Moving Out, Moving In
While we’ve been quiet on the blog front, this past month at Third Rail Projects has been incredibly busy. Since January, we have:
- Closed our wildly successful first run of Then She Fell; - Secured a new space for the second run of Then She Fell at a former parochial school, only blocks away from our first venue; - Performed a full strike of the installation environments at Arts@Renaissance and restored the space; - Painstakingly packed our sets and ephemera into boxes and moved them a couple streets down; - Started to rebuild in a new, totally different space (three levels as opposed to one); - Expanded our cast and crew and began rehearsing, adapting and developing material to fit the new space; - are readying ourselves for Then She Fell to reopen this Saturday, March 9 at 7:30pm!
Through this blog, you’ll get a glimpse of the inner workings of our world. My name is Lauren Wong, and I’m Third Rail Projects’ current Marketing & Production Intern. To me, learning how things are made is more thrilling than seeing the things fully finished. Not everyone has access to dress rehearsals, just as not everyone can wander around working four-star kitchens. And while many of you will have the opportunity to see our show, it’s rare to see us in action before the proverbial curtain rises. Here, then, is your opportunity to see inside our show. Welcome.
A prefatory note from Co-Artistic Director, Tom Pearson:
Moving in to a new space is always a bit scary but also tremendously exciting. With this particular show it was all the more so. The first run was supported and subsidized by a presenting partner and individual contributors. The show’s subsequent success and the exceptional demand for tickets have allowed it a continued life and to now expand into its own rented space. But it also comes with growing pains.
When you are working in a site-specific manner, the architecture and structure of the space you are working in meets and defines the material you bring into it. With a work that is intensely structural to begin with, and also immensely dependent upon the existing architectural structures, what happens when it has to move?
Much of what framed the first version of Then She Fell was the hospital patina that the Arts@Renaissance/former Greenpoint Hospital offered. Losing the institutional green tile shower room and the choreography that was made for the tile wall was particularly heartbreaking. But whenever you lose something you love, you inevitably gain something new in return, and that is surely the case with the St. Johns space. From former hospital to former parochial school, Then She Fell, has kept its core intact while extending its limbs into the multi-level corridors, landings and stairwells of its new home.
The three-level institutional building’s passageways have become our new playground, and several scenes have been reinvented or replaced with new material. It feels as if the ante has been upped in every way. If you saw the show before, it will feel like a familiar friend, but one who has travelled widely and brought a sense of worldliness back. Then She Fell retains the places it has been; the Kingsland Ward itself was born from the hospital space and has moved into the school, and the school itself has added an additional layer, making the work deeper and wider and steeped in several histories all at once.
We asked Debra Beardsley, our Production Manager and Carlton Cyrus Ward, our Technical Director (he also plays Lewis Carroll or the White Rabbit in the show) to describe the move from a sprawling basement into a three-story schoolhouse. The move, while only a few blocks away, was a daunting idea; all the furniture we acquired, in addition to fragile glassware, needed to be safely transported and carried up or down stairs. Luckily, a talented crew from Moishe’s Moving came to our aid. “It definitely gave us some peace of mind during a very daunting project,” Debra mentioned.
Our first concern in the new space was seeing how our pieces fit within a wholly different environment. Says Carlton: “Places have a character and this works is very based on that character… I wondered if the scenic elements built for that space would translate.” But the production values did translate to 195 Maujer once we had acquainted ourselves with the new space’s constraints, such as turning its open classrooms into 20 separate spaces. In order to do so, we built a lot of walls and had to carry them up/down stairs; if there was a slight error in measuring, we had to bring them back to the shop and do it again. Each of these rooms required their own lighting and sound; this proved challenging since each original classroom only had a few outlets.
While creating spaces took up the majority of our time, existing spaces also required our attention. We had to see whether all of our ephemera could fit or fill these new rooms, and whether new furniture impacted the choreography. At the same time, areas for dancing became tightened, moved or even flipped. An existing duet (green tile shower room) was re-choreographed around an existing staircase, and even that staircase needed modifications to make it structurally sound for the performers.
It’s extraordinary to think of how a few short weeks can transform someone else’s (St. John’s Evangelical School) into our own. Despite the long days and constant trips up the stairs, we couldn’t be happier with our new home. To Debra, “being in a building that is entirely ours made us feel really proud. It’s not just that this is our space, it’s that this is our building!”
We can’t wait for you to see it for yourselves.
Visit thenshefell.com for more.