Tech week makes things in theater really real. It's awesome!
By Owen Panettieri (playwright, lyricist)
This Friday November 4th, my latest play, A Burial Place, will have its world premiere at the Dorothy Stelsin Theatre in NYC. We run for 3 weeks in that sweet spot of the year in between Halloween and Thanksgiving where things aren't TOO too crazy and you should come out and see what we've been cooking up! Tickets available here! It's been an incredibly rewarding rehearsal process for me and I have to thank New Light Theater Project, Sarah Norris and 5000 Broadway Productions for producing the show, my director and great friend Joey Brenneman, for once again brilliantly bringing a vision to my words, my cast Max King, Evan Maltby and Deshawn Wyatte for being fearless and supportive of each other on stage and for the entire creative team who have come together to create a special little world together. I'm an incredibly lucky guy.
I'm writing this from Load-In at the theater, right as the set goes up. Hooray for Tech Week! Moving into the theater is probably my favorite time during a production. It's when the whole creative team really gets their time to shine. We step into a blank space together, and in roughly 48 hours we'll have created our own little universe inside the theater. Sets, lights, sound, props and actors combine to create something that never existed before. It's a special moment. It's an exciting moment! We create the environment and then welcome in an audience to complete the experience. Tech hours are long. Sometimes the process can be tedious. But still, I love every second of it.
The week before opening night can be a difficult time for a playwright. Even when the rehearsal process is going great, you reach that one-week-out place and suddenly your brain goes a little haywire and you think, "Oh my god, why did anyone agree to do this? How did I convince all these talented artists that this was a good idea? What if I've been wasting there time and they just went along with me to be nice?" That's when you take a deep breath, sing, "Die Vampire, Die!" and keep going forward. And that's easier to do when you're actually in theater with a great team. When you start writing a play you're all alone. And by the time you get to production, so many other people have come on board to help you tell the story. They're really the ones that create the world that you originally only saw in your head. It's a magical mysterious process every time it happens. Karen Cartwright was wrong in that episode of Smash when she famously said, "I Can't! I'm In Tech!" Tech is when you say, "I CAN!" and "WE WILL!" It's the time when you're almost there and the world's just about to be born. And when opening night comes, how can you feel anything but grateful?
OWEN PANETTIERI is the author of the awarding-winning plays Vestments of the Gods and The Timing of a Day. Member of Playwrights Gallery in NYC. His new play A Burial Place opens on Nov. 4th 2016 in NYC! www.owenpanettieri.com
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