00:00We're here at the Belasco Theatre, home of the ten-time Tony-nominated Maybe Happy Ending,
00:05a show that blends science fiction with a story about love, memory, and what it means to connect.
00:10The show follows two helper bots, Claire and Oliver,
00:13and today we're going behind the scenes to see how this futuristic world is put together.
00:18A robot does what she always does.
00:21It's the only way it'll be okay.
00:25I'm Justin Scribner. I'm the production stage manager for Maybe Happy Ending,
00:29and a long-time collaborator of Michael Arden and Dane Laffres.
00:33I met Michael in 2006.
00:36We did a show called The Times They Are A-Changin' with Twyla Tharp on Broadway.
00:40He was in it, and I was the assistant stage manager, so we forged a friendship backstage,
00:45mostly laughing, mostly having a great time together.
00:48On a big Broadway show, often the production stage manager is the one that everyone calls during the day
00:54if anything comes up.
00:55So actually, my day starts when I check my phone in the morning,
00:58and there could be any number of things that happen.
01:01Usually, you have understudies and swings that are ready to go on at a moment's notice,
01:05and when actors get sick, injured, take days off, it is the stage managers who are planning for that show during the day.
01:12So whenever I show up to the theater, it's really to make sure that everyone's got all the things that they need,
01:17that we're heading towards a smooth show in the evening.
01:21We're kind of like the central nervous system, the communicators, the facilitators.
01:26Yeah, I call us the parents backstage.
01:29This show is so tech-heavy and so filled with special effects and relies on all of the design elements working in tandem,
01:37and this beautiful script.
01:39But I am really thrilled that we were able to achieve Dane and George's vision for the scenic and video design.
01:46And it was a hard job, but it was kind of like putting together a really complicated puzzle.
01:51Into the stage door.
01:53Right here, this is our call board here.
01:56Entrance to the stage.
01:58Darren's dressing room.
02:00We have a whole tower of dressing rooms here.
02:04I have a fabulous team of stage managers I work with.
02:08We live in here, and then right here is the calling room.
02:12Okay, walk me through what exactly a calling room is, because I don't think I've ever heard of that before.
02:16It's not a phrase.
02:17It doesn't exist usually.
02:18Usually you have a calling desk, a stage manager's desk, or a calling booth.
02:24But here, because we have so few actors, we had empty dressing rooms,
02:28and I advocated for us to have a desk space.
02:32So I sit here, and I have my calling script.
02:36I need to agree with you.
02:37Please.
02:38When the show gets going, I have a huge color shot of the stage,
02:44and I utilize cue lights and my headset to call all of the automation, lights, sound, video cues in the show.
02:56And I do it rhythmically, and I'm always counting music.
03:00But basically, I'm following along, and there are some sequences where I'm really talking very quickly.
03:08And I have indicated every time our set moves, I have what is happening on the left, and how I'm cueing it on the right.
03:18I've got 19 crew members on headset with me as we're going about the show, and it's an hour and 45 minutes of nonstop action.
03:32And when I'm cueing them, often we've organized it so that I will warn our auto-fly operator,
03:40who's up on the fourth floor with a big computer set up, our auto-deck operator,
03:44who's in the basement, also with a huge computer set up.
03:47And when their lights go on, they are warned. They know that the sequence is coming up.
03:51And I probably will be also calling a light cue at the same time.
03:55And I'll start the transition by saying go along with the lights so that everything can move in tandem together.
04:03Sometimes the computers will say, danger, we can't go.
04:07We can't roll this unit because something else is in its way.
04:10And so for that reason, I'm actually grateful that we have a system that speaks to itself
04:15and is able to tell us if there's going to be an issue.
04:17But we always try to avoid not, you know, stopping the show at all costs.
04:22But if you need to, you're right there.
04:23That's right.
04:24Yeah, you got it.
04:25Yeah, and I have so much trust in our team, so it's really great.
04:30This is awesome.
04:31And I know this might even be fun.
04:34When the packing is done, I'm finally hitting the road.
04:37Dane and George, it turns out, use some of the same software when they are building their material.
04:44And what they were able to do was do some pre-visualization of how this was going to look
04:49and get really clever about what areas of the stage are actually secretly made up of video.
04:57Here we are in the hallway.
05:00Wow.
05:01And one little tidbit is we're on the 106th floor and they're in units 82 and 84.
05:10But we chose that because Michael's birthday is October 6th, 1982.
05:15Wow.
05:16So a little, you know, a little Easter egg in there.
05:18Yeah.
05:19A little Easter egg.
05:20Would you like to come in?
05:21Yes, of course.
05:22Let's come on in, guys.
05:23I heard that these apartments were actually based off of a real modular building in Tokyo.
05:28Yes.
05:29So were you able to talk about that a little?
05:30I think it was built in the 70s and it was an idea of a modular building that you could
05:35actually take the units out with a crane and move them to other buildings.
05:39So if you wanted to move, you just have your entire little home.
05:42So these cubes kind of inspired them to build a world that Oliver essentially never leaves.
05:48And you can say this is the paper wall that has the video behind it and you would never know.
05:55These are all made for the actors.
05:58Each of the actors has their own set of these.
06:01So the understudies also did a photo shoot.
06:03It's so beautiful.
06:04This is the charger that lights up that he then charges himself with.
06:09And there's a lot of lighting built into it.
06:12So we have moving lights above.
06:14There are speakers.
06:15This is a fake speaker just for show.
06:18And then like the audience doesn't see these, but this is all helping to light the unit as it moves
06:24in and out.
06:25And then this is the star of the show.
06:28Star of the show.
06:29And of course, Wah-Boon has his own emotional arc.
06:32He starts a little sad.
06:33So you can see he's getting into character is what's happening.
06:36His favorite singers, obviously we have Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald.
06:40We have Bill Evans.
06:42And then all of the magazines that he gets through the mail shoot, which comes zooming in from above.
06:47Okay, so now are we stepping into...
06:51This is Claire's unit.
06:52Wow.
06:53Come on in.
06:54Let's take a look.
06:55Absolutely.
06:56It's interesting.
06:57Their personalities are revealed through the design here.
06:59She's kind of strung up some fairy lights in a somewhat haphazard half manner.
07:05And she's turned her desk into a workshop.
07:09So what she cares about is getting her battery fixed.
07:12But they went so far as to even create a ground plan of what the units might look like in the building.
07:18This 106th floor building.
07:21The writers really were inspired by this idea.
07:24The hermetic lifestyle of the Hikikomori Japanese men who were sealed off in their own little rooms in their cubes.
07:32And here, Oliver has kind of never left his apartment for 12 years.
07:36And we kind of assume part of that is because James wasn't someone who actually left his apartment very often.
07:42And he had a robot to keep him company in his little world.
07:45The truth is, the genius of this design is that you don't know it's coming.
07:50It's not like when you sit down and you're watching the show, you say,
07:53I can see the video is going to be a big part of the show.
07:56It just feels very intimate and small.
07:58And as the show kind of unravels and you peel back the layers, design elements are revealed and you kind of enter the world of these robots adventure.
08:08It's really cool.
08:09And if it doesn't come for free, well that's the way that it has to be.
08:18I don't sleep.
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