Here’s Chris Fenwick, he’s the music director on Rocky. This is the day we went into the studio to record the cast album, and the photo is from when we were recording the final fight, which is a 20-minute musical sequence.
These are the musicians during a break from recording the finale of Rocky. For a cast recording, because of union rules, you’re only given one day and it’s a session from 9 a.m. until midnight, so some of these players might have been there for 15 hours. There are about 19 musicians and you record each section separately. We also had about 30 actors doing 22 songs. It’s a crazy kind of arithmetic; whoever has to schedule a cast recorder must be a math genius.
This was in Avatar Studios, where the album was getting mixed. What’s cool about the studio is that all of this equipment is quite old, but because of the quality of it they keep it around. It’s been used to record some incredible albums, so a lot of engineers love this place.
This is Stephen Trask, who’s one of our orchestrators. He also wrote Hedwig and the Angry Inch. He’s looking at charts of all the different instruments because he does all of the orchestral arrangements of the show, so he has all of these big books plotting out what each instrument is doing during each measure. A cast recording is so important to a show because it’s how people fall in love with it. It becomes the thing that decides whether or not a show gets done around the world.
This is a rehearsal of Here Lies Love, which is an immersive show about Imedla Marcos and the history of the Philippines and it features music by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim. What’s interesting about the staging of this show is that the audience stands the entire time and the performers, for the most part, are on elevated platforms that surround the audience. When we’re rehearsing the show, we’re actually rehearsing on the set—unlike 99% of plays—because you really can’t rehearse this out of context.
This is a different angle of the same room, where we’re rehearsing a number in Here Lies Love called “Please Don’t,” when Imedla has assumed leadership of the Philippines and is talking to world leaders. I shot this in the middle of the dance rehearsal. In many ways, remounting the show is easier because we know what works and I know what I like and what I want to change. In some ways, though, remaining focused on story and character takes a little bit more attention than one would think.
I took this about two weeks after the opening of Rocky. I went back to see the show to see how the actors were doing and how audiences were responding. What you do after the show opens is you have these periodic maintenance visits, where you give actors and the stage manager some notes, trying to help them remain focused on the story and keeping the show fresh.
This is the door that the cast and crew use to go in and out of the Winter Garden Theater; the main entrance is on Broadway.
I took this picture from the back of the house, next to the soundboard. Rocky shares unusual staging with Here Lies Love, and in the final 20 minutes, a portion of the audience goes up to sit in the ring, and a portion of the stage pushes out into the audience. Suddenly the show goes from proscenium to being in the round.
When the performers are learning a dance, usually the work with mirrors so they can see what they’re doing. So, here we have a series of mirrors that the actors are working with; we’re looking over the mirrors into a choreography rehearsal.
This is my desk at home, in the little office I keep. This is where I do my writing and all of my notation when I’m working with a script. It’s also the view when I wake up in the morning.
I found these action figures and I love them! These are Rocky, Apollo Creed, Clubber Lang from Rocky III and Dolph Lundgren’s character from Rocky IV. They’re adorable, so they reside in my office.
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