Whew

Opening night of the opera we all got a surprise when a previously dark scene was suddenly bright. Very bright. I first noticed it when I could see the scene change happening. I thought perhaps I was just seeing more because I was at the top of the balcony. Then it stayed bright. Oh shit, I thought. I ran down to the booth to see what the crappity smack was going on. Between the two of us, the board op and I figured out that the lighting designer- who made changes after the last rehearsal- brought up a bunch of lights in one cue, and they tracked through the whole scene. The scene was supposed to be dark and moody, as the cast of about 75 sang and carried candles and sacrificed a topless virgin priestess. Not on opening night, oh no. On opening night it was as bright as about 6000* watts of accidental PAR cans can make a scene. Unfortunately, I couldn't fix it then, but I could see clearly how to fix it for the next show. Tonight before the show I fixed it, we ran through the cues with the stage manager to double check, and happily went into preshow; safe in the knowlege that it would be dark when it was supposed to be dark, and bright when it was supposed to be bright. Whew. I finally got do do something really productive as ALD.

In book news, Robert Jordan died yesterday. Thousands of readers' first thoughts: How are they going to finish the series??!? Fortunately, it seems that he's left instructions on how to finish up. Oh, and sympathies to his family and stuff. The series started in 1990, I started reading around '98. I've been on board for 9 years, as he added more and more plotlines. I waited through several books when very little seemed to happen, until stuff started happening again in the last few books. Now I want to see how it ends, goddammit! I really enjoyed the last book, where as least two plotlines got tied up and several others made significant progress. Sigh.

*for those of you who want to know, that's 21 1000w PAR cans at 28%.