‘What if my writing is terrible?’: The six-week sprint to opening night

What does it take to turn Shakespeare’s Macbeth into a glitter-soaked tale of child stardom set in 2006? For playwright Yve Blake, it involved six busy weeks of rehearsals, rewrites, wigs, quick changes and a few moments of panic as Mackenzie made its way towards opening night at Bell Shakespeare. Ahead of the production’s premiere, Blake kept a behind-the-scenes diary documenting the journey from first read-through to preview.

WEEK ONE

It’s day one of rehearsals and I feel like a kid at Christmas! What do you mean a prestigious theatre company like Bell Shakespeare is letting us make a CAMP adaptation of Macbeth where Macbeth is a 13-year-old girl, and also a child actor, and also Lady Macbeth is her ruthless stage mum, and also it’s set in 2006?!

I walk into the room to see dozens of smiling faces. The entire Bell Shakespeare staff are here to greet the team who will bring this show to life. This is when I learn that there are three separate people here to make costumes for this show. Three!

Our genius designer, Keerthi Subramanyam, presents a model box of the theatre, and a teeny-tiny version of the VERY sparkly set she’s designed. She shows us her costume mood boards, and we collectively squeal at pictures of Zac Efron, Miley Cyrus and the biggest child stars of 2006.

We launch into a table read and, as I listen, I scribble all over the script, making notes about sounds that are slow or long or worth trimming, and of which punchlines could hit harder. I smoosh endless Post-it notes onto the pages, reminding myself what to come back to.

This play is full of very silly fake pop songs, all written to sound like the type of music that a Disney Channel starlet would have released in the noughties (I had a lot of fun). And, each time we play one of my demos in the table read, our choreographer, Elle Evangelista, launches into full draft choreography, all while her 10-month-old daughter is strapped to her chest. I am instantly obsessed with this woman.

During the week we chat about the show, read a lot of Macbeth, and watch a lot of YouTube. We exchange clips from High School Musical and Hannah Montana (crucial research) and go feral with nostalgia.

WEEK TWO

And we’re up on our feet! Or, the actors are, and I am sitting at a trestle table swapping emails with Currency Press, the wonderful publishing house that is going to publish the script of Mackenzie.

They need me to send them a “final” version of the script by Friday so they can print it in time for our first performance (and then we can sell it on the merch desk). What an honour, but the pressure is on.

I stare at the Post-it notes that have taken over my printed script. They jut out like teeth from every page. I edit and edit the script on my laptop, knowing full well that I’ll probably have 27 epiphanies about it from the moment I send it off. Still, I hit send.

WEEK THREE

Prototype wigs have entered the room! Famously, Macbeth becomes King of Scotland, but in our adaptation, Mackenzie becomes the Number One Pop Girl of the World. So, while Macbeth scores a crown, Mackenzie gets… upgraded hair.

We watch her pull on the wig she’ll start the show in – an intentionally horrific bowl cut – and our jaws hit the floor. It is terrible. It is perfect.
I work late each night this week, marking up a printed proof of the soon-to-be published script.

To end the week, the cast does their first stumble-through of the whole show. It’s pure chaos. None of the wig changes goes right, but it’s also… incredible. The cast makes me snort-laugh, then they make me cry, and hey! I know all the spoilers! There’s work to do, but at this rate, this show will be even better than my wildest dreams.

WEEK FOUR

An endless parade of goofy props appears in the room: three rubber pigs stuffed into a pink handbag. Multiple bedazzled flip phones. A plastic bag of fake turds, lovingly handmade by the props department. Then boxes of merch arrive, including hot-pink carabiners with our show’s logo on them (Gay rights!).

On Thursday night, we host about 100 Bell Shakespeare donors in the rehearsal room for a special event where they get to see a sneak peek of the show. It’s nerve-wracking. This show is a huge departure from Bell Shakespeare’s regular fare. What if the donors don’t like it? Can they ask for their money back?

The actors begin, I hold my breath, and then a character delivers a line that heavily references Macbeth. The donors cackle knowingly. And then the laughs keep rolling. PHEW.

WEEK FIVE

Every afternoon this week, the actors run the entire show. Not only that, they begin running the frankly diabolical number of quick changes they have backstage.

See, in this show, six actors play more than 20 characters, meaning almost every costume change operates like a Formula One pit stop. At our director’s request, I don’t watch a run until Thursday, when the staff of Bell Shakespeare shuffle upstairs to be our audience.

Seeing it, I squawk with delight and surprise. It’s funnier than ever! Our Sound designer Tom Lowndes (AKA your favourite DJ, Hot Dub Time Machine) has made the most deliciously spooky sound design. The costumes are so silly and perfect!

But as I watch, a realisation sets in. When you add laughter from the audience plus scene changes, the show runs 20 minutes over the 90-minute run time that we’ve advertised.

We can’t lose 20 minutes by merely asking the actors to pick up the pace. To fix this, I’m going to need to trim every single scene in the script. And I’m going to need to do it in the next 24 hours.

I call Virginia Gay (our director) and launch into action. We meet before rehearsals on Friday to swap ideas for script cuts, and then I spend the rest of the morning compiling them into a 38-page document. Looking at it, I remember the Post-it notes sticking out of my script back in week one. Why didn’t I cut more out? But here we are.

Unaware of what’s coming, the cast runs the show as normal on Friday afternoon. Immediately afterwards, I break the news: They’ll need to come in tomorrow. For a Saturday rehearsal. To learn a whole new version of the script.

I apologise to them all, but then cast member Ryan González shrugs and says: “Babes, I once had to learn a whole new song and entirely new choreography on the day we opened a new musical. This is nothing.”

I just hope everyone feels the same.

That night, Virginia and I pitch every proposed script change to our stage manager, Georgie Deal, who can tell us which cuts will eat into somebody’s precious time to change costumes backstage. Georgie painstakingly adds every change into her rehearsal script and sends it to the entire team. We leave work at 9pm.

The next day, the cast comes in and learns the new script. I stay home, and fear for what tech will now feel like. Have I dashed everyone’s hard-won confidence?

WEEK SIX

It’s a tech week, baby! I assume everyone shows up feeling mad at me, but instead, everyone tells me how much they love the cuts. Hallelujah! We spend the week plotting lights, testing sound and running special effects. Backstage, I discover a plugged-in hair straightener and learn that it’s for an actor to use in a quick change so they can iron their real hair into a side fringe in the style of early Joe Jonas.

The audience cheers as we begin. I notice how strangely calm I feel. And then…Oh no. Almost immediately, something is wrong.

We stay until 10.30pm each night. The crew stay even later. Then suddenly, it’s Saturday – an audience will walk into the room in 30 minutes. Nervous, I head out into the foyer to see if any friends are here, and I can’t believe what I see. So many people have come in themed outfits?! One person is dressed as a character from the show?! Someone shows me the script they just bought from the merch table. Holding it in my hands, I feel a sudden moment of wonder. Just like day one, I feel like a little kid at Christmas. I take my seat in the theatre and pull out my notebook so I can scribble notes in the dark. The audience cheers as we begin. I notice how strangely calm I feel. And then…Oh no. Almost immediately, something is wrong.

Turns out, when 240 people sit inside a theatre, their bodies change the acoustics of the room. All those bodies literally eat the sound up. As a result? All our audio sounds about half as loud as intended.

It’s a classic first-preview tech issue. No one is to blame. But the next 90 minutes feel like a year. Then the lights start looking a little… odd. Later, I’ll learn that the lighting desk glitched mid-show, forcing the crew to manually run the entire performance.

It ends. The audience applauds. The actors have done an incredible job. But there’s a rock in my stomach. I want to stand up and say: “Thank you, everyone, but also, please can you all come back when the tech is working nicely? Thanks, divas!”

The sound team find me. I’m relieved to discover they already have a plan. Tomorrow it should be better. Not, certainly. But hopefully. I congratulate the team, head home, and spend four hours binge-watching the stupidest videos I can find in an effort to erase the memory of preview one.

The next day, our crew arrive at 9am to start fixing the sound and lights. The actors join at midday and spend four hours restaging sections of the show.
Fifteen minutes before the show starts, I head to the foyer again. Tonight, even more people are wearing Y2K-themed outfits. One person is wearing a full pink velour tracksuit. But seeing them tonight hits differently. Because what if tonight’s show is even more technically cooked than the first preview? What if all the nice people who’ve dressed up leave disappointed? And what if it’s not the tech that didn’t work last night, but my writing itself? Oh my God. We’ve printed scripts. We’ve ordered merch. And what if my writing is actually… terrible.

I take my seat. The lights go down. I clench my butt cheeks.

Then BANG. Thunder roars through the theatre. I can feel the sound design in my chest. I slightly unclench. The lights are working. I unclench a little more. And then a huge laugh rolls across the audience. And another. And another. People get scared in the scary bits. They cry in the sad bits. At the end, they cheer. The show works. It really works. And we still have two previews left to make it even better. I fully unclench.

Mackenzie is at the Neilson Nutshell, Sydney, until July 18 and the Arts Centre Melbourne from July 23 to August 9.