Sheffield, England — Visitors to Tudor Square in the heart of this northern British city may find unusual figures this week, such as a woman running in a neon boiler suit, a tudor, and a man running with a box of scissors. Hmm. And if they seem to be in a hurry to go somewhere, that’s because they are. These are actors and they have an entrance to make — on a different stage than the one they just left.
“”First goo, rock-paper-scissorsIs a triptych designed to be performed by one cast at the same time in three different theaters, which lasts until July 2. Programmed to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Crucible Theater in Sheffield, the trilogy will take place on the playhouse’s 980-seat main stage, in a small studio opposite the Victorian Lyceum Square.
The logistics of a project can be daunting. The 14 cast members appear as the same character in all three shows, most often on one of the stages. Therefore, it is a rush trip between theaters. Each play has its own director and technical team, with nine stage managers ensuring a smooth run behind the scenes.
The three plays, which provide different perspectives on the clan’s story, are designed to act as independent stories, but if you look at all three in a row, the densely interwoven plot lines and character arcs Will be revealed. “Lock”, “paper” and “scissors” are all installed at the same time, on the same day, in almost the same place. It straddles three different spaces in the devastated Shefield scissors factory. The collapsing location resonates with a city that once had a rich industrial tradition of producing steel and producing world-class cutlery, including scissors.
The play opens after the death of the lost-willed factory owner. Each story focuses on characters whose claims to the building are competing and whose visions for the future are conflicting.
Chris Bush, who wrote three plays to celebrate the Crucible Theater’s anniversary, said it would provide a “change of perspective” for three generations. “The same world is shared by three different stories: a hero becoming a villain and a villain becoming a hero,” she said.
She said Bush used a set of spreadsheets to plan the script and adjusted the entry and exit timings with the number of words in each scene so that the scripts could run simultaneously.
“Precise adjustments are more complicated than we’ve ever done,” said Robert Husty, the artistic leader of the Sheffield Theater and director of “Paper.” Even scheduling a rehearsal turned out to be a headache and requires careful planning with his fellow directors Anthony Lau and Erin Scofield to divide the time of the 14 actors. had.
Behind the scenes of recent preview performances, there was a quiet and focused atmosphere. If the play runs faster, slower, or stops for some reason, all three will be out of sync. The stage manager’s team all focused on marked-up scripts and color-coded spreadsheets with over 80 entrance and exit details.
The large screen in each behind-the-scenes area of the theater shows all three stages and a giant sync clock so you can quickly spot deviations from your plans. The stage manager communicates with the radio via WhatsApp and, in the worst case, is ready to stop all three shows as needed. (So far, this has only happened once in the preview. This is not a timing issue, but a technical failure.)
Nonetheless, the swift entrances and exits, and the knowledge that the cast must run across busy public squares to move between theaters, add Frison to both the audience and the actors.
Samantha Power, one of the cast members, said there are several entrances to “where I’m sprinting through Tudor Square.” She added that this was a bigger challenge to “negotiate with all the intoxicated people” on Saturday night.
Another actor on the show, Andrew Mack Bean, said during the same journey, “Someone asked me if I had any preliminary changes.” But most of the time, the cast wasn’t upset, he added. “For us, it’s just one play,” he said. “Three different venues are actually the same as doing it with three different sets.”
The reaction to “rock-paper-scissors” has been positive so far, and the show has been constantly applauded. And strong reviews.. Watching all three plays in a row on Wednesday’s Press Day made the performance a cumulative experience. With each new part, the audience’s understanding of the character deepened.
Triptych also offers three different answers to a new topic two years after the coronavirus pandemic.
In “Rock,” unveiled at the Crucible Arena stage, Susie’s character, a dilapidated rocker and sister of the deceased owner of the scissors factory, turns a gritty space into a vibrant new music venue. We present an ideal plan to change. In Lyceum’s “Paper,” the owner’s daughter Faye and her wife insist on the most economically advantageous option: selling the building to the developer and turning it into an apartment. The studio’s “scissors” are set up in a workshop where four young apprentices place cases to maintain the building as a handmade scissors workshop, while preserving local traditions.
These arguments sound familiar to the residents of Shefield.Like many British town centres, Sheffield has many closed buildings, including a prominent former department store. The city authorities are currently discussing how to reuse it... (Options include soccer museum, bars and restaurants, and housing). The decline of Shefield’s steel industry since the 1970s means that many of the buildings once used in manufacturing are no longer in use, but some are stall food markets, nightclubs, vintage stores, and homes. It is being reused for development.
Fifty years ago, Sheffield had dozens of scissors factories. Now there are only two.. One of the remaining, Ernest Wright, lent a working machine to the production, allowing the actor to sharpen a real blade during the “scissors.”
“It is impossible to overestimate the centrality of cutlery for Sheffield’s self-consciousness and pride,” Hasti said. Examine this heritage and think about the future of the former industrial space, he said, seemed like the proper subject of a 50th anniversary show at a theater in the center of the city.
“We were very much looking for an idea for the 50th anniversary with a spirit of adventure and boldness,” he said, adding that using three theater spaces at the same time would fit the bill. He said, “I wanted to see if I chewed more than I could.”
And are they there? “We are still biting very hard,” Hasty said.
First goo, rock-paper-scissors
Until July 2nd at the Crucible, Studio and Lyceum Theater in Sheffield, England. sheffieldtheatres.co.uk..