BWW Exclusive Blog: CLYBOURNE PARK Behind the Scenes: Day Two (Part 3)

BroadwayWorld.com welcomes Clybourne Park to the Broadway neighborhood by offering readers an exclusive behind-the-scenes peek as the play gets ready for performances. Through this unprecedented access to the fascinating creative process of technical rehearsals, students from Fordham University will keep BroadwayWorld.com readers in the loop through daily updates and photography. Log on to follow along as this Pulitzer Prize-winning play moves into its new Broadway home and literally gets built from the ground up.

In the afternoon session the students observed the actors performing through most of Act 1 (no costumes, just spacing). Then in the evening session, they picked up where they left off and finished Act 1. Then the crew practiced the scene shift again and they started Act 2, which they got through a good chunk of. Tomorrow afternoon they're starting at the Top of Act 1 in costume and will work through the show again.

I have been backstage to several Broadway shows and every time is like the first time. Walking into a Broadway theatre during tech is like walking backstage at Disney World but twice as magical. The audience of the Walter Kerr Theatre, where Clybourne Park is located, is currently filled with tech tables, a table for the director, a table for lights, a table for sound, a table for set, a table for props, a table for stage management, and there are snacks on every table. You might not recognize the Walter Kerr Theatre during tech, the carpet and seats are covered with plastic to protect them.

Tech is where all the elements finally come together, lights, set, props, and sounds all begin working together to create a show. It is amazing to see the insanity of multitasking that is required in order to be teched for the first preview on March 26th. All at once the director is going over blocking with the actors, while the stage manger and stagehands are working on a trunk falling down the stairs, while the light designer is building cues, and the wardrobe crew is going over quickchanges. Although seeing the secret behind the magic of Broadway is awesome, the best part of going to tech of a Broadway show is meeting the professional theatre artists.

Meeting Broadway theatre artists shows us young, aspiring artists that working on Broadway is not an impossible dream but that real, normal people work on Broadway and that could be us someday. It was a great realization that Broadway is just a larger and grander version of shows I work on at Fordham. Big things can happen from small beginnings, Clybourne Park was once a small play Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons and now on Broadway. Clybourne Park’s journey from Off-Broadway to Broadway makes observing tech so unique. The cast and creative team of Clybourne Park have had two previous full productions at Playwrights Horizons, in L.A. and now have to adapt to working in the Walter Kerr Theatre, which causes many alterations to set, lights, props, etc. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be a part of Clybourne Park now and looking back to when it was at Playwright Horizons just a couple of blocks away and only dreaming of Broadway. Now Broadway is the reality for the cast and creative team of Clybourne Park. It is definitely a show that people will dream they could have seen if they miss out on the play’s short 16 week run.

By Ellen Goldberg, Fordham University Class of 2013, pursuing a B.A. in Design and Production.

Photo Credit: Ben Cohen/Givenik.com