So, because I’m not really working too exclusively in theater any more, I’m going to start posting about things I actually am doing. They probably will be random, no one will probably read them, but hey at least I’ll remember what I’m doing I guess. So keep an eye here for fun things that I’m doing (if you read this of course).

Big turnbuckle, small cable

Now I’m not a rigging genious, but I do believe that that just isn’t right.

We opened our preview matinee to a house of about 800 or so people. That’s very impressive for a Thursday afternoon. Seriously, the nursing home buses were lined up like it was a huge event or something. The show was awesome, and sounded perfect. Great way to start off a five show weekend. Friday night wasn’t exactly the same. The house was smaller than the previous day, disappointing but not to big of a deal. Except the show sounded like total and utter crap. It sent me scambling to try and find the problem and come up with a solution. (More about what happened in this previous post)

Oh well, onto double show Saturday. This is where scenic got to have some fun. With this show rail space is at a premium. We are packed very tight up there, especially around mid-stage (I may try and get a picture of the grid before we strike it all). Its so tight in fact two pieces of scenery knock into each other fairly regularly. Saturday’s matinee, they decided to knock hard enough to break. During the first show, trim around the top of the archway was pulled off. Not really a big deal, and it was fixed in between the two shows.  The evening show wasn’t so pretty. On the way in, the bottom of the archway got caught, snapping off a brace. When the archway was pulled back out, the brace broke off and fell to the stage. In the middle of a scene. Luckily this all happened during the Finale number, which was at the end of the show.

In order to fix the problem, we had to replace the broken braces and add several others around the length of the arch to give it more support. Thankfully we haven’t had any other issues with the arches (fingers crossed).

Sunday’s show went pretty smoothly, without anything really major to note. Goot way to leave off for this weekend.

In another whoops moment, yesterday during opening night something seemed “off” as soon as the show started. Every one of the mics seemed to sound muffled, not clear and crisp like the night before. I chocked it up to just my imagination, until we got to the big number. Then I noticed it loud and clear, distortion in the low middle to low ranges. Now we don’t have the best speakers, but they should be able to handle this area very well. So after thinking about it all intermission (and changing out a couple mic elements to be safe), it dawned on me. Turns out the cover to the EQ rack was off and someone must have brushed against it, knocking it all over the place, thus the distortion. A quick fix (and some more detailed tuning the next day) and everything was back to normal.

Let’s just hope the are the only hiccups we run into for the rest of the run.

First off let me start with a little back story here. It was a Sunday matinee (an afternoon show…) with a sold out house. Lots and lots of old people. Seriously we had the nursing home buses lined up outside the theater. It was insane. So needless to say when you get a lot of elderly people in a room together you get the occasional “What did she just say Deloris?” and the “When’s the intermission Peter?” comments that can be heard fairly well, mainly due to the older groups lack of hearing ability. Anyways, about 15 minutes into the second act of the show I hear a phone ring. Not a big deal really, we’ve all done it at one point or another, woohoo. But to add to the ring, someone answers it. In the theater. Without making any moves to get up and take the call in oh say the lobby. Now getting up during a show is generally frowned upon, but it still happens and honestly I’d much rather have someone get up during a show than sit in their seat and talk on the phone.

So basically if you walk into the theatre, please watch the show. Some of us have put hours and hours of hard work into what’s going on in front of you. And the person sitting next to you also spent a considerable amount of money to sit there. Turn off your god damn phone.

Exactly how we feel.

Now the background story. We have to build quite a few doors for this show. There’s regular door, double swing doors, French doors, and double doors. Most of them have more than one set (they get changed at intermission). So of course, because we can’t do anything easy on ourselves we have to build the doors. Thanks to the nature of the construction practices here, no two frames are the same, so every door has to be custom build for its opening. Needless to say this is a long and frustrating process.

So after the doors are built the crew onstage is cleaning up to head out to lunch. I was sitting at the sound computer working on some paperwork when I hear lots of laughter from the loading dock area. Thinking its almost lunch, so they must be on their way to lunch, I close what I’m doing and head to the stage to get lunch. I turned the corner to the loading dock and was met with that.

Apparently, they had noticed that their offcut scrap just happened to form an “L”,”S”, and “T”. Now if only they had a “U” this could be fun. Well who would have guessed, but two “L” shaped scrap pieces form a “U”. This beautiful piece of artwork was proudly displayed in front of our warehouse for the rest of the day.

Oh by the way it needs to fly.

And fit into the truck.

I’m proud to say after 3 hours of work (including my drawings) I managed to build some massive frames. To fit in the truck, I broke the wall into 3 pieces, each 12 foot tall and 5 foot wide. The tops and bottoms are 5 foot 1×3, sides cut from 12 foot long pieces, and toggles every 2 feet. All built on edge (tv style).

Now the challenge of facing with faux brick, and then rigging this monstrosity up to fly. Its gonna be a heavy mofo.

So the moral of this story, when you build a platform, make sure to take into account that the luan will add 1/4 inch to each side (on two opposite side that adds up to half an inch which can be bad news)

The sad part is this has happened to me twice. You think I’d have learned the first time. Oh well…

I elected not to be over worked, under appredicated, and very under paid at Summer Theatre at Salem again. I played that game last year and was left with a feeling that there had to be better choices out there somewhere. So this summer (rather last minute I might add), the opportunity arose to start anew in a real professional theatre (or so I thought). Turns out, after being in this daily grind for almost two months now, I’m still under appreciated, over worked, and under paid (although considerably better than a venture at Salem would have given me). *

Oh and I decided to move to Salem, to an apartment that legit borders the campus, with 2 friends of mine. Good move really.

Anywho, back here at the Reagle, I board op’ed our first show Hello Dolly along with long grueling hours putting the rented set together during the day. The show: made no sense at all, the porcess: kinda fun and a new look at theater. Dolly came and went, and now we are faced with the looming behemath called Mame. One word: Ugh.

At the same time I was handed the keys to the theater sound system. That’s right I moved from the comfy chair of the board op’s spot to the hard metal stool of the engineer. This is one of the most challenging, interesting, and assbackwards systems I have ever been crossed with. But that is a post all its own.

And on that note, I am off to check mics for show number 2 of the day.

Please note: This last show has been a very difficult and challenging process and has me in a somewhat sour mood about this place. It’s really not usually this bad.