THE CLOCKWORK PRINCESS – THE REHEARSALS ~ THE CAT SINGS

The Invitation

Before I share the details of the grand performance of The Clockwork Princess The Musical, I think I ought to share what went down during the rehearsals. The rehearsals, in general and in essence, is a completely different experience from the actual performance. It always is the most fun part of every theater production yet it’s also the most grueling.

The truth is, the cast of The Clockwork Princess, was not too blessed with time in terms of rehearsals. To be exact, we had about 8 rehearsal sessions and about 2 full run-throughs (technical and dress rehearsals). If you ask me, that’s really not enough especially since this was almost a full blown musical. I, on the other hand, had about 2 weeks to construct the music of the main songs and another 2 weeks to do the score and the sound effects. That’s a total of 34 tracks - - it’s like producing 2 albums - - all done in one month. Thanks to my music partner for this project Jay Young who rose to the occasion and my post-prod sound engineer Paul Canada who worked day and night even on the eve of his birthday to finish mixing and mastering all the tracks.

Judging from how happy I am and how proud I am of what we did, I’m sure you can tell that everything went well and it was a success. Even if the cast didn’t have the luxury of an ample amount of rehearsals, they still did fabulous! I’m so proud of them and working with them is 20x better than working with a band. They’re actually rock stars!

Now going back to the rehearsals...

CHOIR WITH NO NAME

When our brilliant writers, Pami Estalila, Vince Gaton & Jessica McYorker wrote the story, they pretty much had it in their heads who will play the characters and, if you ask me, the casting was pretty spot on. The cast is actually part of this chorale called Voices of Praise (VOP) but currently they are on some sort of hiatus - - as Pami would put it, The Disbanded Choir. So some of the members grouped themselves together and called themselves the CWNN, The Choir with No Name.

The Clockwork Princess cast was completed the moment lawyer and blues/folk singer Graeme Elmido joined to play the King.

Chaine Cast:

▪ King- Graeme Elmido

▪ Queen (Soprano)- Yemma Senining-Judilla

▪ Clockwork Princess (Soloist)- Ainee Echivarre

▪ Tinkerer (Soloist)- Gabriel Rellin Gomez

Ensemble:

▪ Chamberlain (Bass)- Vincent Paul Gaton

▪ Royal Cyborg Guard (Tenor)- Leomar Hermosilla

▪ Detective (Tenor/Bass)- Jeo Librando

▪ Court Musician (Soprano)- Jessica McYorker

▪ Time Agent (Alto)- Pami Estalilla

▪ Navigator (Alto) – Ronnie Echivarre

That’s a singing powerhouse right there, if you ask me. It was fun how during rehearsals, they would make mistakes and I’d have the opportunity to say, “Oh my god, you suck”! I always say it very lovingly though, complete with a smile. Someone had to be the bitch during rehearsals, and my director Alex Uypuanco seemed to have given that job to me. I took it seriously and without questions. I think I did it well, I hope he’s proud of me.

MY SOUND MACHINE

It was a good decision that I got A1 Sound Engineer Justin Alfafara to complete my sound team. I knew that this was going to be a complicated set-up as Director Alex Uypuanco’s vision was to make the whole Grand Ballroom of the Marco Polo Hotel the “stage” where the performance will happen. So we whipped up an ideal Audio requirement for the event that considers a surround sound effect and includes powered output speakers, subwoofers, 10 wireless head-worn microphones for the singing cast, a Yamaha digital mixer, etc, all of which are to be supplied by Sound Balloon, Inc.

The challenge was to eliminate audio feedback while the cast is singing which was not easy to achieve since powered speakers surrounded the ballroom. Audio feedback happens when a microphone feeds a signal into the audio system, which then amplifies the signal from a speaker, which is picked up again by the microphone. In other words, we have to avoid getting the microphone receivers directed to the speakers. So think about it, there are 10 singers who are mobile, they move around the ballroom a lot, and there are 8 powered output speakers surrounding the area which means that the chances of getting those microphones directed to the speakers are somewhat huge. That’s a big headache right there…

And we only had 2 technical runs.

On the other hand, one of my jobs was to run the input - - my 34 tracks of audio that makes the musical. My system was made up of 2 Apple computers, a CDJ for back-up – and an audio mixer. The technology was pretty up to date and state-of-the-art, that’s a given. But to run the show with that technology, I still have to rely a lot on my hand coordination, or make that ear-hand-brain-computer coordination plus throw in some gut-feel in the mix! If I mess up my job, if I make just 1 mistake, I mess up the whole play. Imagine my stress!

And we only had 2 technical runs.

THE BEST PART

The preparation for this was really challenging and somewhat close to impossible considering the number of set backs we had. But through the set backs, we were able to work with each other, build personal relationships, showed our true selves and somehow still accepted each other. And working with such amazing connection made it all worthwhile, not to mention the talent, the talent!

The best part was the opportunity to make new friends and challenge old friendships that simply became stronger through the ordeal…

To be honest, I don’t think we were prepared at all. But we were prepared to wing it.

So did we?

You’ll have to wait for my next blog for that.