Set Build

Sneak peek behind the scenes in the shop, where pieces of the set are made.

As the spirited cast and crew of Don't You Forget About Me heads into the final two weeks, work is moving ahead steadily on the set!

There's always time for humor, even between heavy lifting. 

Field trip to pick up mattresses for scenes in Say Anything and Ferris Bueller.

The set is coming together!

Set builds are always one of my favorite experiences to take away from each show. While they are opportunities to bond with the cast and listen to awesome music, we more importantly get to look back at the end of the day and say "we built that." Acting is only a fraction of the Berkshire Theater experience. I have learned so much about everything from lighting the stage, to using power tools, to being a part of a team that is totally committed to one goal. As a senior, this is my seventh production here at Berkshire and I am every bit as excited for this show to go up as I was the first time I stepped on stage. 

- Kennedy Alvarez 

The Theater Warm Up

After a long school day, how do we transition from an academically-driven day to a theater mindset? With the warm-up, of course! I’m a strong believer in meditation, for it always helps me feel better when I’m stressed or worried. Bad vibes are the last thing that we need for rehearsal.

My favorite part of the warm-up (as I’m sure others can attest to) is the moment we all take to find joy and feel it in our bodies. And I don’t mean general happiness, but rather genuine joy. How many times a day do people actually stop what they are doing and attempt to feel joy? Probably never. As Mr. Howard often says, feeling joy is probably the most important part of the day.

While the warm-up features exercises such as calisthenics, voice warm-ups, and breathing exercises, I always look forward to seeing everyone take a moment to come together to get in the right mindset. Though I still have another year ahead of my Berkshire career, many senior captains will be leaving this May. For the past three performances I’ve been in, we’ve warmed up together. Soon, they will go on to their next endeavors.

I can’t tell you how many times the warm-up has saved me, especially on performance nights. It serves as a reminder that we are all here to do something special and beautiful—something that not everyone gets to do. I know that I can always count on everyone to back me up, and they can count on me as well.

So when you get the chance to meditate, do it. It does not take very long. Whether you may think that you may not need to warm-up to start your daily activities, I guarantee that you will feel better.

-Jeffrey Erazo

Video Mashup

-Margaret Butler

Time Travel to the 80s

Walk into the greenroom and you may feel like you stepped into a time machine into the 80’s!  We’ve got a whole rack of 80’s costumes and there’s more to come!  One of my favorites is this wedding dress- it’s got super puffy sleeves and basically screams 80s.  And we’ll be going all out in hair and makeup too.  The costume crew already has plans for big hair and loud colorful makeup.  Mr. Anselmi (spoiler alert: who will be playing Vernon) even brought in an “I heart the 80’s poster” with 80’s sayings and quotes on it some even quotes from the films we’re doing!  And yes we’re super excited to have Mr. Anselmi and well as other teachers join the cast!  Having Mr. Anselmi in rehearsals has already added so much to our show.  He brings his full commitment whenever he’s playing his character.  Also, the fact that he happens to be a big 80’s fan brings a great vibe.  Oh yeah and Mr. Howard- he’s got that 80’s thing going on too.  Sometimes he’ll tell us stories about his time in high school, mainly that he was like Loyd Dobler in high school.  These stories are very much appreciated.  All in all, it’s super fun to work on these 80’s films and learn about the decade.  Sometimes it makes you want to travel back to 80’s.  “Like totally!”

Alyssa Cass

Theater Knowledge

Just four weeks ago we sat in a circle on stage and read through our script for the first time. We are now about halfway through the process, which means one thing-- Line Run is only a week away! Line Run can be one of two things: either a celebratory event in which everybody is off-book and ready to dig deeper into the material without a script at hand… or it can be a total disaster. Luckily, after checking in with each cast, everybody seems solid and ready to sit in our circle once again to recite these lines that were once so foreign.

​So how do we get off-book? There are loads of tricks for memorizing lines but here are the top three tricks in our group:

1)

Recordings. Make a recording of the entire script, scene by scene, and listen as much as possible. Then, make a second recording, excluding your part, and leave extra space between lines so you have time remember and recite. Listening while working out in the gym, studying in the library, and even playing it bedside while sleeping helps.

2)

Before Bed. This is a huge one. Your brain remembers so much more of what you study when it is the last thing you do before rest. So brush your teeth and recite a scene right before you hop into bed.

3)

Always move. Note that I said before hopping into bed. Never recite lines sitting or lying down. Get up and move around; it helps you to get into character and lessons the urge to slack off. Also, on the note of slacking, never just run lines in your head—it’s basically useless. It is one thing to think you know your lines, and another to actually say them, so shout them out nice and loud!

​

First Set Build

With the show less than a month away, the cast and crew of “Don’t You Forget About Me” got together on Saturday get started on making the set. Dom and Sam, our Tech Director and Assistant Director, drove us to a secluded garage on campus to begin organizing the platforms for our set. Since four 80s films will be part of this play—The Breakfast Club, Say Anything, Mystic Pizza, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—our stage will accommodate all four plays by using various platforms of different heights. These platforms will give us better a better performance space on stage while giving each play a defined set to work with.

After moving the heavy platforms (and struggling), we headed back to the theater to clean the stage and organize the props closet. Once we got there, we decided to split into two different groups and make these tasks a competition. Even though the props closet crew had to mop up a puddle due to the leaky ceiling, they managed to come in first. Then the stage managers ended the day by sweeping and mopping the stage. Two more set builds to go!

Spring into the 80's

This spring Berkshire Theater is doing Don’t You Forget About Me, a play taking popular 80's movies  and bringing them to the stage.  We’re using scenes from The Breakfast Club, Say Anything, Mystic Pizza, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, all different stories but connect to each other in similar themes about relationships and parents and being a teenager. So far we’ve been working in a rotation system, with different groups switching off in different work spaces from the theatre to the film lab and the green room.  At “show and tell” we come together and share what we have been working on with the cast. 

 

 

You might be wondering how do we bring different scenes from films and put it on a stage as a play?  One of the ways we’re doing this is by using platforms.  Each film has its own section off the stage and the middle space is left open for all groups to use. We’ve also been playing around with overlap in different spaces, for instance, in a Ferris Bueller scene the characters eat out at the Mystic Pizza place. Doing scenes from films also challenges us to deliver to the audience in a way that the characters feel real.  A lot of time has been dedicated to character work in order to get the feel for who the characters are. With all the different experimenting and rehearsals, these first few weeks have flown by!

 

 

What the cast and crew are saying…

 

“We’re having a lot of fun putting the pieces of the puzzle together.”

–Katie Soper

 

“It’s a really cool concept; one play with four different story lines.”  

-Lucia Liencres

 

“I was skeptical at first for how we could make scenes from films into a play, but to my surprise it’s been working out better than I imagined and in an awesome way.”

-Andrea Cass

 

 

 

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