The Minster as Theatrical Venue: a Reassessment

Now that we've finished all the tech rehearsals, the one dress rehearsal, and had the opening night (only 40 shows to go...), I'm going to give an entirely biased opinion on the pros and cons of staging a production, and specifically this production, in a very large space such as a massive medieval church building.

On the plus side: it's simply spectacular. Take a look at the (at this point not quite finished) stage:

It shows the catwalk or jetty in front, the "Hell's Mouth" in the middle (which also functions as the door to Noah's Ark), the stage with three flights of stairs. The orchestra sits under the stage, you can see the openings which permit the music to project. The stage is eminently flexible: counting characters who enter through the audience onto the jetty, those who emerge from the Hell's Mouth, and those who appear over the very top, there are a total of seven entry point for actors. It is, indeed, very grand.

Another plus: the music, some of it sung by choir students at the Minster Choir School, sounds ethereally beautiful, haunting in a way it would not in a smaller venue.

However - I'm learning there are downsides. And one of the main downsides lies precisely in its size. Our only dress rehearsal ran 1.5 hours overtime, from 7:30 until midnight. It required exceptional stamina from actors and crew, and audience alike. Why might that dress rehearsal have run so much longer than anticipated?

The director's response was to instruct actors to speak faster, to come in on cue more quickly, to enter and exit more rapidly. Personally, I think "actor speed" is only one factor.

In my view, an important factor is the very nature of the spectacle required by such a spectacular stage. Take Noah's Ark as just one example: it wouldn't look good to have just a few animals, or small animals, or small versions of large animals. So there are many animals, pairs of them, some - like the heads of virtually life-size elephants - huge and hence carried by two people each who must coordinate. These animals have to march on stage from designated entries and down into the Ark (Hell's Mouth) - and at the end, when Noah finds dry land, they (or at least most of them) have to march out again. All well and good, and spectacular and beautiful - but chalk up around 15-20 minutes of the overtime run to that scene.

The staired stage is gorgeous and imposing. Quite a number of the actors, however, are not as young as they used to be, and stair climbing simply takes a little longer. Some of the characters wear massively flowing robes (spectacle again) in which they must navigate those stairs, up or down.  The two-actor elephants have to navigate stairs, not necessarily with the best sightlines. Every entry requires stair climbing in one form or another, some of them substantial. Fifteen treads take a lot longer to walk than five treads, or no treads at all. Chalk up another 15 minutes just to stairs.

A spectacular stage requires it to be peopled - even the lonely Christ is impressive only when juxtaposed with the crowd scenes that hailed him (entry into Jerusalem) or condemned him ("Give us Barabas!"). Crowd scenes take time: like getting traffic moving at a stoplight, not everyone can move at once, and getting 100 people on stage (I think there's actually more, but 100 will do) takes longer than getting only five people there. So chalk up another 15 minutes to crowd scenes.

I'm a bit of a time tyrant, so it's entirely possible that I'm out of step with everyone else involved in the production, and all actors and audiences are willing to spend the time it takes to put on, and to witness, such a grand spectacle. Still, as an actor with a sense of humor said at the half time interval during that long dress rehearsal: "Well, we're 45 minutes behind already. We're cutting out the crucifixion!"