Slide Show: Drawing “Hedwig”

For three days, I sat, watched, and drew at the Belasco Theatre as the company and crew of the Broadway revival of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” starring Neil Patrick Harris, prepared for the show to go into previews. The first public performance—enthusiastically greeted by hardcore fans and friends of the company—was also the first time the show ran all the way through without stopping. This is not an unusual situation, given the standards of today’s technically challenging Broadway shows. Tech rehearsals bring together for the first time, and strive to seamlessly coördinate, costumes, lights, set, projections, sound, actors, choreography, stagehands, and crew. For the performers, “hurry up and wait” is the general rallying sigh of tech rehearsals; moments of performance-level activity alternate with long periods of fixing whatever goes wrong before trying it all again.