Happy National Swing Day!
No, this day isn’t about appreciating one of the best pieces of playground equipment (sorry, I couldn’t resist)! This is a day, organized by Actors’ Equity Association, to honor and celebrate the hard-working, but often overlooked, performers who spend most of their time behind the scenes preparing to go on at a moment’s notice. After what the Swings here on the Mean Girls Tour have gone through in the first couple weeks in Chicago, they deserve all the appreciation and celebrating we can give them.
What the heck is a Swing, you say? A Swing is a performer who covers multiple ensemble roles. The Mean Girls Tour has four Swings—two men and two women—who cover every ensemble track, both male and female. When an ensemble member is going on as an understudy for a Principal role or is just out for whatever reason, one of the Swings goes on in their place. When they are not needed onstage, they spend their time backstage or in the audience studying and watching the show. In addition to covering all of the ensemble parts, two of the Tour’s Swings understudy a Principal role as well! That’s a lot to memorize!
The Mean Girls Tour also has one Standby. Standbys are like Swings, but they only cover Principal roles. The Tour’s Standby covers Regina, Katie, and Janice. And like the Swings, when she’s not on for any of those roles, she is watching the show and available to go on at any time, even mid-show, which has already happened more than once.
In addition to regular, full-time Swings and Standbys, there are Partial Swings and Vacation Swings. A Partial Swing is a member of the ensemble who covers a specific role in a scene when the usual performer is out, but they don’t do the rest of that performer’s track. For instance, there is a scene involving a Kenya jacket that is worn by a black female ensemble member. If she is on as an understudy for one of the Principals or just out that night, another black ensemble member will fill in for just that scene.
A Vacation Swing is a performer who joins the show for a limited time to cover another performer who might be on vacation or medical leave. Since being in Chicago, Mean Girls has also had a Vacation Swing. Fortunately, the tour was able to get one of the male Swings from the Broadway show to serve as a Vacation Swing for a short time. The Tour is similar but not identical to the Broadway show, so he only needed a little rehearsal before going on for a few shows.
Now to why the Mean Girls Tour Swings deserve so much appreciation. This past week, many members of the cast and crew have been sick. There were at least 7 confirmed cases of the flu. Thankfully, not everyone had the flu at the same time, and many performers went on as soon as they weren’t contagious anymore—not necessarily when they were all better though. If you noticed, the Tour only has 5 “extra” cast members between the four Swings and one Standby, so many of the performances were what they call “All-Skates”, every performer in the building was onstage. All four Swings and the Standby were on a lot throughout the week.
The Stage Management team knows that they can’t have 3 men out at any one time without having to put one of the female Swings on for a male track and vice versa. Well, this last week was one of those times where one of the female Swings, who also happens to be the female Dance Captain, went on for one of the male ensemble. This created Split Tracks, where a few Swings split the responsibilities of multiple ensemble tracks. The female Swing bounced back and forth between a female and male track depending on what the scene needed and the two male Swings also picked up some parts of that male ensemble track, such as dance lifts which the female Swing is too petite to do.
When Swings are in or there are a lot of weird tracks, it is probably most stressful for the wardrobe department. Mean Girls has a ton of costumes. The Wardrobe Supervisor once mentioned to Emma that the only show he knows of that is more taxing on the wardrobe team is Aladdin (same Director and Costume Designer as Mean Girls). Many people are surprised that Mean Girls would be so taxing because the costume pieces aren’t necessarily elaborate like those in Aladdin—store bought skirts compared to hand painted and beaded silk dresses—but there are just so many costume pieces and each character has a lot of costume changes throughout the show with very few repeating pieces.
For the wardrobe team, if the actress who normally plays Regina were to call out of the evening show on the two-show-day, the wardrobe team would have to replace all of her costumes with her understudy’s costumes before the second show in addition to adding any costumes for Swings that might now have to go on. When the female Swing was on in the male track, she had to have completely different mens costumes and wigs, and because of the split track, her costume changes were different than what that male ensemble’s changes would have been. So, bravo to the Wardrobe department for all their amazing work this last week too!
Luckily, things didn’t get bad enough this last week to require Emma or one of the other Stage Managers to have to go out onstage. It was close though; just one more person would have needed to call out. If that had happened, they would have cut one of the ensemble tracks, adjusted the choreography a bit to fill in any holes, had Partial Swings take over any of that ensemble member’s lines, and Emma, or one of the other Stage Mangers, would have had to put on a varsity jacket–which they have on hand for any time a crew person has to go onstage–and move the set pieces that that ensemble member would have moved. It wouldn’t have been Emma’s Tour debut, but she would have definitely spent more time onstage than ever before! Thankfully, everyone seems to have recovered or is well enough to go on now, so Emma won’t have to go onstage again any time soon.
I know that Emma is grateful for the Swings and their preparation and professionalism that made the All-Skates run as smooth as possible. Hopefully next year, National Swing Day doesn’t have to coincide with all of the Swings going on to remind us to show them our appreciation!
Congratulations and thank you to Swings everywhere.
-B