If you think working on a musical with multiple sets is tricky, try tackling a touring show where the venue changes almost daily, and the size of the venue expands or shrinks depending upon where you are. That’s the challenge that production stage manager Shawn Pennington and head electrician Lynnette Provost face on the current national tour of Gypsy. The show chronicles the rise of Gypsy Rose Lee, whose stage mother tried for years to make her a star until their waning fortunes landed their act in a seedy burlesque theater, where financial desperation and failed artistic aspirations transformed a sweet young woman into a seductive stripper.
Not only is the show, which originated on Broadway, full of lively song and dance numbers with numerous costume changes, it features a plethora of set changes as well. At Gypsy’s recent stop at the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts in Greenvale, Long Island, the cast and crew had to cope with a far smaller stage space than they were used to, despite the venue’s 2,200-seat capacity. Beyond the tight space for sets, the touring company could only use the Center’s lighting rig as their truss could not fit.
“It was our first conventional show, and I had to basically rewrite the show on the fly as we went,” divulges Provost. “It was also a matinee load-in, so we started at 6:00 am. Our first show of the day was a 2:00, our second at 7:00, and then a load-out that night. Basically 18 hours of straight adrenaline!”
Pennington states that the biggest challenges are the obvious ones. “When you have a show that is designed for a space 40 feet deep and 80 feet wide, playing one that is half that size is going to be an issue,” he says. “Every show has its own physical strengths and limitations.” He reports that Gypsy does not have a single unit set. It is comprised of four large rolling units used for one to two scenes each, plus approximately 15 flying pieces.
In designing the show, Michael Hotopp – who has worked on many Broadway, off-Broadway, and touring shows as well as TV gigs for Oprah, ESPN, and the Winter Olympics on CBS – was cognizant of the markets the show would go through. He has seen Gypsy in many Broadway revivals and has worked on it doing summer stock and dinner theater, so he was quite familiar with the show, but he also brought ideas to his designs.
“Phoenix Productions has been doing this for quite awhile, and we know that the minimum depth in most cities is 28 feet,” says Hotopp. “Because it’s more of a play with music, we pulled it in so we were a 16 by 30 feet opening, plus the showcard placards, to give a full look to it, even though it’s a small production in the sense that it doesn’t have all the big production numbers that a lot of musicals do.” For this tour, he utilized a large false proscenium flanked by show placards on each side. It is a massive piece and is key to the whole show because it gives everything its dimension.
Hotopp and his team designed for an “A-city,” which he says is about 70 percent of the theaters the show is booked into, and then alternate versions for the remaining 30 percent. “Within the A, we’re constantly being flexible, as much as we can be, to accommodate the variety of theaters that we’re going into,” he explains. “Then there have to be other versions of the show, for that other 30 percent. The dressing room and kitchen break away, and there’s no wing space, and there’s a smaller version of the hotel. You try to give the fullest production value you can, but you’re not sitting down. Your slide floor is going to change from city to city, so you have to design a great deal of flexibility into the hang of the show as well as the way it travels.” Hotopp praises Charlie Morrison’s lighting design, and he acknowledges how that will vary from theater to theater, like his own work, “but it is what it has to be sometimes.”
The biggest problem the Gypsy company has dealt with has been offstage storage. Many theatres do not have the wing space to accommodate their set pieces when they are not in play. “We solved this by changing how the units move during the show,” remarks Pennington. “Instead of left to right, we use an upstage black curtain to isolate 8 to10 feet of space ‘behind’ the playing area. We keep the units up there and use the curtain as a sort of garage door, flying it out to switch out pieces, and then bringing it in to mask what's not being used.”
Pennington mainly works with the head carpenter during the morning to determine which version of the show will run in that particular venue, what cuts must be made, and how everything is going to move. He then re-writes his calling script to reflect those changes. “This mainly has to do with fly cues, since they vary greatly depending on what we do and do not have,” explains Pennington. “I then have to plan my daily meeting with the actors, so that they can be as informed as possible as to how the show will be operating around them that night. I'm fortunate to have a great cast and crew who are willing to go with the flow.”
Provost says that in the beginning, it was challenging to figuring out how to work the show and make it look the same every day. “In addition, trying to remember what was cut daily and which version of the show we are doing also causes some confusion,” she states. “The physical stress of touring on the rig is a definite factor. When you consider that my trusses may get ramped off a truck as many as six days a week, you have to consider all the jarring and jostling and the effect it has on the movers. A lot of problems I have in my rig are purely physical as connectors get unseated or conventionals literally get knocked out of focus.”
Provost has created a conventional plot that can be used in spaces where their truss cannot fly. “In this situation we use what is essentially a rep plot with our deck movers to invoke the feel and look of our full show,” she says. Her normal rig consists, onstage, of 16 Mac 2K Profiles, 5 Mac 2K Washes, 4 Mac 600s as Deck Movers, 142 Source Fours of various degrees, 12 Source Four Pars, and 18 Chroma Q scrollers. Front of house she usually uses house instruments, comprised of, she says, “25 Source Fours in a cove, 10 of which get Chroma Q scrollers. From box boom positions, we use 10 Source Fours or equivalent, and from a balcony rail, we use two 5-degree Source Fours and place three of our Mac 2K Performances.”
Previous to Gypsy, Provost’s first touring experience was on the North American tour of Dora the Explorer Live!, which later traveled to Europe, where it played England and France. Her last tour before Gypsy was Go Diego Go! Before she became a road warrior, Provost spent six years working at Walt Disney World as a lighting tech, working mostly on special events, conventions and concerts.
“In particular, I feel like my time in the UK helped me the most in preparing for this tour because we played some really small theatres that were literally 200 hundred years old, and we had to make the show look the same every day,” says Provost. “That's the amazing thing about touring. You can go into a different space every day and still put on the same show every night, regardless of space, time, or crew. You just have to know how to tweak your programming and your gear.”
Gypsy is Pennington’s ninth tour and fourth as stage manager. He is a life-along actor who delved into stage management while playing a small role on the national tour of Fame in 2003. The producers needed an assistant company manager, and he was able to capably balance his two roles, which lead to him also taking on assistant stage manager chores halfway through the tour.
“Turns out I really enjoyed it, and when the next season came around they offered me the PSM position on Smokey Joe's Café,” recalls Pennington. “I love performing, but stage managing is fulfilling in a completely different way. You are totally aware of and involved in every aspect of the show. You're basically the glue that holds it all together. When the curtain comes down on a successful show, that's a nice feeling.”
On the Gypsy tour, Pennington has been juggling a lot on his own. He says that his head props person is his ASM, “but he has an extraordinarily props heavy show to deal with. He collects valuables for me, but other than that I'm pretty much flying solo.”
“We've played a lot of really small venues, and we've had a lot of very long drives,” reveals Pennington. “The combination of the two makes for some stressful days. We've pulled it off so far though, and I have every confidence in the crew and cast. There are days when it seems like we'll never be ready in time, but somehow we always are. Some would call that ‘the magic of theatre’.”
