A theater rehearsal, in terms of the words exchanged, is a collision of specialized vocabulary and jargon from several different disciplines; as collaborators, we may stumble towards some level of mutual comprehensibility, but some dark spots of incomprehension remain. Kevin, the full-time assistant technical director of theater where RCP perform, wasn’t familiar with one of the items on the list below, collected from several weeks of Seussical rehearsals.
- dance belt
- I once heard this expression as the punch line to a joke in The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940, and I didn’t get it. It describes a brief undergarment worn by men to avoid, um, VPLs and other mishaps under tights. A close synonym, as two or three of us muttered to Earle when the costumer explained that we would be required to supply our own, is “jockstrap.”
- color note
- As used by music director Matt when rehearsing “Biggest Blame Fool,” the note of a chord that provides the particular bluesy quality, and hence the one that he wanted to make sure was sung with a little more oomph.
- smart casters
- Wheels bolted into the base of a set piece that can either swivel or be locked into place. Dawn has designed and Steve built a couple of huge pieces for the back of the set that aren’t going anywhere without smart casters.
- sitzprobe
- One of the few terms of art in music not taken from Italian. Refers to the first rehearsal that brings together singers and the orchestra, generally with no other technical or acting elements involved.
- Anatevka
- Strictly speaking, an allusion rather than jargon, Anatevka is the Russian village that provides the setting for Fiddler on the Roof, home to oppressed Jews who struggle on gamely. And hence, per director Haley, the idea of the plaintive mood that we’re looking for in the second half of “Here on Who,” when the Whos (and the Grinch, for some reason) sing to Horton that war is coming and the truffula trees are all gone, and he is the only one who can help them.
- l’istesso
- Per my copy of Randel’s New Harvard Dictionary of Music, “The same tempo; hence, an indication that the tempo is to remain the same despite a change in meter and thus in the unit of metrical pulse.” Which doesn’t give me very much information that I can work with: I just latch on to whatever Matt and the band are playing and hang on.
Choreographer Heide has kept her vocabulary, both spoken and physical, simple, for which we non-dancers in the cast are grateful. But there will still be something interesting to watch.