When a touring production is preparing to go on the road, the company goes through weeks of rehearsals -- memorizing dialogue, building chemistry and establishing the show's identity. But when it comes time to navigate the physicality of the show -- the blocking, the set pieces, even the costumes -- that is all finalized on the road. This process is known as teching and enables the company to work out all the kinks and quirks of moving a performance from city to city before the tour officially begins.
The Walton Arts Center recently hosted The Lincoln Center's revival of "Falsettos," the 10th show to launch from Fayetteville in the arts center's 27 seasons. The impact of hosting a tour during its teching -- often a 10 to 14 day process and sometimes longer -- extends beyond the WAC's front steps to more than just the arts community.
"For Walton Arts Center, it means we have the opportunity to raise our profile in the industry. But for Northwest Arkansas and Fayetteville, it's a big impact to the local economy," explains Jennifer Ross, programming director at WAC. Even a relatively small-scale cast and crew of around 30 people will require nearly that many hotel rooms, groceries, three meals a day and will pour into local businesses. That monetary impact alone, even for just a week and a half, is a plus, but factor in the locals hired for temporary crew positions on top of that, and teching a show becomes a significant economic driver for the area.
"It also gives Walton Arts Center the opportunity to have a show that we may not get otherwise," Ross adds. "'Falsettos' is a very limited run. It's only going into big markets -- and Fayetteville. So we're pretty proud of that."
"I really love the puzzle aspect of it," Alex Newby shares. Newby has been the technical director at WAC for nearly two seasons and started as the head carpenter eight seasons ago. "This idea that this has all probably been computer modeled, they've got these blueprints, they've got these drawings, but nobody's ever actually put it together yet. And so to see it come off the truck and to see it go together for the first time and to be part of that problem solving process that has to happen in real time, I find that extremely fun and different."
Every situation is unique, Newby says, because no matter the show, it is always this crew's first time to build the show. The shows that visit in the middle of a tour typically involve local hires to unload and re-load the trucks and maybe a few extra stagehands and technicians. When a show comes to tech, though, you never know how many people the company will need, which can change from day to day.
"They really want to get it as close to the blueprints as they can," Newby explains of the "Falsettos" tech process. The performances at WAC on Feb. 8 and 9 were the first performances of the revival following its Broadway debut. "So the process is a little bit slower than usual, as you can imagine, because it's everybody's first time to do it. So we all just kind of get in the right mindset to really put this puzzle together as a team. And that's a neat experience for our local crew to get to see a different side of the Broadway touring shows."
"We had to make it basically have wheels," reveals company manager Joel Herbst of taking the show on the road for the first time. Sets had to be rebuilt, new costumes were created, and once the company was actually in Fayetteville, little road bumps were smoothed out daily. "We had to figure out how we could make it tourable because a lot of the shows in New York are not built to tour."
Beyond raising the profile of both WAC and Northwest Arkansas in the theater industry, teching a show in a relatively intimate house like the Walton Arts Center is a mutually beneficial arrangement, Herbst explains. Although it is the Mecca of the theater world, real estate is hard to come by in New York, and rehearsal spaces are tight. Baum Walker Hall's 1,201 seats and comfortable back stage are intimate compared to bigger houses across the country but quite large compared to many of the theater spaces in New York.
"It's easier to expand than condense, so it's always nice to tech a show in a space that's more intimate," Herbst says. "It's also kind of nice to be away from New York when you're doing this process because it gives us a chance to almost experiment and work on things in kind of an isolated setting. It feels very protective in a city like Fayetteville, because it's a lovely city but it's so far removed from the New York scene. So our actors and creatives and designers can really feel isolated and play with the piece."
NAN What's Up on 02/17/2019