FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Below, we have posted some of the most frequently asked questions regarding the performance of The Pennsylvania Story. Check here for answers first, but if you don’t find what you’re looking for, feel free to use the information provided on the contact page to ask further, more detailed questions.
PERFORMANCE BASED QUESTIONS
Q: We notice that many of the script’s stage directions indicate the use of a large overhead projection screen – how does this work? Is the musical performable without this piece of technology?
A: Most churches that regularly perform Praise Music as part of their Sunday service have a large projection screen to help the congregation with the words. In our original performance of the piece, we used this screen to serve multiple purposes. Moving progressively through the play, the screen first functioned as a delivery device for the introduction, then as a large television which played a pre-recorded segment of the Channel 6 news, then as the sign overlooking the Bethlehem Steel factory floor, then as the SDSU science banner, and ultimately as a rolling background for pre-shot footage during the car drives of Mary and Joseph and later the drive eastward of the three professors. While the screen was useful for us, the musical can absolutely be adjusted and performed without this technology. For example, a narrator could deliver the play’s opening introduction, and the news team could deliver their broadcast live on stage behind a desk.
Q: We are a relatively small church, and in order to perform the musical, we’ll need all the singers we’ve got. This includes the praise band, making it difficult for them to play the music live. Is there an accompaniment track available?
A: Unfortunately, at this point, no. In a rather silly move on our part, we neglected to produce a separate copy of the Soundtrack without words when it was recorded. If all goes well, however, with this free-dissemination of the performance-rights experiment, we anticipate being able to offer a pre-recorded accompaniment track available for Christmas 2010.
Q: How did you make cast booklets?
A: Our goal was to produce something that was as cheap and durable as possible (we staged the whole musical – costumes and everything – on about $800), because we knew that they needed to hold up through the four months of rehearsals leading up to our week of performances. So, we made roughly 50 photocopies of the script, then stuffed the pages into clear protective sheets and fastened them into half-inch binders. It worked well, and cost very little.
Q: How many people does it take to put on The Pennsylvania Story?
A: While there are some ways to double up (use your musicians as newscasters because they can be pre-recorded, bolster the choir by having cast members not on stage sing from behind the curtain, etc.), the truth is that The Pennsylvania Story is a pretty personnel-intensive play. By the time you consider the speaking cast, a choir of extras, a stage crew, the band, lighting/video/sound techs, costume designers, and makeup artists, you’re probably talking about a bare minimum of 40 people. The great news about this, however, is that it’s an outstanding opportunity for church fellowship – particularly if your congregation is small (the original performance was staged by a church of 250) – and it will absolutely bring your church closer together.
Q: There are a lot of men in this play, and we have trouble getting our church’s men involved in this sort of activity. Any suggestions?
A: This is something that we absolutely came up against during the first performance. So we did a couple of things. First, we sold everybody in the church on the idea that this musical was going to be different – it was going to be FUN. Second, we brought in a few folks from outside churches who were friends with members in our congregation (or guys we knew from softball). And finally, we actually switched one of the parts. Originally, the character “Rachel Tolcher” was “Matthew Tolcher.” Our advice: sell hard, and get creative if need be!
Q: Some of the props seem a little crazy. A lightpost? A tower? Two cars? How did you do these things?
A: Well, we had a great and imaginative stage and prop crew – and they spent several weekends just building things like a reception desk and a pair of doors with frames that could be moved quickly on and off stage. We had an electrician rig up the lightpost; the tower we built out of scaffolding; and as for the cars – which were definitely the coup de grace – we built a frame with doors and wheels (sort of a large modified golf-cart), painted each side a different color, and then just flipped it a different direction for each of the scenes. Voila! Red car / Green car – which led to a pretty funny ad-lib during the final performance night. The bottom line, however, is this – if your audience is enthralled, they will be willing, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge noted, to willingly suspend their disbelief. So, just do your best. Also, we’re working on a series of downloadable .pdf stage maps that will show how we constructed the base set, where we placed things during various scenes, and where we hid things off stage.
Q: How did you do the birthing scene?
A: After much deliberation, we decided to go delicately, and at a quick tempo. The scene’s dialogue is designed to be delivered in rapid fire, and we supplemented this with a jaunty 12-bar bluegrass riff that added an old-western feeling to the moment. We then built an opaque screen that was stored to the side of the janitor’s closet, and prior to the delivery, Dr. Davidson and crew rolled the screen in front of Mary. We then switched off the lights, and used a single floor-based floodlamp to create a shadowed sillouette of the scene for the audience.
MUSIC BASED QUESTIONS
Q: Why does the Soundtrack feature harmony vocals from Mary, when she is clearly off stage during Joseph’s first song?
A: Originally, we were going to keep Mary on stage, using the two-door, two-room trick that we employ in Act I, Scene IV. Later, we decided this was impractical given our space limitations and our desire to center Mary and Joseph in the play’s opening scene. Therefore, we did a slight rewrite, and in our final production, the song was sung wholly by Joseph.
Q: When our acoustic guitar player plays the acoustic parts, the phrasings often sound a little different. On what songs is it advisable to use a capo?
A: We used a capo on the acoustic guitar during “No Time to Start a Family” (capo 3 – transpose the song to the key of A), “Overwhelmed” (capo 2 – play the song in A-minor to more easily play the arpeggios), “Follow that Star” (capo 4 – transpose the song to E-minor), and “Pride” (capo 2 – play the song in G).
Q: Is there tabulature for the electric guitar fills and the solos?
A: While we may not tab out all of the solos (your lead guitarist should be able to handle these in his own way with little trouble), we will definitely post in the coming months tab for some of the more integral song-pieces played on the soundtrack by the electric guitar.
Q: The vocals are too high on “Bethlehem Steel” for the actors we have playing the Shepherd family. What should we do?
A: This was something we figured out quite early in our own process of rehearsals. Luckily, all you have to do is drop the melody a full octave and it falls quite easily into almost every male vocalist’s range.
Q: In addition to the ten performance songs, certain parts of the script call for background music. What did you play? What did you play between scenes?
A: In general, our game plan for set change music was to play an instrumental reprisal of the previous featured song. During the three scenes with two lights-out set changes, we also played a second song. Because all three of these double-change scenes occur in Act II, our choice was a call-back to those characters’ Act I songs – with the one exception of our reprisal of “The Weight,” by The Band. A full music schedule can be found by clicking here. As for the other music played, it went as follows: “The Weight” by The Band during the SDSU reception, “Canon in D” by Pachelbel and “The Wedding March” by Mendelsson preceding the wedding, a brief blues lick and “Hey Joe” by Jimi Hendrix during the driving/locating of the hotel scene, and the aforementioned generic bluegrass riff during the birthing scene.
OTHER QUESTIONS
Q: Is there a video available of the original performance?
A: Yes. It’s a little shaky, and it’s inexplicably missing one scene, but we do have a burnable DVD copy of the performance that we can send along by request.
Q: Can we duplicate the CD Soundtrack for practice? Can we distribute copies of the Soundtrack in advance to our congregation to help us drum up support for the musical? May we use them for publicity, or as a gift to audience members?
A: Absolutely.
Q: We’ve decided to perform The Pennsylvania Story. What do we do?
A: Well, it’s pretty easy, really. All you need to do is contact us via email, phone, or USPS using the information provided on the Contact Page, and we’ll send out a simple contract granting you free one-time performance rights and access to all available material throughout 2009. Then, the fun of staging the musical begins. We’ll be here to answer any and all questions that you might have throughout the staging process, and we’ll look forward to hearing about your progress and performance!
