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February 19, 2012

A Real Nice Clambake

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 8:58 pm

I was going through a lot of old paperwork today, and I discovered this gem:

This is from the 2005 production of Carousel at The Reagle Players. The musicians at Reagle have a long tradition of making funny signs to display in the pit, generally referencing the songs in the show.

Sometimes the pictures never leave the pit, but are displayed along the inside of the pit rail so the actors can also enjoy them. When I want to be let in on the joke, they have to take the picture down and pass it to the conductor so he can hold it up to the video camera.

I’ll leave it to you to figure out what show that was.


February 16, 2012

I Sent a Resume: Episode II – The Company Writes Back

I call this: theatre — Posted by KP @ 5:03 pm

You may want to read Episode I, if you haven’t already.

In the first development since I submitted my resume a week ago, I received a form letter acknowledging that they got my materials. It warns that they have a lot of applicants and not everyone will get an interview. I don’t know where they draw that line, but I’m pretty confident that I’m comfortably above it.

Interviews are next month, so I’m just going to patiently wait, while keeping an eye out for other job listings. My job hunt has been basically outsourced this week, while I’ve been doing this reading. My awesome assistant, who long-time readers will know as Ashley, formerly stage management intern at the Guthrie, and now New York-based stage manager, has also been looking, and has been showing me listings for anything I might be right for. Nothing really interesting has come up yet.


February 8, 2012

I Sent a Resume: Episode I — The Saga Begins

I call this: theatre — Posted by KP @ 6:37 pm

I’m a big believer that sending cold resumes doesn’t really work. Stage management, especially PSM work, is such a tricky thing, nobody will hire somebody they don’t trust, because if they screw it up their whole show could potentially be a disaster. This means they hire somebody they know, or they hire somebody that somebody they know knows.

However, I’m aware of some cases where a company gets really desperate and hires somebody from the pile of resumes they receive. It does happen, I just don’t have enough faith in it to bother with a process that used to require paper, ink, envelopes and stamps, as well as hours of staring at a blank page that it is hoped will eventually become a cover letter. I stopped torturing myself with this process somewhere around the age of 22.

I have done just fine for myself by essentially waiting for my phone to ring, my email icon to bounce, or a conversation with a colleague to turn into something. However, lately I’d like to branch out to working with different people. I’d like to do the same job I’ve been doing with other companies that pay more. And I’d like to keep my health insurance. So I have decided that it couldn’t hurt to put myself out there for jobs that I know I’m qualified for, that I want. Also, things have changed a lot since I was 22: stamps are no longer a requirement, and I’m not hung up about my resume making me look inexperienced or unqualified.

Today I sent out a resume. If you’re curious what it contains, hit the big “RESUME” link in the navbar up yonder. This job listing was for a PSM position with a well-known purveyor of summer musical theatre productions. I intend to apply for many similar jobs, but for now, I’m curious to see the journey of this first humble resume across the interwebs to its final conclusion, whatever that may be.


February 1, 2012

Another Stage Management Survey

I call this: theatre — Posted by KP @ 3:41 pm

Remember that survey I totally forgot to tell you about? Well I’m making amends today.

Through the magic of Twitter, it came to my attention that a stage manager / tech guy named Tim Boucher is conducting his own survey about how stage managers use their scripts. Like the University of Iowa survey, it also focuses a lot on software and technology issues. He’s looking to gather some data for the purposes of developing electronic script-making software. If you’ve read the post I linked above, you know that this is an area of stage management technological development that I think is still lacking a useable solution. So I wish him luck, and I wish to pass on the link to his survey.

Survey Link



January 31, 2012

Battleship in a Bottle

I call this: random — Posted by KP @ 3:45 am

This has nothing to do with anything, but I just have to share what I spent my evening doing:

I had been looking for some kind of hands-on project for a while, even considered the idea of building something geeky in a bottle, and had given up. Then today, while looking at all the stuff on my shelves and categorizing the things I don’t need, my eyes rested on the less organized part of my shrine to the ’80s (yes, I have one, and yes, it includes a Voltron), where I realized I owned a Battleship set. I didn’t even remember buying it (it’s not the one from my childhood — thanks, mom!). Suddenly what needed to go in the bottle became clear.

And thus, I put on seven episodes of West Wing, and this came out the other end.

Really, I am doing a reading in 2 weeks, and I have two jobs in April. In the meantime, I am literally whittling.


January 24, 2012

SM Survey Results Are In, Tech Questions Answered

I call this: theatre — Posted by KP @ 7:25 pm

Well don’t I have egg on my face. The results of the 2011 Stage Manager Survey conducted by the University of Iowa have been released. Of course I wanted to blog about it so you would know what the results of the survey were. As the first step of making my post, I wanted to provide the link to the post in which I told you there was a survey going on. So I typed in “survey” in the handy search bar over there on the right, and the newest result was from 2010 (when the results of the 2009 survey were announced). Seriously? I didn’t blog about it? And here I thought I was doing my part to raise participation. Thanks to @ThngsUrSMthinks, one of several hilarious anonymous Twitter stage managers, for pointing out that the results are available.

So… anyway, these folks at the University of Iowa do a stage management survey every two years. It’s advertised in the Equity News, and by the SMA, and on some other websites, but apparently not HeadsetChatter.com this time. Sorry about that. I definitely put it on Google+, where it was probably seen by about five people, and it sparked a lively discussion on the quality of the questions with one or two.

This year they got 614 participants, including 332 Equity members, which is about 15% of all Equity stage managers. The survey has taken on different themes each time it’s been given, and this year’s theme was technology, which of course is a subject near and dear to my heart.

Reactions to the Survey

My favorite question asked what electronics are provided by the producer vs. what a stage manager is expected to provide for themselves (result: you’re pretty much expected to invest in expensive electronics). The one problem I had with those questions (and said so on the feedback) is that when you sometimes work for very established companies with an office and infrastructure, and other times work by the seat of your pants, what you’re provided with can vary greatly, and the question addressed the issue as if you just have one job that never changes, there was no “sometimes” or “usually” in this section. I don’t assume I’ll have internet access in rehearsal, so I invest in the ability to bring my own, but when I’m working at the Guthrie, or New 42nd Street Studios, of course that’s part of the expected services in the rehearsal facilities (New 42 makes you pay extra for it, but any producer who refused to do so would be an idiot).

Calling from a Computer

I was a bit surprised at how many people had called a show from a computer (13%). It may shock you to know that I have not. Of course I find the subject fascinating, but I haven’t come up with a method that I feel comfortable with, that offers me a better alternative to paper. If it’s basically a script on a screen, with the added bonus of being able to crash in the middle of a scene change, or skip 50 pages at the accidental press of a button, then what’s the point? Also, you know I’m still gonna have a paper script next to me for emergencies, so I’m still doing all the work of maintaining the paper copy. Not to mention, I continue to mark up my script right up to the final performance, no matter how long a show runs (often I actually make calling notes during the final performance, and then realize I’m an idiot). Because of this, I often have the pencil in my hand the entire show — partially because I have a really nice pencil and I find fondling it to be relaxing, but also because I very often have just enough time to mark a dot or an arrow next to something before I have to move on and keep calling. There is no word processor on which I feel I could make notes so quickly and safely.

I did have ideas for an interactive script that would actually do something productive as you called it, like generating data in my database. I had this idea that I could streamline my recording of performance times and gather much more data on scene timings. For instance, I could click on a certain cue when I called it, which would then record the timing for that scene. I will occasionally divide a scene into 2 or 3 parts if they’re very distinctive, but having this in the script itself would greatly increase the number of individual timings you could have, for instance every time an actor enters or exits. Having scene timings from current performances would be very helpful. I can calculate how long is left in the act based on recent performance data, but I don’t have the focus to do scene timings once we leave the rehearsal room, meaning any calculation of how much time there is between Thing A and Thing B is an educated guess, but not nearly as foolproof as the above method. Also, it would be great for when the director asks why the first act was five minutes longer than last night: you could see easily if it happened in specific scenes, or if the pacing was different in general.

One day when I was bored on tour, I was mulling this over and considered a couple options, including building the script right into my database, and formatting the script in HTML which would then interface with a database. I gave up quickly on both, which is not to say they’re not possible, but they didn’t make me say “wow, that’s totally better than what I have now and it wouldn’t be a pain in the ass to implement.”

The survey did mention that one of the more popular methods of calling from a computer was using Pages to create scripts for the iPad. This made my ears perk up a little. I recall that the day I sat in the greenroom hopelessly typing out this:

was the same week the iPad was released, because I was calling every Apple Store we passed trying to get one for my dad. So I haven’t really revisited this concept since the iPad came out. I still don’t have one, but I’m teetering on the fence of it being a significant improvement to my workflow (if they release one with a retina display, I think that will push me over). The mention of Pages also made me go “huh!” because while I gave up using Pages for most things because the world runs on Word, the one thing Pages is awesome at is making it easy to create whatever layout you want. You will never be able to view that document in Word easily, but if you don’t ever need to, it doesn’t matter. I doubt the kind of interactive features I’m looking for would be do-able with a Pages/iPad solution, but it’s the first proposal of a computer calling script where I’ve been able to picture myself using it without the computer feeling like an obstacle between me and the script. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be as easy to hand off a script like that to another stage manager (right now, I presume, somebody is using my Comedy of Errors script or a document derived from being able to read it).

And finally, if you have read this far, you deserve a reward. I leave you with the somewhat embarrassing story of the closest I’ve ever come to calling a show off the computer:

I was just about to start a performance of Romeo and Juliet somewhere in Florida. It was a 2,000-something-seat theatre, and I was calling from the balcony. The path from the calling position to backstage was loooong. I had already done my check-in. I was plugging my computer in when we had some last-minute headset problems that we spent time trouble-shooting. Once those were resolved, it was just a few minutes before curtain time, and I reached for my script.

I had left my script in my workbox, which was in the green room, which might as well have been on the moon. I had been on my way to get it, and at the entrance to the green room was stopped by the company manager, and by the time we finished talking I forgot why I had been heading to the green room in the first place, and was focused on getting upstairs because it was getting late.

Sadly, none of our people backstage had needed to learn the confusing path to the booth to meet me halfway. I looked at my computer. I may have even opened the script in Word. I thought about the fact that I had called the show over a hundred times and was very comfortable with it. I considered whether I was crazy enough to call the first act from a Word document. I decided I wasn’t. I ran my ass all the way down to the green room and back, hopped into the booth (it literally involved a Dukes of Hazzard-style hop over a wall), threw my script down on the table, put my headset on and, being told we had just gotten the house, called the first three cues before even opening my script.

Bonus: I also forgot my Little-Lite, and called the first act using a glorified bite-light.


December 30, 2011

How Was Your Day?

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 8:45 pm

My day has been OK. I didn’t do much, other than fix what I broke while moving my domain away from GoDaddy as part of yesterday’s “Move Your Domain Day.” (If you’d like to know more about why GoDaddy and the proposed SOPA legislation suck, my new registrar, NameCheap.com, has a decent summary.)

Anyway, my day was just OK until a friend and reader texted me this shot of what was transpiring on 42nd Street:

I actually knew nothing about this, which is a wonderful thing, as my life experience has taught me that anything involving that truck and 42nd Street must have royally sucked for whoever was involved, which thankfully was not me.

So I say, godspeed, unfortunate Acting Company employees and hourly laborers! May whatever you were doing have gone quickly and without incurring the wrath of the NYPD and/or studio management. And as this was less than 4 hours ago, at the very least I hope it’s not still going on!


December 21, 2011

Truck Excursion Follow-up

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 6:33 pm

As I blogged, last week I was sent on a 2-day trip to upstate New York on a little truck-packing project for The Acting Company.

I was going to visit Adirondack Studios, where the set for the new tour of Julius Caesar had just been completed, to supervise the loading of the set into the company’s 53-foot trailer, in combination with the road boxes and part of the set for The Comedy of Errors that was already in there.

The staff at Adirondack was really friendly and helpful, and perhaps most notably, fed me incredibly well, from dinner at a local brew pub the night I arrived, to coffee on the way to my 7AM call, to a delicious lunch during our break from loading the truck. Our account manager and his wife were Acting Company alums from the ’70s and ’80s, so I got to hear lots of stories from the early days on the road, and share my tales of how much things have changed (or haven’t changed!) since then.

Perhaps my favorite part of the trip was the train station in nearby Fort George, where I stepped down off the train at night, literally the only person getting off the train, onto a completely empty platform. It was so awesome. I also got to wait a while for the train on the way home. It was a little busier, because there’s a gift shop/coffee shop in the old train station that got a little bit of traffic, but I got this cool shot down the tracks.

I won’t lie, it’s a cell phone photo, but click the image for a wallpaper-sized (1920×1080*) version. I generally hate wallpaper images that aren’t pixel-perfect, but I have to commend the iPhone 4 for failing in a direction that sort of makes it look like a painting rather than a blotch of pixels (especially the trees).

*I generally think 1920×1080 is the devil’s resolution, but the aspect ratio worked much better for this photo.


December 20, 2011

A Small Holiday Gift

I call this: mac,tech — Posted by KP @ 6:15 pm

This is not so much a holiday gift, as it is a re-gift. It’s a gift I’m giving to myself, that thanks to the wonder of digital property, I can re-gift to you at no cost to myself, with virtually no effort.

I have been a Mac user for almost 10 years now, and there are still a couple very basic, very useful keyboard shortcuts that I can never remember. And they’re the ones that aren’t just handy, you actually need them when you need them. Like how to bring up the Force Quit screen when your app has frozen and you can’t mouse over to it in the menu. Or how to put the computer to sleep when you’ve gone and unplugged the mouse (I don’t know exactly why, but this comes up more often than you might expect in my life).

So for a while I’ve had these two shortcuts (as well as another that I can never recall: how to bring up the dictionary) written on a post-it, because I got tired of having to Google them (on another computer or my phone, because of course the computer I’m trying to use them on is out of commission). But a post-it is rather ugly for something on long-term display, so I decided to print out a nicer-looking cheat sheet that I could tape to the shelf over my monitor with a little more dignity. I’m still embarrassed that I need them at all, but perhaps within the next decade I can actually learn them.

Voila!

*Results would be even better if you don’t use a crappy printer!

If you’d like to have one of these of your very own, just steal the image up at the top of this post and print it out at 100%. It will be ever-so-slightly smaller than a business card (which is largely unintentional, but hey — you can bring it in your wallet if you’re really afraid of being caught without these shortcuts).

Enjoy!


December 13, 2011

The TAC Truck, Year 4

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 6:10 pm

The other day, I was out at Ikea with my parents, buying a $10 lamp for my desk, which is seriously the most blogworthy thing that’s happened to me in weeks (thus my silence), when I saw I had a voicemail.

Heeding the old adage of theatrefolk, I checked the message because it was a 212 number (the theory being that nobody has a landline, and if you’re receiving a 212 call from an unknown number, it could only possibly be the office of a producer or general manager who’s calling to offer you a job!) As it is a surprising number of times, it was indeed the office of a theatre company, although I was unexpectedly greeted by a voice I knew: it was The Acting Company.

I think I’ve mentioned — maybe — that I’m not doing this year’s tour, but they know I’m in town and available for other stuff. This particular situation has to do with the truck.

The set for Julius Caesar has just been finished at the shop, up in Glens Falls, NY (for the upstate-challenged, that’s “way past Albany”), and as always, it’s big, and may not fit in the truck, and it has to get to New 42nd Street Studios for rehearsal tomorrow afternoon.

So, having a reputation as She Who Makes Things Fit in the Truck, I have been asked to go to Glens Falls to supervise the load out and make it fit in the truck.

The trickiest part of this assignment is not having to devise an optimized truck pack on the fly for a set I’ve never seen. The trick is going to be doing that successfully at 7AM. The company is sending me to the shop at great expense, not because I’m needed to load the truck, but because supposedly there’s something in my brain that will allow the truck to be loaded better. So really the best preparation I can do for this assignment is to sleep and drink coffee.

I requested an early enough train to get to the hotel at a reasonable hour to have dinner and get a good amount of sleep.

I’m on the train now, which is somewhere between a 4- or 5-and-a-half-hour ride, I guess depending on how express the train is. I have six proposed versions of the truck pack drawn up by the production manager, from which to draw ideas. Once the sun set and there was nothing to watch out the window, I sat with them on my tray table and looked them all over again. I’m optimistic that I can do better than what’s on paper, which of course is drawn conservatively.

Thankfully I don’t have to participate in the unloading of the truck (a load-in or -out at New42 is high on my list of things for which there is not enough money in the world), but I want to make it as easy as possible on the other end, and I know that I have an opportunity to test out some ideas, or create new ones, that will give the show crew a head start in finding clever ways of loading the truck for the tour.

What the truck might look like, and what the people unloading it might look like if they weren’t illegally parked in Times Square.

I’m excited to see the truck again, and to get a peek at the new set, even if I probably won’t have any idea of what it looks like when it’s broken down for travel.


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