Theatre fail

This evening while striking the show downtown we took a break about 7:00. There were 15 or so people sitting in the front row of seats, snacking. I heard a questioning voice from the theatre entrance, which is up several rows of seats. Several of us looked, where there was a girl and her boyfriend- asking about the show. Someone said it had been a matinée. She looked down at her tickets, exclaimed "matinée!" and left hurriedly. She must not have looked at the time on the tickets before!

It was funnier at the time, but picture the entire crew in the middle of taking the set and lights down- ah, you had to be there.

Spring is here

I'm going from one thing to another this week. Today was focus at the Lyric from 8-5, then my show call here at Copaken at 5:30. I should be home by nine. Tomorrow and Saturday are all day Lyric, then on Sunday I'll close a show at Copaken then head back to the Lyric for more tech. It should be a profitable week, at least!

It seems Subway is having a promotion with footlongs for $5. I got one at lunch and ate the other half for dinner. Lunch and dinner together cost me about $7.

I'm sick of driving. It used to be fun, but now it just seems like there are too many assholes doing asshole things out there. I want a subway, now.

We watched 28 Days Later last night. I was pleasantly surprised that there weren't cheap scares where something jumps out at you. The story wasn't complex, but it didn't need to be. Also- more Cillian Murphy can't be bad. I'm definitely going to be waiting for Danny Boyle's next movie, since he also directed Sunshine which I loved.

I love flowers! I love going out every day and looking at new growing things. My hens and chicks have decided now is the time to grow bigger. It must be all the rain. I also enjoy daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, irises, and violets. I love that violets grow all over the yard. Purple, light purple, white with purple centers and white. Soon lilacs will bloom. I may have to dig up my plants when we move. I'm getting rather fond of them.

Why theatre is dumb today

I dragged my ass out of bed at 6:30 this morning to get down here and focus lights at 8AM. To start off, there were no spikes on the floor for the furniture so the lighting designer spent half an hour placing spikes. Then we focused the lights for an hour and a half. (It's a very small plot.) Then we took a break, and worked on the cues for awhile. We had a lunch break, then came back to find that the director showed up and moved everything around. Naturally. So we worked on the cues for a few more hours, then spent half an hour refocusing on the moved furniture. There's nothing that annoys me quite like doing work twice because somebody didn't do their job.

Hanging lights

Today's light hang went better than I expected. We started kind of slow, but once we got moving we had enough people to get a lot of work done in a decent amount of time. Since I was the Master Electrician for this one, I didn't have to hang any lights myself. I answered questions, and told people where to hang the lights, and kept the paperwork up to date. I prepared the plot to hang earlier this week. I drew circles around groups of lights on the plot indicating where they should be plugged in. This sounds like a silly thing, but it makes the hang a LOT easier in the long run. I didn't bother plotting the plot in half inch scale for several reasons: because the plotter can be a pain in the ass and I didn't want to deal with it, because half inch scale is really bigger than necessary, and your sheet of paper is unwieldy and it's a waste of paper because you're just going to throw it away at the end of the day. (Plotter paper is expensive.) I printed the plot in 4 sections on regular 8 1/2 x 11 paper, so each person can have their own piece of plot. That way everybody knows what's going on. We managed to be finished by 5. That's damn good for 116.

More tasty dinner, and not too funny

I cooked again! At the theater we decided to do an Italian- themed potluck on Sunday between shows. Yesterday, my mom and I made spaghetti sauce and meatballs. It was fun to cook together, and delicious too. Afterwards, my hair smelled like meatballs. My hair seems to absorb food smells very easily. I smelled delicious. So now I have delicious sauce and meatballs to take.

After the show last night I caught the end of UMKC's production of Noises Off. Verdict: I'm not sorry I didn't see the beginning. One major element that the movie does better than the stage production is focus your attention. I saw the last 10-15 minutes of Act 2, where there is a lot of chaotic running around. In the movie, they put the camera on what they want you to see. On stage, there's so much mess that you don't know where you should be looking until you realize you've missed something. This is more of a problem with the staging then the actual show. I'm sure that professionals can (and have) pulled it off nicely.

Next there was a ridiculous little, I dunno, intermission show or something while the set changed. They played Mission Impossible music and a guy dashed around playing commando or something while the turntable turned and the set revolved around to the front. It was the single most amateur thing I've seen on the Spencer Stage. I was kind of embarrassed, actually.

Then there was Act 3. Another issue I have with this production is the voices of some of the actors weren't strong enough to project the dialogue. Act 3 isn't funny if you don't know how much they're doing wrong from Act 1, and you can't tell how much they're doing wrong if you can't hear what they're saying. They also seemed to have cribbed a lot of blocking straight from the movie, which was even more obvious in Act 2.

Verdict: Watch the movie. It has Carol Burnett, Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve, John Ritter, Marilu Henner, Julie Hagerty, Mark Linn-Baker, Denholm Elliot and young Nicollette Sheridan running around in her underwear. It is hilarious.

P.S.- The lighting wasn't any good either.

Not quite Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs

I sat down in my desk chair this morning and wrapped myself up in a blanket because it's kind of chilly. A couple minutes later Anna dashed in, hopped onto my lap and gave me a dirty look- as if to say, you got out the blanket and didn't tell me?? Then she turned in circles a few times and settled down, purring furiously. I love having a cat.

Monday I finished up Aida. It took about an hour, then I spent a couple more finishing up my gel file cabinet organization project. I'm pretty damn pleased with the outcome. There are a few more things to organize, and it's not perfect, but it's sooo much better than before. All it took was a bit of time. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, it's probably because I started the file cabinet project many moons ago, and just now got around to finishing it up. Monday evening we watched Heroes. It was a good start to the new season. Lots of questions to answer!

Tuesday I went in to work and started my dimmer check as usual, to find that the entire first rack of dimmers wasn't working. That meant zero lights were working front of house. I had no idea how to fix that, so I called SMJ, who came over to save the day. After poking at several things, they came back to life. We didn't really figure out what was wrong, and that's never good. If it happens again and we can't get them up at all, there are several backup plans. First plan was to turn on the Studio Spots and use them to frontlight wash the whole stage. (The set is small. This would have worked.) Plan 2 was to turn on the followspot and have SMJ followspot the whole show. (It's a one woman show. This also would have worked.) Comedy option three was to give the audience free booze so they'd be so drunk they wouldn't care what it looked like. This led people to suggest that we should have had free booze all through tech. Yeah, and if wishes were horses we'd all be eatin' steak.

Wednesday Donald stayed home sick, and spent most of the day sleeping on the couch and feeling crappy. We got Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from Netflix, and tried to watch it in the afternoon. I say tried because it was a really crappy movie. I dozed off once, and then gave up entirely and got ready for work. I sure hate it when a good book is turned into a bad movie. That night was opening night, and it went just fine. All dimmers kindly performed their dimming, the audience clapped, then we ate nibbles at the opening night party.

Thursday I went for a walk in the morning, washed some dishes in the afternoon, did the show in the evening, and watched the tape of the Grey's Anatomy season premiere that Donald kindly remembered to record. We're so hooked on that show.

I have the ForecastFox extension installed. It puts today's weather in the bottom of my browser. I just glanced over and saw a curly looking symbol I'd never seen before. I moused over it and saw that it was predicting wind, but not until after I thought to myself, "Ah, sunny with a chance of squigglies." Now I'm picturing squigglies falling from the sky.
It'd be different!

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%.

Show's done

As I mentioned (very briefly) the preview of our show went fine. As anyone in theatre knows, a good preview is a bad sign. If a bunch of things go wrong in the preview, opening night will be fine. If your preview is smooth, something will go wrong on opening night. I figure there's some kind of universal balancing act going on there. Things have to screw up at some point. There wasn't any kind of disaster Monday night, but my light board did overheat and reboot itself twice. I was pretty unhappy with that. At intermission we moved the fan closer and raised the board up, so Act 2 was okay. The audience seemed to really enjoy the show. Success!

Strike yesterday went very smoothly. Taking things down is so very much easier than putting them up! Hooray gravity. With a bit of help, and a few trips here and there, I was finished and home by 2:30. Then I took a most glorious shower. It was even more satisfying because I knew that I didn't have to go back to the dusty place ever again! My lungs will finally be able to recover. I'm looking forward to not coughing up phlegm and being able to talk again wouldn't hurt either. My toe is feeling better too. I'm feeling very hopeful that my toenail is undamaged. Regrowing my big toenail would be a bitch.

So now it's on to the next show. I've started preparing for Aida at the Lyric. I also have a bunch of dishes and laundry to catch up on, and I need to go to the grocery store.

Time for an audience

Our little show is ready to go. We ran through the whole play last night and the night before, and it went pretty great both times. We have our preview tonight, and the performance tomorrow. Yay! I'm glad to get to the performance, and yes, I'll be glad when it's over. I'm looking forward to not inhaling any more dust. We're bringing in fans to try to keep our audience as comfortable as possible. Oddly enough, we all agreed that it didn't seem as hot lately. Either we're getting used to it, or there's some inversely proportional temperature thing going on with the outdoors. It's probably the first one.

I spent a few hours yesterday afternoon helping the set designer make masking. Using only the finest in materials- we made blacks out of black plastic paint tarps. :) It worked surprisingly well. I cut them to size, then sat and put grommets in them, and Dave hung them. Then we made a backdrop with the same technique. The backdrop has fabric "buildings" attached. Dave laid them out, then I took over making them into buildings. It was a lot of fun actually. The sound designer watched me do it, making suggestions. So it ended up being a truly collaborative effort. For once. All the talk about collaboration in theater is usually just talk. It's very rare that 3 designers do ANYTHING together. So, it was fun!

Speaking of dust, I started getting a sore throat a few days ago. I'm sure the excessive dust doesn't help, even though by this point we aren't really stirring it up. By today my voice is nearly gone. I'm thinking about making myself a button that I can just point at to avoid unnecessary speaking.

For dinner last night Donald and Mike and I tried out the Westport Flea Market for the first time. I give them 2 thumbs up. They have 2 sizes of hamburger, A Little Too Big and Really Too Big. Both sizes are delicious- flavorful and juicy, and reasonably priced for the size. They come with a side of fries, and you help yourself to a condiment bar. There are a lot of other sandwiches on the menu, but I'm pretty sure that the next few times I go there I'll be getting another delicious burger. Tasty tasty.

That must mean I'm a unicorn!

Day 2 in the dustiest place to ever do a theatrical production went rather better than day 1. I got some desperately needed help from Dan Parks for a few hours. He helped me hang and focus my pile 'o lights. Hanging eighteen lights is no big deal, if you have a buddy. If you're on your own, it takes much much longer. So Dan is awesome, and I owe him a nice big dinner sometime. With his help, I got the stuff ready between 11:30 and 4:30. Then I went home and took a glorious shower. One of my top 5 showers ever, probably. I rested awhile, made a lovely batch of smoothies, and had dinner with Donald.

Around 8:30 I went back for the evening portion of rehearsal. I wrote some cues, and watched the scene change rehearsals. It was a pretty productive evening. It was also relatively comfortable, sitting still in front of my light board with a fan on me. I borrowed a camp chair from my dad so I have a clean place to sit. Once the sun has been down a couple of hours, it gets cooler, or at least seems to . That's not going to help with the performance much though, since "curtain" is at 7:30.

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to not go in until 6:30 for rehearsal. We thoroughly teched Act 1, then just did the scene changes for Act 2. It's coming together quite nicely, and I think we're ready to run through the whole thing tonight. If you're free Monday night, check it out... it'll be unique! Bring a hand fan and wear shorts though!

info here: http://davidfehr.net/Sin.htm

Dirty place: day 1

Having gotten the Equity Showcase up, and having returned from the weekend out-of-town trip, I was left with no choice but to start in on the One Night Stand show. Hoo boy, did I do a lot of running around using up petroleum today. (Sorry planet, at least I recycle, right?)

1. Drove to fetch lights from theater in a land far, far away (Kansas.) Took about half an hour to get there. Kept telling myself, the lights were free, I only had to go get them. Filled up my dad's gas tank, said goodbye to $50. Delivered lights to "theater."
2. Drove to fetch booms and dimmers from a land much closer, but possessing a much more unpleasant smell. Harvest Productions is just north of the river, and it smells truly awful in that general area sometimes. Loaded all the stuff into the pickup truck, back to the "theater" for more unloading.
3. Drove back to my home to get keys so I could fetch a light board and various other stuff from UMKC. More unloading.
4. Started setting up in "theater." This was the hard part, and the lack of A/C was very unpleasant. I spent a lot of time taking water breaks and trying to cool off somewhat. At least there are now copious extension cords to plug fans into.
5. Drove to Home Depot, bought a few things, went back again.
6. Set up a bit more equipment. Got booted out of the building at 7. I've never been so glad to be kicked out of somewhere I'm trying to work. I was so ready for any excuse to go home and take a shower.

I think I sweated more today than in the whole rest of the summer combined. Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit better, since all the equipment is already there. Now I just have to put it all together, and hope none of the lamps are burned out. Then focus the lights, and write cues, and do a play! Whew.

Day so very long

Yesterday we loaded in the Equity showcase in 116. I got there at 9am, and didn't go home until midnight. At times, it was a highly unproductive day. First thing, they hang curtains. First problem, they didn't have the right curtains. That started the day off late for me, since I was supposed to be starting lights by 11, and didn't until at least 12:30. Then it all just went slow. At 9pm the stumble through rehearsal got started, and somehow took 3 hours. I am telling you, the show won't be 3 hours long, so I don't know how it took so long. I tried to write a few cues, to get ahead for today. I took a few notes of things to change or fix. By the time I got home I was ready to go to bed. Ugh. I'm heading back to the theater at noon to keep working.

what I watched on Sunday

We watched Pan's Labyrinth yesterday with Mike. I enjoyed it, but not so much that I understand all the rave reviews. I liked the look of the whole thing, and I thought the story was very interesting and original. But it was kinda slow moving, and the Captain character was really hateful. (I know, that's the point, but still.) The ending was pretty depressing too. I'm glad I watched it though.

I watched the Tonys last night too. You'd think being in theatre, that this would be an important broadcast for me to watch. You'd be incorrect. I don't know who 90% of the people on the stage were, and didn't see any of the plays. I fast forwarded through a lot, because I just didn't care what they were saying. At least when you watch the Oscars, you had a chance to see the nominated movies. (Even though I rarely see any of the Best Picture nominees.) You'd have to spend a LOT of money and effort to see even a few of the Tony nominated plays. It's a weird thing that Broadway shows, the supposed center of the theatre universe, are COMPLETELY inaccessible to the majority of Americans. Why even bother watching the Tonys?