the ship. The goal is that throughout the entire piece, we will have animations by Matthew McElligott projected onto the sails, allowing for an artistic union of the source material and its stage incarnation. It is still the element of this production that we have had the slightest exposure to, and we are all so excited to see how this element is cultivated in this final week.

Matthew McElligott's Backbeard books (the series that birthed the musical) have been an obvious presence in rehearsal this past week. Someone from the production team brought their copies in and left them on the management table, and as I've been sitting at this table for several hours each day, I have been watching members of the cast, crew, and production team walk by, quietly peruse the books, and then continue to do the work that they're doing. I only wish we had done this sooner, and intentionally -- as we transform this tale from one artistic medium to the plethora of artistic media that musical theatre requires, I think a quick flip-through of Matthew McElligott's beautiful work in the Backbeard books is an effective way of grounding our efforts and reminding us of how close we are to the gradual evolvement of this project from page to stage.

Just a year ago, director and composer Michael Musial gathered our department for a first workshop of a preliminary first half of Backbeard in musical form. Today, we will walk into the Schacht Fine Arts Center for rehearsal, where a plethora of artists have been working around the clock to give Backbeard theatrical life. We will work on an evolving set with functioning gangplanks and portholes, designed by technical director Spencer Musser. We will work with Lynne's costume pieces, which seek to evoke Matthew McElligott's illustrations in color, form, and style. We will listen to a book and score which have been meticulously built upon a variety of themes and ideas from the source material. And still, the Backbeard books will sit on the management table, serving as a reminder to all of us why we are here, of the inspiration behind the project that we have all grown to care so deeply about.