MILES AXLE Translation. Region: Russian Federation –
Source: Moscow Government – Government of Moscow –
Any performance is the result of long, intense and painstaking preparation. The work of actors and directors is, of course, always visible at first glance, but the work that remains behind the scenes also makes the production a harmonious and integral work of art. Decorations and costumes, technical solutions and organizational processes are no less important, but not always obvious components of the success of the performance.
Moscow Academic Musical Theatre named after K.S. Stanislavsky and Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko (MAMT) is unique: hundreds of employees of the workshops work on the seven floors of the building on Bolshaya Dmitrovka – painting and decoration, sewing, shoe, props, metalwork, carpentry and other shops. More details about their work – in the material mos.ru.
Headwear and fabric painting
Almost no performance can do without headwear for the artists (and there are more than 40 of them in the repertoire). And the specialists can create almost any product right here in the workshop.
Making a headdress is an individual job. When an artist joins a troupe, their head is immediately measured so that the product fits perfectly. Of course, the data needs to be updated periodically – for example, if the actor changes his hairstyle. And in the case of opera artists, they have to resort to tricks – under the spotlight and from the stress of performing parts, the head circumference can become significantly larger, sometimes even by several sizes. To make the artists comfortable throughout the performance, the craftsmen sew special elastic bands into the headdresses.
Another important task is to make the products as light as possible so that the actors can move freely, dance, perform complex pirouettes and jumps. Sometimes it happens that the idea of a particular headdress is technically impossible to implement, and the craftsmen have to compromise – so that the costumes suit both the production designer in appearance and the performers in convenience and functionality. For example, for the round red headdresses of the natives (working title – “tomatoes”) in the play “Robinson Crusoe”, costume designer Vladimir Arefyev suggested using wooden sticks as a frame. But they would have turned out too heavy this way, and the craftsmen came up with the idea of creating lighter structures from polyurethane foam and wrapping them with red threads.
And the opera “Not Only Love” was the easiest for the specialists, although about 100 different headdresses were made for it. The action takes place in a post-war collective farm, so the headscarves were sewn by hand, but many were not even processed along the edges – to create a more authentic image.
The fabric painting workshop does a huge and very diverse job – here they “blow” the ballet costumes (darken them on the sides so that the artists on stage look even more slender and fragile), and finish the details, and actually paint the fabrics. For “Robinson Crusoe” the workshop worked almost around the clock – for 40 native costumes it was necessary to blow and paint several thousand feathers by hand, and shell beads were collected (also by hand) by almost the entire team. The craftsmen joked that it seemed that shells had run out in all of Moscow at that time, and there were still few of them.
The costume designer for the opera Othello, Dmitry Andreyev, took great care to recreate the historical reality. Each woman’s dress made of silk velvet required about 10 meters of fabric, and the entire choir – almost 50 people – had to be dressed in them. And the artist performing the part of the Dwarf in the opera The Tales of Hoffmann moves around the stage on his knees in a short crinoline skirt made of scraps of different fabrics, painted and sewn together by hand. It took the workshop’s master several weeks of continuous work to make it.
Assistant Director: The Unsung Conductor
An assistant director is a rare profession even for the theater industry; many theaters simply do not have a person who would be responsible for all the services involved in holding a performance. But at MAMT, this is an indispensable specialist, without whom not a single production would take place. In essence, this is the captain of the ship – he is responsible for changing scenes on time, turning on and off the lights, and making sure that the stage props appear on time. And if during a performance the conductor directs the orchestra from the pit, then from behind the scenes, the assistant director conducts everything that happens on stage.
Such a specialist must have a musical education, because he directs the performance using a piano score — the musical score of a ballet or opera, which is filled with notes about what should happen on stage at every second. One page of the piano score can contain up to six such notes. The assistant director knows the entire theater repertoire almost by heart and is next to the director throughout the entire process of creating new performances. Moreover, he is a full-fledged participant — together with technologists at the staging stage, he looks for ways to quickly, “cleanly,” and conveniently for employees of all theater services change the scenery on stage. Assistant directors have to literally measure some moments with a stopwatch so that the performance goes perfectly.
The assistant stage manager’s console at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre is located in the left wings, in the stage pocket. The console can be used to open and close the curtain, as well as maintain contact with all services involved in the performance: lighting technicians, machinists, mechanics and many others.
The Invisible Work of the Stage Operator
Other specialists, invisible to the viewer’s eyes, are responsible for the magic that happens on the theater stage – stage machinists. They are the ones who assemble and disassemble the giant scenery and change it during performances.
More than 60 people work in the MAMT machine and scenery shop, 40 of them are stage machinists who literally physically ensure the performance of all productions. Their tasks include assembling and disassembling scenery, loading and unloading it, and they are also responsible for storage. And there are a lot of scenery – some are located right in the theater, in a huge room underground at a depth of 30 meters, some are stored in 50 containers outside the theater.
The shop works almost around the clock, and preparations for each new performance begin long before the premiere. Several weeks before the first show, “bau-tests” are held, during which the machinists rehearse the change of scenery so that everything works without a hitch at the premiere. There are so-called “draw-up” performances, which are considered quite simple for stage machinists – the scenery can be assembled in a few hours on the morning of the show. They mainly consist of suspended structures that are installed on the stage fairly quickly. Draw-up performances include the operas “Madame Butterfly” and “The Elixir of Love”, and the ballets “Giselle” and “The Stone Flower”.
“Norma” is one of the most complex performances in terms of editing. At the beginning, the audience sees a forest of huge trees about 10 meters high, each consisting of three separate parts. The installation of “Norma” takes a day of continuous work. And for the opera “Rigoletto” the machinists literally build a two-story house on the stage. The floors are assembled separately, and then they are connected by raising the second floor on fly rods and lowering the first on plunger platforms. Another example of complex editing is the ballet “Don Quixote”: huge wings, complex rigid wings on frames, towers, gazebos, carts – only a small part of what the machinists must assemble on the stage in two days.
The opera “Eugene Onegin” requires special participation of the employees of the machine and scenery shop. The floor covering for it is made of natural wood, and before each performance the parquet is assembled from many blocks. Also on the stage are four 10-meter columns that must rotate, and a suspension bridge about 30 meters long – on it Tatyana soars upward when she writes a letter to Onegin. From the auditorium it looks light and airy, and behind the scenes the machinists hold the bridge with special iron rods so that the structure does not wobble, and the actors are safe. And for one of the scenes of the play “Winter Evening in Chamonix”, where two actors travel towards each other in cabins on a cable car above the stage, the simultaneous work of eight machinists is required – they adjust the position of the cabins, raise and lower them.
A “clean” change of scenery is a special job for stage machinists: the picture in this case changes right during the performance, with the curtain open. Then the employees of the machine-set shop are dressed in costumes so that they do not differ from the actors on stage and continue to do their work. Such a change of scenery is, for example, in the ballet “Snegurochka” – in the first act, the machinists, dressed in fur coats, bring a small fence and a bench onto the stage.
Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
Please note; This information is raw content directly from the information source. It is accurate to what the source is stating and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
https://vvv.mos.ru/nevs/item/144521073/
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is a translation. Apologies should the grammar and or sentence structure not be perfect.