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.
