The first show of the season at Stage West is about halfway through it’s run.
“Death Trap” officially opened on Friday, Sept. 13, an auspicious day for an opening, says director Mark Bellamy.
There’s still have ample opportunity to grab tickets, as the show runs through to Nov. 10, much longer than other companies would run a show.
With a smile, Bellamy says that just makes the second half of performances better.
“Shows are kind of like wine, they age and as they go in the run they get stronger, and they get more confident,” he said.
But, the longer run time does translate to a shorter rehearsal time. Other theatre companies like Theatre Calgary generally spend three to four weeks in the rehearsal hall before bringing the show to the stage and adding tech elements.
Stage West shows spend only two weeks in the rehearsal hall, one week on stage, and then previews begin a week before opening.
On preview week, the cast performs every night to a live audience, and then spends the day continuing rehearsals.
Bellamy says while getting the show in front of an audience that early is a kind of sprint for actors to learn their parts, it can be beneficial for fine tuning,
“What you lose on one end, you get on the other end,” he said.
Bellamy explains that having the input of the audience helps a director gauge how things are landing.
“If we discover, ‘Oh that doesn’t work the way we thought it did,’ then we can go back into rehearsal and fix it,” he said.
The audience helps the cast make new discoveries too, Bellamy adds, giving the example of the crowd gasping at a reveal the actors hadn’t even planned in the second half — no spoilers here.
In live performance, the audience becomes an extension of the cast, breathing life into the story in a way that just actors cannot achieve, and getting the show in front of a crowd earlier helps actors play to it.
“Death Trap” by Ira Levin has become an old standard theatrical production; the story is about a famous playwright who is having a hard time finding success in his later years, working with a new up-and-coming playwright with a great script, musing how far he would go to get his name on it.
Envy versus envy as a weary seasoned writer welcomes a fresh aspiring writer into his gorgeous living room, who at one point comments he would like a home like this. Each character wants something the other has and so, the trap is set.
Part of the joy of the play is the set, parts of which are a requirement and written into the script.
From the jump, the audience is presented with dozens of tools and weapons that could be used in nefarious plots. Stage West’s set for the show is the foyer and front sitting room of what one assumes is a wonderful large estate home, and while the amount of murder-y devices may be uncomfortable in your own home, the actors show that for their characters, it just makes sense.
For more information on the show, visit stagewestcalgary.com