TELLY Leung (center) had the most lyrics to learn, throw away and relearn. Matthew Murphy
NEW YORK—After four full weeks of previews, “Allegiance” has finally been frozen. One friend, after reading my tweet announcing the same, thought I had just been cast in a theatrical production of the monster Disney hit.
The term “frozen” basically means that there will be no more major changes to the production as it stands right now.
Over the last four weeks, members of our creative team (composer/lyricist/cobook writer Jay Kuo, cobook writer Marc Acito, book writer and lead producer Lorenzo Thione, director Stafford Arima and choreographer Andrew Palermo) have been making huge tweaks to the show based on audience response as well as how the show is hitting them from the stage as they sit in the house.
Daily routine
Our daily routine would be thus: the night before a rehearsal, everyone in the team would receive a script log indicating what changes will be made, as well as the actual script pages to put into our books.
Some days, we would get a short log with only a few changes, while on other days, we would get a thicker pile, meaning it would be a more arduous session. Our stage time on these preview days would be limited only to four hours a day, and we would not have rehearsals scheduled on a two-show day.
The cast would meet in the lower lobby at 12 noon, where the first order of the day would be Marc outlining our script changes one by one, and having us rehearse the line change right then. Afterwards, our music supervisor Lynne Shankel would take over to either teach us something new musically for immediate or subsequent implementation, or clean something up that didn’t go well the night before.
Stafford would farm out notes individually via small pieces of paper, or an e-mail sent out either to individual actors or to pairs or groups.
When something new gets put into the show, stress levels go up. Actors will need to commit to memory a new line, melody, lyric, staging or choreography.
All hands on deck
Lighting might need to tweak a cue or change a look. Dressers might need to replot a quick change. Our props men may need to figure out what new props might be needed. It’s an “all hands on deck” approach.
Let me use one concrete example for a scene we call “Baseball.” What was originally a meeting among block members in a mess hall has been transformed quite a few times. For some performances, we’d use a “band-aid” solution, until a more significant change could be done.
The front end of the scene was the first thing to be changed… and later on, which was just a few days ago, the middle part. The only part of this scene that stayed from its original rehearsal state was the last third of the scene.
Crowd-pleaser
Don’t get me wrong; the scene on its own is gangbusters and a crowd-pleaser. However, for a show like this, it’s not just about getting applause.
GEORGE Takei makes “official” Broadway debut this Sunday. MATTHEW MURPHY
Does the scene make sense, historically and contextually? Does it match the tone that is set by the rest of the show? How does it affect everything going before it, as well as after it?
Yes, our brains as a company (most especially that of our leading man Telly Leung who had the most lyrics to learn, throw away and relearn) turned to mush. Yes, our choreographer and his associate had to rejigger the dance steps to make sense with the rest of the staging. And yes, the first time we performed this section of the show, it was not perfect. It wasn’t a train wreck, but things weren’t lining up in the way it needed to be.
The following day, Friday (the day we officially froze the show), we tried to figure out what we needed. Our sound department helped us out by upping the level of percussion on stage for cueing and tempo. We rehearsed and re-rehearsed a few times. All in the midst of putting in 19 other, smaller changes into the show.
At 5 p.m., the whole cast and crew gathered in the house. Stafford gave a speech thanking us for our hard work, perseverance, dedication, patience and investment throughout this most arduous stage of creating an original musical.
The amount of changes that went into “Allegiance” is insane, but everyone pulled together. At the end, Stafford held up a big bag of ice to signify that the show was, indeed, finally frozen. The cast backstage celebrated by playing music from the “Frozen” soundtrack.
And now we will have a full week performing this final, golden master version before our official opening this Sunday. Thank you to our preview audiences for coming to see us and giving us valuable feedback needed to make it even better.
Yeah, we are frozen. The cold never bothered us anyway.