After several days teching 12th Night, the cast of Beard of Avon changed their costumes and headed right into another round of technical rehearsals. Weary, but silly we launched into adding lights and sound, building the transitions between scenes, and figuring out how the play would best translate from the rehearsal hall to the theater.

Casi Pacilio, our resident Sound Supervisor, was deeply thankful not to have any actors in microphones after doing Cabaret and A Christmas Carol back to back.

This is the screen of her computer. You can see she has to build the timing and duration of each sound cue in the computer. Josh Kohl, our composer for the show sat with Casi throughout the process, and the two of them finagled over exactly how loud each piece of music should play in concert with the dialogue.

While the show utilizes no turntables, or flying ghosts (thank you) - it requires as many quick changes as any show I’ve been involved with. One of the trickiest changes demands that each of the actors above switch out of their “theater guy” costume into their “courtier” costume in less than a minute. No mean feat, when you are trying to figure out how to pull your pumpkin pants on.

Carol Halstead (from last season’s Bad Dates) gets the delicious job of playing Queen Elizabeth in Beard and Olivia in 12th Night. One of the treats of the rehearsal process was watching Carol work with an upside down coat hanger in the back of her collar in an attempt to approximate the effect of the “butterfly wings” of her costume.

The set is a wonderful combination of bare planked floor, stairs, bridges and doors - an “Elizabethan backstage” if you will - with numerous theatrical props suspended from the ceiling. John Wernke is seen sitting on the steps in his “player” garb: one of three roles he dons in Beard.

Cate Davis (Anne Hathaway), travels to London to try and woo her wayward husband back again; and spends much of Act 2 disguised as “Lucy, a bawd about town”.