August 4
We “walked through” the show in the KET studio today. (In a walk-through it is understood in advance that there will be a lot of stopping and starting to adjust to a new space, work in new props, etc. No attempt is made to time the show.) Bob hasn’t finished the set yet, but what he has so far is phenomenal. He has re-created exact replicas of two of the trucks that carried the show in 1974. When I saw the replica of the truck I slept in, I almost started crying. I suddenly remembered we used to call it “The Hilton.” There used to be a scene in the play about my bunk—my bunk was so shallow that I had to lie down on the floor and roll over to get into it—but we cut that scene in the rewrite. In the rewrite, if something didn’t relate directly to the theme of “Wayne achieves his dream and his influence on Liz,” it had to go.
It’s very interesting to me because many of the props that Bob
built are exact replicas of the props that Wayne built for the circus.
Obviously he used all the old circus pictures I had in his research. I
mentioned to Bob that in a way he had gotten into Wayne’s head to
build everything and he said, “Yeah, that’s what I tried to
do.”
My first impulse upon seeing the huge studio space was to say, “Oh, yeah, I can fill this space with my voice.” I immediately realized that my goal is NOT to fill the space, only to create the scene right in front of the camera and let the camera capture it. Having to project your voice to fill a huge studio is not an issue the way it would be in a stage performance.
Oh—here’s another difference between live theater and television. They asked me what I thought of the set, and if I thought we should make any changes. Well, Bob has built three ring curb sections, and they are placed downstage. (I don’t know if you use that term in television. In the theater, “downstage” is toward the audience, and “upstage” is away from the audience.) Anyway, in the TV studio today the ring curb was placed downstage. Well, in the production in the theater, we placed the ring curb upstage. In the theater, in general, one would not place an obstacle like that between the actor and the audience. So I mentioned that. It turns out that the ring curb is a “foreground element.” It won’t necessarily be in the shot, but it might be used to frame the shot. See, I am used to thinking that whatever is on stage will be seen by the audience. In the TV studio, the director chooses what will be in the shot, and nothing else is seen.