Our front of house staff reports hearing this question almost every night- “It sounds beautiful, but where on earth do they put the orchestra??” Luckily, one of our orchestra members, John Nastos, is a blogger himself and has posted a fascinating piece that explains the logistics of having an offstage orchestra that can be integrated with the on-stage performances. After all, normally the orchestra would be in a pit just in front of the singers where they could hear the music and see the conductor throughout the show. So how do the singers and orchestra both see the conductor during Ragtime?

Well, I’ll let John explain it:

For both Grey Gardens and Ragtime, the orchestra has had a rather non-traditional placement in the theater. Instead of being in the orchestra pit in front of the stage, the orchestra lives on what’s called the “slab,” which is behind the stage. So, as an audience member, if you had X-ray vision and could see through the back wall of the set, you would be able to see into our space. The instrumentalists’ backs would be towards you and Rick Lewis (our conductor) would be facing you.

Rick watches what is going on onstage from a small closed-circuit television in front of him. The actors can see Rick’s conducting on a large monitor facing the stage mounted in the back of the theater (if you were watching the performance, you could turn around and see it from most seats in the house). The instrumentalists also get to see what is going on onstage via a large monitor behind Rick…

Read the rest of John’s blog post here.

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