Some of the Artists Behind the Scenes Of Plank

Sarah Schneider

Plank is receiving some very nice press. The designers and actors who have worked hard and used their incredible talents to put together the show that you see at the Calderwood Pavilion most definitely deserve their names noted. There are always a couple of people, though, who work tirelessly and without whom the show would never go on, but are never noted in the theater reviews because their work is very much behind the scenes. There are two very important people who have worked on Plank—Stage Manager Sarah Schneider and Technical Director Steve McGonagle—along with the members of the cast who brought their choreography skills to bear, without whom the show never would have reached the production values for which it’s being noted.

The stage manager is always the first person in the theater and the last to leave. Sarah actually came to Plank late when the stage manager we originally hired went MIA (it happens) so she had the extra burden of coming in when the production was already in motion. Like all stage managers, Sarah seemingly has a thousand things to do at once, and only a highly focused individual with real knowledge of the theater can pull off what she does. She also doesn’t feel the need to laugh at my jokes, proving that she’s not a suck up, which has led me to ask her advice about things before acting upon them. That’s how much trust we put into the stage manager at Alley Cat Theater.

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The sheep pasture in Bolton, Massachusetts

When JiYoung Han came in with her set design, the responsibility of building the impressive set that reaches 19 feet at its highest point fell to Technical Director Steve McGonagle. Because of the size of the set, Steve built the panels in a pasture on a sheep farm in Bolton, Massachusetts under some beautiful, spreading trees. The panels’ foundation is made of sheep fencing, naturally, covered in window screen covered in a kind of skim coat. Objects that represented a dying earth, keeping with the play’s main theme of rebirth, were imbedded into the skim coat while it was still wet, including a couple of actual sheep bones. The back of the set that our patrons see when they arrive in the space is hung with a handmade fishing net made in Italy that Steve found on Craigslist. Steve also is our prop master, making the plank, which had to be both lightweight and durable, the copy of Moby Dick, the lunchbox, and the money that Potpee throws into the ocean.

Finally, one of the primary theatrical elements in Plank is movement, and during auditions Director Megan Schy Gleeson particularly was looking for actors who also had a background in dance and/or movement. Actors Sydney Grant and Adam Lokken are both choreographers, and Actor Fray Cordero is part of the first graduating class in Contemporary Theater at the Conservatory. For all three actors, movement is a language they speak fluently; instead of speaking it audibly they speak it physically. The movement you see in Plank is a result of a devised theater process where the entire ensemble worked collaboratively with the director to build the choreography.  

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Adam Lokken, Sydney Grant, and Fray Cordero

Plank runs until Saturday, September 16th. Tickets can be found at BostonTheaterScene.com. Reduced priced tickets can be found at Bostix. And we also offer half-price student tickets.

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