intervals

Interval in my opinion should be 20 minutes at the most. With regards to blackouts, they are my pet hate particularly in Perth Community Theatre. If you have blackouts lasting longer than ten seconds, it shows that the director has not done their homework with the logistics of the script being presented in terms of setting and costume. It is also an insult to your actors hard work in performance, once your audience's attenion has dropped, they have to work so much harder to win them back again...the more long blackouts the more this occurs and can turn a great production into a very sad train wreck. If the problem is your venue...then youve chosen the wrong play for the venue...more fool you. The director, sm and technical crew should be working as a team to make the transition between scenes as seamless as possible, by coming up with solutions to the problems presented by the script. A few tricks are; 1)Streamlining props - if it isnt going to be used as part of the action - don't include it! I saw a production where a fully prepared dinner and wine were on the table and barely touched by the cast and totally irrelevant to the production as a whole...it could have been omitted....the scene was short and the scene change was long...not good. 2)Actors can move small props when they end their scene. A production had a gentleman in the middle of the set going through old LP's (the old fashioned vinyl records from the pre CD/Ipod era for the younger set that dont remember) another person was reading a newspaper and drinking a glass of wine. At the end of the scene when they walked off the stage the props were left behind when they could easily been taken off by the actors, the lp guy could have scooped the LP's up and he newspaper and drink could have been taken off by the actors..instead of having to be cleaned up by the stage crew...a very simple technique which would have shortened the scene change from 2 minutes (as it ended up being) to ten second I went to see a production of a movie adapted for the stage, and it showed that it was originally a movie, their were at times 5 minute scene changes for a 2 minute scene, and the production suffered badly as a result, in all honesty it was torture to watch it, and the long blackouts made me totally lose track with the story. 3) Dress your set for minimal alteration during the course of the play, or if you can't build clever sets that can have bits pulled out or covered up quickly. I'm prepared to put my money where my mouth is on this and run a workshop of how to overcome theses difficulties in staging...because its an area that isnt being tackled well in Perth. Just a few thoughts, in short, its a case of the 6 "P's". Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. That is the key to overcoming the dreaded blackout trap. Cheers Robert.