Spring Production 2010 "Quartet" - Production Manager's Report

"Quartet" by Ronald Harwood was performed at the Baseldytschi Bihni from February 1 to 20, 2010. The play was proposed by Mark Giesser, who also was prepared to direct, with Peter Hilton as assistant director. With this very satisfactory arrangement, the auditions were held on October 28th at the Lohnhof. There was a good turnout and Mark had several choices for the female roles and less so for the men. The cast was selected fairly promptly, with the following members: Diana Zuger, Elisabeth Shaw, Norman Koeth and Eric Collino.

The initial read throughs were held mostly at Eric’s apartment. The search was also on for a production manager and after absolutely no volunteers, I stepped in and took the reins (temporarily I thought). One of the most pressing issues was finding suitable rehearsal space – not an easy task on a very tight budget. Eventually we found a small theatre at the Jufa in Peter-Merian Strasse and reserved several hours through January.

By the middle of November the problems had started! The director, committed to a production in London in February let the cast know that he would not be available for rehearsal during the week, so, after much consideration of the plight of the cast, the committee decided to take up Peter Hilton’s offer to step in. This was not as simple as it sounds, as Peter was committed to the panto at this time and would not be effectively available until the end of December. The cast felt they were being let down and were not sure that they could continue, so at this stage it was not certain that we would have a production to take to the theatre.

Eventually a solution was found when Richard Levitt was approached and he agreed to step in as director and Penny Rettig offered her services as prompter. Gradually, all the problems were solved and the rehearsals got underway.

As no production manager had stepped forward, I decided to take on the position myself and asked Angela Robinson to help me, particularly with the costumes. Robi Pipoz got on with the set, Conny Heim did the flyer and programme and we had a production off the ground!

With rehearsals going smoothly, I could concentrate on the technical side of the production. Fortunately we did not have to do the ticketing or front of house, as the Baseldytschi Bihni did all that. They also contributed to the publicity, which was fortunate, as we had a very tight schedule and we couldn’t get to all the organizations we would have wished.

We finally got the production on the stage for the dress rehearsal on February 10 and we had the premiere on the 11th. The production was a great success and there was a lot of positive feedback, despite the lack of audience - the theatre was not filled on any of the performance nights. This leads to several considerations: the length of time between our productions – in this case very short as we could not choose when we could perform at the BDB, publicity issues, as well as potential time and personnel conflicts with the panto group.

In conclusion I would like to thank once again those people, both cast, director and crew, who worked so hard to get this production onto the stage. This was a very compact number of people, largely caused by a distinct lack of commitment by many Semi-Circle members; virtually nobody volunteered to help with the production. In my opinion, this issue needs to be seriously addressed for future productions.

Suzan Wilson- Sladek