The curtain is up. Lights are brightly shining. Guests are arriving and the room starts to look like a real place. Before the play begins, there’s a brief interval of ‘staging’ to allow the audience to adjust to the bright lights and get a peek at what’s going on behind the scenes. This is an opportunity for the audience to get a glimpse into the world of theater. After all, this is what makes the great difference between movies and plays. Movies are often thought of as being more practical due to their shorter duration. However, there’s more to it than that. The staging, the set design, the lighting – all affect the way the audience perceives what they’re watching. It’s the little things that make a world of difference. Unfortunately, even with all the effort that goes into creating a polished look on stage, there are bound to be some technical hiccups. That’s what makes this particular moment so crucial. If the performance is going to go smoothly, then this is the time for the technicians to ensure nothing is standing in the way of the magic of scene-making.
The moment the play begins you know what’s going to happen. You also know who the players are going to be and what’s going to happen. There are a few twists and turns, but it’s essentially a formiddable story of a man pursuing a woman. The fun starts when the main character, an alcoholic, has a nervous breakdown and decides to go on a bender. This is where things really start to happen. It’s almost like he’s intoxicated by the story itself and all its possibilities. The audience is therefore swept up in the excitement as well and begins to have complete involvement in the narrative. This leads to some very amusing and sometimes outrageous scenes. The trick is to always keep the story moving and interesting, no matter what. It needs to remain entertaining and it needs to keep the audience engaged. The last thing you want to do is bore the audience or even worse, seem like you’re mocking them. This can backfire terribly. So you have to keep your eye on the prize and ensure everything you do has a purpose and will further the story, even if it seems like a momentary diversion.
When it comes to the theater, nothing is more important than the lights. This is especially crucial in a play that has many scenes across the board where different lighting requirements exist. For example, one scene might call for a brightly lit room, while another could call for something more subtle. You have to keep the footlights bright without washing out the actors, especially if they’re in the middle of a dramatic scene. This is why it’s so important to try and stick as much as possible to natural light wherever possible. The drawback to this is that often times, the venue you’ve been allocated doesn’t allow for a lot of natural light so you’re sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place. This is why it’s so important to have good stage lighting. There are a few different options that you could go for depending on what you’re looking for. For instance, you could get a single light with a large range of colors or you could get a pair of large lights that produce a balanced spectrum of light. What ever you do, make sure you test it out before the first show. There’s nothing worse than trying to fix something midway through the performance. Especially if it’s during a critical scene where everything can seem to go wrong. So, even if you’re not a professional, it’s still worth having someone in the audience who’s willing to step in and help if anything untoward should occur. Especially since you’re on live television, there’s always the chance that something could go wrong and you could end up in front of a live studio audience. This could make or break your performance.
The Importance of the Script
Although this might seem obvious, a well-written script can make or break a play. Naturally, you don’t want to end up with a script that’s full of spelling mistakes and bad language. This might seem like a no-brainer, yet there are countless amateur playwrights out there who think they’re above the (grammatical) rules. For whatever reason, they decide to forgo the simple act of proofreading. Once again, this can ruin your entire performance. As frustrating as this might be, you have to remember that no one’s perfect and no one’s read it through from start to finish. Your job is to put on a good show and ensure that the script is as polished as possible. This means looking for any little errors that you might have missed and fixing them before the show. Naturally, you want to avoid these sorts of situations if you can. After all, it’s already hard enough to write a script without having to worry about grammatical errors. Hopefully, this will never be an issue for you. Nevertheless, it’s still good practice to double check for typos before you publish. In this way, you can be sure your script is free of errors and it is the best it can be. This does, however, take a lot of the stress out of the writing process.