The Epitome of "Guerilla Theatre"

Why hello there! I’m Izzy Kasdin, a rising junior history major at Princeton and I am one of the co-directors of Assassins. I’m finally having a moment to sit down and write a blog post about this experience so far (I’m also finding I’ve been a big fan of the progressive as of late, according to Luke). But the trouble is putting all of that into words. I’m afraid I’ll have to rely on some stream of consciousness prose in order to describe exactly how this first whirlwind week has been for me.

It was a year and a half ago when Lily and I first decided it would be a good idea to take a show to the Fringe. I mean, you just buy some plane tickets, fill out a registration form, master the dollars to pounds exchange rate, and be sure to pack a rain coat, right? Not exactly. Especially since we learned today that the trickiest part is remembering to bring the rain coat with you when you leave the house. It’s been a wild ride preparing for these two weeks over the past year and I’ve done and learned things I’ve never expected, like reading UK firearms and customs legislation (who knew there could be a crucial difference between realistic imitation firearms and imitation firearms), filing for taxes (we’re now on the books with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs!), buying insurance, and building an entire set that folds up to fit in a standard suitcase (and keeping all of the suitcases to under 50 pounds. Victory #1). But not for a second in the whole grueling preparation process, even when I woke up early to have enough time to call the UK with the time difference, did I ever think it wouldn’t be worth it. And the last few days, watching everything unfold, have been truly spectacular. Seeing the smiles on all of the company members’ faces is really the best feeling in the world.

As a tech person who finds solving last-minute tech problems exhilarating, I’ve thrived off of the adrenaline of the past couple of days. We officially open tomorrow and the past few days have been spent pulling together the final props, building the rest of our set, and planning for tech without even having seen our theater and without even knowing what the Home Depot or Staples equivalents are called here. At least we could assure the tech manager in our venue that we brought a “torch!” My proudest accomplishment over the past few days was making a period microphone from the 1930s out of a McDonald’s Happy Meal box and black gaff tape. Ari did the honors of eating the miniature chicken mcnuggets and itty bitty bag of fries beforehand.

Microphone!

And after all of the preparation, today came the moment of truth – our technical rehearsal in the venue. We had three hours to load in all of our props and set, explore the space, get a safety briefing, and go through the moves of what would ordinarily happen in an entire tech week. It was truly a herculean task. Ari (our tech director) especially deserves a pat on the back for hanging, focusing, designing, and programming the lights for the entire show in two hours. As soon as the door to the theater opened, Ari bolted for the tech table and got started; my favorite part of the rehearsal was when, as Lily was coordinating a scene change about two and a half hours into the rehearsal, Ari just stood up and shouted in victory, “Done!” and we all cheered.

The most difficult part of the rehearsal was coordinating what the Fringe calls “get in/get out.” We have a two-hour slot time in our venue and our show is one hour and 50 minutes long. So we have five minutes to set up our entire set and five minutes to take it down every day. Once we arrived at our rehearsal, and lugged in all of our set, props, and instruments, the tech team at the venue was pretty much convinced we wouldn’t be able to load in and out so quickly. In order to practice, we literally lined up at the entrance to the venue, practically stretching and jogging in place, until Lily, armed with a stopwatch, yelled go and we ran into the venue, grabbed our stuff and went through the motions as quickly as we could. After two tries, we managed to set up in three and a half minutes and strike in two minutes and fifty seconds. It was like a beautiful tech ballet. When we were cutting our rehearsal close to the end of our slot, the venue manager became worried about how we would clean up in time and the supervisor just whispered to him, “I know it sounds daft, but they can get this all down in under three minutes.” Champs. We are absolutely champs.

Brian during our technical rehearsal. 

After the tech rehearsal, we had our first street performance on one of the Fringe stages on the Royal Mile. Brian (the Proprietor of the shooting range in Assassins) adorably led a little girl in competing in our water gun shooting range game and our hardy cast of actors sung through four songs a cappella in the rain (“pants” weather).

We’re now having a leisurely evening at home in our townhouse. There’s always someone playing the piano and earlier “Suddenly Seymour” is floating down the stairs to where I’m typing. Right now we're doing a full cast reading of the play that Mark wrote -- funny how this house is just bursting with SO MUCH THEATRE.

As a final tidbit, yesterday we picked up our Edinburgh bus passes and we happened to all be in costume because we had just been doing some publicity. So the actors decided to pose in character. Here’s John Wilkes Booth’s (aka Evan Thompson's) dignified bus pass.

Our flyers on a table in our venue with a bunch of other Fringe flyers!

ALSO HAPPY BIRTHDAY LUKE!!

Ta ta for now! Wish us luck tomorrow!!