San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
The precautions one theater took to film onstage during COVID.
advance to lessrestrictive tiers, as per the state’s reopening color system, “Hieroglyph,” which streams through April 4, might offer a preview of production methods for a hybrid time: when some inperson collaboration is possible but a full recovery still seems a long way off.
If you were either Khary L. Moye or Safiya Fredericks, you took still more precautions for “Hieroglyph.” Those actors performed an intimate scene in Erika Dickerson Despenza’s play, which is about a girl reeling from intersecting traumas — displacement and sexual abuse — after her family loses its home to Hurricane Katrina.
Moye and Fredericks had to isolate in a hotel across the street from the theater for two nights until the intimate scene was filmed. Susi Damilano, producing director at San Francisco Playhouse, had to send a copy of the hotel’s HVAC report (in addition to her own theater’s) to the union to make sure ventilation was up to snuff. The theater got the actors’ food delivered.
“I didn’t mind being alone in the room,” Moye says of his time at the hotel. “It gave me a lot of time to just work on things.”
He and his castmates had big adjustments to make; for three weeks prior, they were allowed to rehearse only on Zoom, where director Margo Hall staged the show via colorcoded stick figures on a miniature set. They got only three days of inperson rehearsals.
Once on the real set, the cast had to keep masks on except for when they were filming, and even then, they kept masks in the pockets of their costumes to don the instant the cameras stopped recording.
“When we had our first run, it was with masks and we were struggling,” Moye recalls. “I’m like, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t give you what you need with these masks on.’ It was a little frustrating, as artists. I understood why they were doing it, to keep us safe. But when they took the masks off, it felt like they took the leash off a dog that was ready to attack. It was like, ‘Yes! Finally! I’m ready to explore; let’s see what we can find.’ ”
“Hieroglyph” is the fourth show San Francisco Playhouse has filmed on its stage since the pandemic forced the cancellation of live shows last year, and being clear about when masks come off was an early lesson that Damilano and Artistic Director Bill English had to learn, starting with “Art,” the first filmed show they made.
“The moment that (the cast) were coming out getting ready to do the runthrough, I said, ‘OK, masks off, because I’m taking photos.’ And that’s when they all went, ‘Oh, s—,’ ” recalled Damilano.
Actor Bobak Cyrus Bakhtiari recalls “a cartoon walksoffcliff moment of hyperconfused doom silence.” The cast took a 10minute break to discuss their feelings privately with the stage manager. “The Playhouse wasn’t pushy at all,” he adds.
Damilano had assumed that everyone knew this moment was coming. When the actors came back, they said they still weren’t comfortable, but as the photo session progressed, they got used to the idea and eventually took their masks off.
Now, Damilano knows to say things like, “In a couple hours, we’re going to do this masks off. How does everyone feel about that?”
Another early lesson was that English cannot direct the camerapeople and serve as cut man, deciding which of the four cameras — three manned, one getting a static master shot — to use at any given moment, at the same time. (Actors’ Equity Association does not allow theaters to do substantial postproduction work, so most camera and editing decisions have to be made in the moment.)
The theater hired Wolfgang Lancelot Wachalovsky as posteditor to tell camerapeople what to do, freeing English to make shot decisions. English’s guidance comes from Hall, whose big note on March 5 is, “We want to be really, really clear about whose story it is.” It belongs to Davis (Jamella Cross), the young girl who has been abused. Hall notes that such storytelling focus is one of film’s assets; in live theater,
“Hieroglyph”: Written by Erika Dickerson-Despenza. Directed by Margo Hall. Through April 3. $15-$100. 415-677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org
audience members can choose to look wherever they want.
Two of the three camerapeople are San Francisco Playhouse staff who happened to have interests in photo and video — Director of Audience and Donor Relations Tiiu Eva Rebane and Anthony Aranda, a bartender and carpenter. They sit on platforms built among audience seats so that cameras can be at eye level.
As much effort as Damilano and English, who are married, have poured into learning this filmtheater hybrid, they still question whether it’s all worth it.
“It’s art for art’s sake, to some level,” says English, “and in service to our subscribers and our donors, continuing to keep them involved. And actors are actually able to work, designers are able to work.” But he doesn’t think the theater can financially sustain itself this way much longer, acknowledging that donors are getting San Francisco Playhouse through this year. They also know their own and their audience’s artistic interest in this hybrid medium won’t last forever.
Still, they love being back in the theater instead of on Zoom.
“You walk back in and go, ‘Oh yeah, this is so cool. I remember why we do this,’ “Damilano says. “I forget that when I’m watching a Zoom something. I get distracted.”
Indeed, being in the theater again, after all those tests and all those precautions, felt like seeing the other side of the pandemic. Actors still horse around between scenes. Stagehands and stage managers are still among the world’s most competent humans. And a scene of budding attraction between Moye and Frederick’s characters can still make you forget that the cameras are rolling — that you’re the only noncrew member in a juryrigged theater, that there’s a pandemic going on, that the rest of the world exists.
That magic is still there, waiting for us.