7 minute read
Understudies Take Centre Stage
by shawfest
UNDERSTUDIES TAKE
STAGE
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BY TRAVIS SEETOO & JONATHAN TAN
The Understudy is an established part of theatre, called upon when illness or injury makes it impossible for an actor to go on. In the age of COVID, the need for Understudies has increased to an unprecedented level which is why we thought it would make an interesting topic for Travis Seetoo and Jonathan Tan at a recent Governors Council event. Below are some edited snippets of their presentation.
CENTRE
Travis Seetoo Jonathan Tan
Travis Seetoo and Jonathan Tan are 2 of 11 Embedded Artists at the Shaw Festival. In 2022, Travis appears in Everybody and Too True to Be Good. Jonathan is also in Too True to Be Good as well as Shawground and directed A Year With Frog and Toad—in Concert.
The Ensemble in Damn Yankees
THE UNDERSTUDY EXPERIENCE
T: Jon, why don't you tell us about your most fun understudying? Oh, wait, I’ve got one. It was for Flush last year. It was a beautiful day. I'm riding my bike. I didn't have my phone on me because my shorts are too small to have pockets. I pulled up at the Festival for my regular COVID testing, when Annie McWhinnie, from Stage Management, stopped me and said, “You’re in for Flush. Jon’s sick.” That was the first invited audience for Flush and I had never seen it! I’d gone to every rehearsal I could but, with my schedule, this amounted to about 30 minutes. But Flush was such a beautiful show. I really enjoyed doing it.
J: Yeah, that was an unusual occurrence. In a normal situation, we start with an Understudy Line Run, just with the Understudies for the play, where you get a chance to speak the lines. Then an Understudy Blocking Rehearsal, again with just the Understudies, where Stage Management will show everyone where to stand and what business needs to be done. In something like a classic drawing room play, if you get the blocking wrong, it's probably fine. But, if you get the blocking wrong in a musical, it’s a different story.
T: Literally swords can fall from the sky.
J: And sometimes we have giant sets that…
T: Could kill you. Yeah.
J: After the blocking rehearsal, we have what we call Understudy Runs A and B. We have two full runs of the play where it's an interesting mixed configuration, with half original cast and half Understudies. But Travis didn't have the benefit of any of those rehearsals before being called in for Flush. Technically, Travis could have said no—you can't really call an actor before having those rehearsals, but sometimes emergencies happen…
T: Yeah, it was fine. I like that kind of stuff. But no one here turns their nose up at understudying. It's not a seniority thing because everyone does it.
J: Understudying is also a great opportunity for younger company members to flex their muscles and tackle roles that they wouldn't normally be cast in. I know it was a great learning opportunity for me when I started.
T: Yeah, when I started here, I was constantly understudying and huge parts too. Getting my mouth around that dialogue and watching the other actors was a great learning opportunity, for sure.
J: I'm still learning things covering parts now, like Jeff’s [Irving] brash but loveable Christian in Cyrano and Neil’s [Barclay] wickedly wordy Tallboys in Too True to Be Good—two friends and colleagues I admire so much—and two parts I might not have ordinarily played.
UNDERSTUDIES VS SWINGS
T: A Swing does not normally perform in the musical but knows a lot of the ensemble tracks so that they can slot in when needed. I think we have two Swings per gender this year for Damn Yankees, when normally we only have one male and one female Swing for the musicals.
J: I've only covered a musical—being outside of the musical—once and that was Ragtime, where I covered two ensemble tracks and just two broke my brain. The Swings for Damn Yankees are doing eight or more tracks. I don't know how they do it. They're geniuses.
T: The rule is, if you are a Swing in a musical, you can do nine tracks, but none of the tracks can have major pieces of dialogue. We also have now in plays what we call Walking Covers—essentially a Swing for a play—which means you agree to cover multiple tracks. Generally, it’s a negotiation and an actor can be contracted for as many as they want.
J: I find it infinitely harder to cover musicals than plays. You can always work on the lines when you're out on beautiful walks through The Commons, but blocking is relative to other people on stage, so to review that stuff by yourself is tricky. I have the greatest admiration for Swings because those tracks can be the hardest, with big musical numbers.
So much has happened since Travis and I did this presentation. By now (early September), almost every single company member has gone on for someone at some point in the season— either in their assigned understudy role, or as an emergency on-book cover because both actor and understudy were out at the same time. This actually happened with Travis and me: we had—I guess you could say—overlapping Omicron, so James Daly, having no official duties in Too True (and having only seen the show once) ended up jumping in to play Meek with binder in hand. James later went on to cover Graeme [Kitagawa] as Snail in Frog and Toad, and, after I’d recovered, I also went on for Mike [Nadajewski] as Toad—just a small slice of this season’s musical chairs. While we’re up there taking the credit for saving the day, there are so many unsung heroes of theatre-in-the-age-of-COVID. Our unflappable and incredibly talented wardrobe and wigs teams have been busier than ever, responding in the moment to clothe and wig us when illness and injury occur—sometimes with only minutes’ notice. When I went on as Toad, I wanted to do so in my civvies to show that I wasn’t actually the understudy (and so of course did not have an assigned costume). But the wonderful Janet Ellis (Associate Head of Wardrobe) still pulled a handful of costume options on short notice, and when I arrived at the theatre, one of them was so spot-on that I ended up wearing it after all, and went on to do a few performances in it. The entire company—from stage management to front-of-house and everyone in between— have been absolute heroes through all our ups and downs. What’s been most rewarding is hearing from audiences how, from out front, all seems surprisingly “back to normal”—a feat made possible only because of how the entire company has come together with seemingly-infinite patience and support for each other (and sometimes nerves of steel) to simply make it all work.
T: Sometimes, when an Understudy goes on, that triggers other Understudies, like dominos. There's a pretty decent tumble down in our show, Too True. If Neil [Barclay] goes out, Jon goes on for Neil, I go on for Jon and Taurian Teelucksingh comes over from Damn Yankees to fill in for me.
J: Taurian gets pulled out of the musical, and a Swing—the talented Adam Sergison—takes his place.
T: That’s understudying in the age of COVID—it’s kind of like regular understudying, except you are definitely going on, because someone will get sick! Like what happened this year in Cyrano de Bergerac when Kate Hennig had to go on for Kyle Blair…
J: Yes, that was a real medical emergency.
T: Kyle never goes out—generally true—but something did happen, and Kate went on. She wrote the play, so she knew it, and she was fabulous.
J: Then they got [Kristopher] Bowman to go out the next day on book. He was understudying two other roles in Cyrano (not Kyle's), but I heard he was already off-book by the second day!
T: Whoa. Yeah, he is very quick—talk about a guy who's made his bones doing understudying at the Festival. In his first two seasons, he covered every lead in every show there was to cover.
J: And with his background in improv...
T: He can improvise.
J: You'll never know whether he got a line right or wrong—he will just convince you.
T: You know, he's someone you can rely on. And I think that's something we all strive to be—someone everyone can rely on in these situations.
Graeme Kitagawa in A Year With Frog and Toad—in Concert
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