It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood.
Another old maxim in theatre is that certain things should be avoided on stage. They include:
Water
Fire
Children
Animals
And now, we really should add blood. I actually sat in the audience to watch parts of the dress rehearsal, just to determine that I really don't like opera (I don't). And while I have my quibbles with the staging (A. why is it that in opera you have either 2 people on stage, somehow singing to eachother while both managing to look at the audience, or you have 10000 people on stage all singing in chorus? Nothing in between. and B. What is it with opera sets needing rocks? Every opera set I've ever seen - even the parodies in cartoons - have a pile of rocks on stage?) there is a cool set piece in this opera.
During Lady MacBeth's sleepwalking scene - where I'm sure there's an aria riffing on the "out, out damned spot" line - she wanders about in a white nightgown surrounded by the high white walls that make up the set. At some crucial point in the aria, a mechanical heart-type device under her nightgown (supposedly) starts to pump blood over the neck of her gown as the white walls behind her (allegedly) also begin to bleed.
Well, you can see where this is going.
So I'm sitting in the audience during the first dress rehearsal for the "blood scene" with just about every other wardrobe person because this is the money scene plus we've been privy to all the backstage drama over the mechanical heart thing, how it works, does it work, what is the actress supposed to do to make it work etc. Lady Macbeth begins the aria, wandering around in her nightgown and small red spots are appearing in random places on her gown but it's not the "pumping heart gusher" we were lead to believe. She's also making all these weird rubbing motions with her hands down her body. And then she stops singing and says to the director:
"Bernard, it's dripping into my shoes..."
So a wardrobe person goes on stage to check out the heart, which of course is malfunctioning and refusing to run the blood out the tube and down the front of her dress but instead is leaking/dribbling out the bottom of the container, running down her legs, soaking her shoes and leaving strange footprints and drops on the set. This is where we also discover that the polyester nature of her nightgown means it won't soak up any fluid at all, so the blood is just going to run off of it, no matter what. So they give up on the heart for this rehearsal and decide to try again tomorrow with something different.
Meanwhile, the walls remain pristinely white. So the rehearsal is halted while several stagehands go back stage to find out what happened to the blood. Whatever was wrong is fixed and some red appears at the top of the wall panels, so Lady MacBeth swings into action, walking around stage wailing and trailing bloody footprints while the walls get redder and redder.
Now the set deck (the floor) was built with a "blood channel" like the groove on a sword, that is intended to catch the blood from the walls and direct it into some receptacle backstage. This is especially important as the stage is on a severe slant (called a rake) so the blood could conceivably, if not contained, run down the deck and into the orchestra pit/audience.
So, a minute or so into the restarted aria, a stagehand appears behind Lady MacBeth and appears to be mopping something up. Then another stagehand appears with more towels, and then another, until there are 10 stagehands on stage behind the actress all desperately trying to contain the blood that is running all over the place.
The actress was a trouper, however, and somehow finished the aria in the midst of stagehand turmoil and the rehearsal was halted for a brief reccess so they could finish cleaning up after that number.
It takes 2 more rehearsals and 2 more heart substitutes before they settle on an IV bag with a hose and sew cheesecloth all over her nightgown to soak up the blood as it runs down. As far as I can tell, the set blood has also been contained although a friend of mine, on hearing this story, has suggested that they tell the audience in the first couple of rows to wear raincoats or carry umbrellas.
Can you imagine?
And as a PS, my witches came back yesterday with blood on their white wedding dresses because they were standing in the back for the curtain call and the walls dripped on them. And that stage blood won't come out for anything.
Damned spot, indeed...
Water
Fire
Children
Animals
And now, we really should add blood. I actually sat in the audience to watch parts of the dress rehearsal, just to determine that I really don't like opera (I don't). And while I have my quibbles with the staging (A. why is it that in opera you have either 2 people on stage, somehow singing to eachother while both managing to look at the audience, or you have 10000 people on stage all singing in chorus? Nothing in between. and B. What is it with opera sets needing rocks? Every opera set I've ever seen - even the parodies in cartoons - have a pile of rocks on stage?) there is a cool set piece in this opera.
During Lady MacBeth's sleepwalking scene - where I'm sure there's an aria riffing on the "out, out damned spot" line - she wanders about in a white nightgown surrounded by the high white walls that make up the set. At some crucial point in the aria, a mechanical heart-type device under her nightgown (supposedly) starts to pump blood over the neck of her gown as the white walls behind her (allegedly) also begin to bleed.
Well, you can see where this is going.
So I'm sitting in the audience during the first dress rehearsal for the "blood scene" with just about every other wardrobe person because this is the money scene plus we've been privy to all the backstage drama over the mechanical heart thing, how it works, does it work, what is the actress supposed to do to make it work etc. Lady Macbeth begins the aria, wandering around in her nightgown and small red spots are appearing in random places on her gown but it's not the "pumping heart gusher" we were lead to believe. She's also making all these weird rubbing motions with her hands down her body. And then she stops singing and says to the director:
"Bernard, it's dripping into my shoes..."
So a wardrobe person goes on stage to check out the heart, which of course is malfunctioning and refusing to run the blood out the tube and down the front of her dress but instead is leaking/dribbling out the bottom of the container, running down her legs, soaking her shoes and leaving strange footprints and drops on the set. This is where we also discover that the polyester nature of her nightgown means it won't soak up any fluid at all, so the blood is just going to run off of it, no matter what. So they give up on the heart for this rehearsal and decide to try again tomorrow with something different.
Meanwhile, the walls remain pristinely white. So the rehearsal is halted while several stagehands go back stage to find out what happened to the blood. Whatever was wrong is fixed and some red appears at the top of the wall panels, so Lady MacBeth swings into action, walking around stage wailing and trailing bloody footprints while the walls get redder and redder.
Now the set deck (the floor) was built with a "blood channel" like the groove on a sword, that is intended to catch the blood from the walls and direct it into some receptacle backstage. This is especially important as the stage is on a severe slant (called a rake) so the blood could conceivably, if not contained, run down the deck and into the orchestra pit/audience.
So, a minute or so into the restarted aria, a stagehand appears behind Lady MacBeth and appears to be mopping something up. Then another stagehand appears with more towels, and then another, until there are 10 stagehands on stage behind the actress all desperately trying to contain the blood that is running all over the place.
The actress was a trouper, however, and somehow finished the aria in the midst of stagehand turmoil and the rehearsal was halted for a brief reccess so they could finish cleaning up after that number.
It takes 2 more rehearsals and 2 more heart substitutes before they settle on an IV bag with a hose and sew cheesecloth all over her nightgown to soak up the blood as it runs down. As far as I can tell, the set blood has also been contained although a friend of mine, on hearing this story, has suggested that they tell the audience in the first couple of rows to wear raincoats or carry umbrellas.
Can you imagine?
And as a PS, my witches came back yesterday with blood on their white wedding dresses because they were standing in the back for the curtain call and the walls dripped on them. And that stage blood won't come out for anything.
Damned spot, indeed...
posted by KBARRETT at 2:12 PM
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