Certainly 2 weeks is enough time to create something passable, even watchable, but it's mostly broad strokes and the show will lack details and finesse until well into the 2nd week of the run.Granted, it is certainly somewhat easier to mount a show like "Dial M..." in two weeks (cast of 5, single set) than something like, oh, say ... "Beauty & The Beast" (cast of 22, multiple locations, huge technical requirements) . The poor dancers In "Beauty..." just about collapsed trying to learn all the choreography, harmony and staging in such a short intense period, not to mention the crew trying to deal with all the technical elements in their single alloted rehearsal.
Why are rehearsal periods shorter now? Because theatre companies can't afford to pay the salaries for longer periods. They need to get the show on the stage and start generating revenue. Why is that? Well, for starters, Government funding is getting smaller and smaller. Not that I think it's any government's job to keep the arts alive, but the cuts are getting more and more severe. I have particular issues with funding cuts to arts in the schools. Anytime you make a cut to education of any kind, you are putting a hole in the infrastructure of your country's future. If there's no one learns that art is a part of life, then art dissapears from life and life becomes colourless. Any 'quality of life' survey includes the arts as one of it's measuring sticks...but I digress.
Big business, faced with profit margins and the global economy, is also offering fewer and fewer funding dollars.
And...here's the biggest problem, why leave the house when Hollywood makes it possible to watch a rented movie in your house for 5 dollars? I'll tell you why....because life doesn't happen in your family room. Life is interaction with the world, and most of the world happens 'out here'. Sure you can watch that movie over and over and over again, and it will never change. Go see the same play every night for a week and it will be different every time because it lives, and breathes and has a relationship with the people who are watching it. It lives for YOU. That movie doesn't, and the people with the money behind it certainly don't. When we're on stage, we see you, we feel you, we breathe with you (and listen to you talk and unwrap your candies). But we know you're out there, and we take our cues from your responses.
I think theatre's need to start marketing the unique-ness of theatre. A play happens only once, just for you, just tonight, and then it's never the same again. And if you look at the heart of most plays and compare them to the heart of most movies you'll find different things....real stories at the heart of one, and mostly just marketing and money at the heart of the other.
I will continue to pay $30.00 for mediocre theatre than $12.00 for what Hollywood thinks is a good movie.
I could go on, but my life is pulling at my shirt sleeve.
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2 weeks IS never, WILL never EVER be enough, but alas that is the sad and tragic dilemma we find ourselves in in this country. Why? I believe it's the sad fate of artists who simply will make the show work at any cost. the rise of "Save Your Ass Theatre" has been endemic in far too many theatres in this country and continues to rise ALARMINGLY. It's sad when, on some level, you occasionlly want a show to CRASH BURNING IN A FLAMING DISASTER UPON THE STAGE simply so you can turn around and say "HA! We were right - we needed ONE MORE WEEK! But sadly we, as Canadian artists will not let this happen. We can't. It's not in our nature - which is our great strength and our great weakness rolled into one. How perfectly Canadian.
So the struggle continues - but it is our collective responsability to fight - as actors, directors, chorepgraphers, producers - fight the dwindling rehearsal period however you can. It's easy to bitch about it in the bar but far harder to take ownership - would you be willing to make less money per week for an extra week of rehearsal? Seriously ask yourself the question - is it about the money or the quality of the process? If your answer is the money then stop bitching and do your work. You've made your choice.
That's my rant.
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