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May 19, 2007

Now and Forever

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 8:32 am

So I mentioned as a sidebar that the Cats tour teched at Reagle last year. This was a rather unusual event that complicated the Reagle season by taking up the stage for a week, but it was good for the theatre financially, and I’m sure for Troika as well, since they didn’t have to pay a union crew or deal with any of those big-city problems.

It was fun to have a big show in the theatre while we were rehearsing. Even if it was non-Equity, I couldn’t help thinking that those stage managers, while perhaps being abused, were doing a show that sure looked like a national tour. I’m at a place in my career where having the experience of doing it is more important than getting paid well for it, and I admit I looked on with envy as they worked around us. I would sometimes have to be in the wings during their techs or runs to ask Lori something about our show, and I was jealous of our crew guys standing there with some ridiculous “Skimbleshanks” prop over their heads.

This was also where I learned…
Life Lesson #3: Your lower leg is not going to stop a dozen road cases rolling down a hill.
Well, actually it might, but it’s not worth it just to protect some gear.

The tour had all their boxes of unused equipment in a long hallway backstage, which had a slope to it. At some point we needed to remove one of the boxes. That seemed fine for a second, until all the boxes uphill of it slowly started to roll down the hill. They weren’t going fast, but by the time they filled in the gap left by the missing box, they were going to hit the next box with considerable force. I — “Little One,”remember — was the only one close enough to the oncoming boxes to get a hand on them. I grabbed the leading box by the top corner, and used my leg to try to slow down the bottom corner. I did succeed in slowing it down a lot, and by that time somebody else had gotten a hand on it as well, but they did collide very gently cushioned by my calf, and somehow I managed to get my leg out of there after the boxes hit but before the thousands of pounds of stuff behind the first box caught up. I was fine, but I realized that was incredibly stupid, especially considering no people were in danger and the only potential victim would have been some presumably-well-packed gear. This is the kind of complacency that comes from being a stage manager and not being allowed to touch stuff.< I went to school for directing, but my more formative years were spent in technical theatre, and there's a part of me that still wishes every now and then that I could moonlight as a followspot op or something. Last season we were doing the photo call for Will Rogers and realized there was one shot that was lit basically only with a spot, and we hadn’t called in any crew for that. It would have been no problem for the head electrician to go over to the spot, but I wanted to do it. I hadn’t touched a spot since I was 14. I got a quick course on headset of “what does this knob do?” and played around with it for a while while they took the pictures. I kind of sucked at it, and I was glad I didn’t have to do it in performance. Spot ops have a tough job, and I never hold a mistake against anyone, unless it comes from not paying attention. But it became even more clear that just as one of them couldn’t call the show that night, I would be just as bad at running their spot.

I really wanted to be on the crew for Cats — I mean when else in my life would I have the opportunity to be on local crew for Cats, or anything else for that matter? But of course I was rehearsing Millie a few feet away in the studio, so there was nothing I could do. I did get to work the load-out, where I was on the sound crew. It was a lot of work considering I had been at the theatre since 9:30 that morning, and the last truck drove away at 4:30AM, and I had to be back in rehearsal at 10, but I found it absolutely fascinating. How the hell do you get a 600lb mixing console into its road case and onto the truck without breaking it or your legs? Well I found out.


Little One

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 7:52 am

I found the Singin’ in the Rain package in my mailbox when I got home last night. I was glad it fit so I didn’t have to waste a day picking it up at the post office. I didn’t have time to get through much of it, but so far I’m kind of entertained by it.

In the package was a note referring to me by my top-secret code name, “Little One,” which I had actually forgotten about until this week. Just thought I should tell the story on that.

Last season the Troika tour of Cats did their tech and previews at Reagle in the middle of our season. (I was a little bitter that I was too busy being PSM of Millie across the hall — the idea of being on local crew for a production of Cats was absolutely hysterical to me.) Anyway, the traveling crew had a lot of people whose names we never actually found out, because they all went by names like Big Daddy, Big Mama, etc. and they in turn bestowed on our crew some new names that stuck for the rest of the season.

When they left and we began tech for Millie, somebody decided that the rest of us needed code names on headset. Mine became “Little One.” Here’s the story:
At the end of my first year, we were doing Sound of Music. And you know, there’s like seven kids. So at the top of Act II we needed the kids, Max and Elsa on stage in order to start. Most nights I would be sitting in the booth while the kids were counted, and being told who the culprit was that we were waiting for.

So one night it had been maybe a long intermission, or I got held up with something in the lobby after calling places, and when I got back into the booth I hopped into my chair, put on my headset, and the first thing I hear is the tech director, Lori, say “OK, we just need the little one.” Given the usual ritual of counting the kids at places, one would assume she meant the five-year-old girl playing Gretl. I press the talk button and say, “OK, we have the house,” and Lori says, “Oh, we can go now.” It now becomes clear that I’m the Little One. I thought it was pretty funny, and it stuck.