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April 13, 2010

Nick’s Revenge

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 9:18 pm

Nick has been seeking revenge on me for some time for some alleged misbehavior on my part. When we were in Tyler, TX, he executed his plan to get back at me, and then made a hysterical video about it. There have been many tour videos, but I think this one will stand out as the best. He made it in iMovie ’09 in about four hours on the bus.


March 17, 2010

I Have Found a Use for Twitter!

I call this: tech — Posted by KP @ 2:47 pm

So I’m at the hotel on a day off, thinking the rest of the crew is off partying for St. Patrick’s day. I settle in to sort my clothes for the laundry. When I do chores I generally like to put some music on.

I discovered yesterday that the hotel’s internet can’t handle Pandora reliably, so I start the Pandora app on my iPhone. I decide to tweet about how ridiculous that situation is, and open the Twitter website. In my feed I see a post from Nick (@nicktochelli) about how he’s doing laundry. Son of a bitch!

So I sent Nick a text asking if he was hogging the only machine, or if there were more. It also made me realize that I had a potential lunch buddy at the hotel, and wouldn’t have to go seek food alone.

Nick got back to me and said that he was moving on to the dryer so the washer would be available. We decided to have lunch at the bland and overpriced restaurant in the hotel, so that we could attend to our laundry, and because it’s raining and there’s nothing else close by.

See, without people tweeting things like “I’m doing laundry,” I would have dragged my ass, and my dirty clothes, all the way down to the laundry room potentially for no reason! This way I found someone to have lunch with and we got to coordinate our laundry cycles so I could get a machine easily.


March 16, 2010

The Crew

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 6:54 pm

Nick has already done his crew post, but I’m going to do one too.

Left-to-right in the photo:

Bobby – Technical Director
Bobby is the boss of the crew, and also takes care of most things involving our travel, like bus calls, hotels, and collects the money for crew rooms and the bus driver’s tip. Bobby spends the entire load-in instructing the local crew in the construction of the set, and at load-out supervises taking it down. He doesn’t have a show track, although he has done the ASM track for a few performances, and did the one move the second props track has when we were short-handed.

Olivia – Props Supervisor
We called Olivia by name as “Props” for a couple venues, when it was discovered that that was her billing in the program (as opposed to everybody else who’s “Lighting Director,” “Wardrobe Supervisor,” “Sound Supervisor,” etc.). That got straightened out when we got to New York, where she was then “Properties Supervisor,” which we all then said in a haughty voice. Now she seems to just be “Props Supervisor.” Naturally, she’s in charge of props. She’s also our truck boss. She and I keep the truck pack paperwork updated as things change.

Devon – Lighting Director / Balcony Safety Test Dummy
Devon supervises the preparation of the lights during load-in, but spends most of his time on his Macbook Pro, creating a custom light plot for every venue, that takes into account how many instruments they have (and what kind), how many dimmers are available, and what kind of lighting positions exist. Basically every venue gets their own lighting design that recreates the original as much as possible with what’s available. Because he spends so much time looking at each venue, he’s often the first to catch potential problems and warn me and Bobby when we might need to prepare for something.

He is also the Balcony Safety Test Dummy because he is often the first person to stand on the balcony when it’s installed, before the stairs are attached to it. A lot of our focus can’t be accomplished until the balcony is up, so Devon is usually chomping at the bit to get on it as soon as it’s “safe.”

Me! – Production Stage Manager
I do all the PSM stuff of course — I call the show, write reports, make sure the cast has whatever show-related information they need (since I don’t travel with them, the company manager handles their day-to-day schedule, aside from rehearsal or show calls). During load-in, I look over the space with Nick and do some basic set-up stuff (claiming our office space, printing any additional signage needed), and then go help Devon with focus for the next few hours. During load-out I’m on the truck crew, and maintain the truck pack paperwork.

Jason – Wardrobe Supervisor
Jason also served as Assistant Costume Designer on the show, so he’s been with the show longer than the rest of the crew. Naturally he maintains all the costumes and wigs, and he also has a full show track, which incorporates all the most difficult parts of the three wardrobe/hair tracks that existed at the Guthrie, so that the cast has a consistent person doing their most difficult changes. He is also on the truck crew, where he is immensely valuable for his height, long arms, and strength. Jason and I do the wall pack, which is its own special kind of Tetris with dozens of different-shaped pieces that have to go in the right way or else they won’t fit.

Nick – Stage Manager / Human Cue Light
Unless you’ve been blog-reading under a rock, you will have seen me reference Nick’s Tour Blog before. Nick has been my assistant since last year. During load-in he does most of the stage management stuff, such as putting up the callboard and directional signage around the theatre (using his signage purse), taping actors’ names over their dressing tables, distributing and collecting valuables bags, and using his trusty roll of white gaff tape to mark out which wings actors should enter from, and where obstacles exist backstage. He also assists Olivia with the setup of prop tables and the placement of Fred the Platform, which almost always requires some discussion. During the show he runs the deck. His track consists mostly of being a human cue light, cueing actor entrances (and a few crew moves) with hand signals. We decided this was easier and more reliable than worrying about actual cue lights, and unlike last year, his track is really simple, and without those cues he’d probably die of boredom. At load-out he’s on the truck crew, where his specialty is strapping all our stair units to overhead load bars.

Matt – Sound Supervisor / Stunt Carpenter
Matt loads in the sound equipment and mixes the show, as well as tying our wireless comm into the house system and making sure there are backstage monitors, and paging when available. He has one of the shorter load-ins, so he has taken on a role we like to call Stunt Carpenter, because he does a few specific parts of the set construction that are too difficult and/or dangerous to give to the local crew, most notably the attachment of the cornices (which are huge and waaaay heavier than they should be) to the top of the set. If he’s done with his Stunt Carpenter duties onstage, he usually joins the truck crew for the part of the truck pack where the cornices and other large objects are lofted up over the road boxes into the nose of the truck.

VIDEOS

Bobby has been filming our load out from various locations in and outside the theatre. He has compiled all these into a single video showing the entire process. Note especially the part of the truck footage where we occupy ourselves for the half hour we spend waiting for the walls to be down.

If you’re interested in seeing more, the videos are online in their entirety:


March 8, 2010

Nick’s Signage Purse

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 10:15 pm


Nick’s signage purse deserves its own post.

During the few days that Nick was off the tour, I had the opportunity to do his job myself. One of the things I have always been dissatisfied with is how we have organized our signage. All our signs live permanently in sheet protectors and there are many different types, and they’re slippery, and carrying a bunch around, along with tape and a dry erase marker, is a huge juggling act. And carrying just a few is a pain because you can’t just make a path around the theatre, you have to keep coming back for more.

So I grabbed an expandable folder thing, which was used by our predecessors and filled with old signage, took out all the old signs, and categorized it for our signs. When we got to New York, I showed my rough creation to Nick, and we both agreed that it needed a shoulder strap, because holding the folder was only slightly less annoying than holding the loose signs. So we cut a bunch of tieline and sized it for Nick. At first he was not happy that the folder was pink, but soon embraced it.


March 5, 2010

Nap Day

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 7:24 pm

Just a quick day-in-the-life post.

Today we had a two-show day, in the manner that only an education-based company can: a 9:45AM matinee, and an 8PM evening show. It’s a good thing our bus is so awesome.

We were all exhausted this morning. I mean totally exhausted — cast and crew — without much explanation. I have never been so tired while calling this show. I had a Monster energy drink when I woke up at 6AM. Most of the rest of the crew had Starbucks from the hotel. And none of it helped.

During the first act, Nick and I were bemoaning how tired we were (I’m calling from backstage here). I mentioned that I hadn’t had breakfast, and maybe that was part of it. Nick earned huge bonus points by going to the bus (which was right outside the stage door) and warming up some Pop Tarts for me, and surprising me with a Mountain Dew as an extra treat. After eating I felt a little more functional, but despite now adding a Mountain Dew to my energy drink, I was still really sleepy. We all spent the whole show fantasizing about how comfortable our bunks would be as soon as the show was over.

In the final scene, after all the dead bodies have been discovered, and the Friar is explaining his tale of woe, I was really tired of standing up.

A word about my chair: I have a chair, but it’s a regular-size, kinda odd-looking folding chair that’s not tall enough to see over the calling desk, so while I sit down during the long speeches and stuff, a lot of the time I have to stand, or lean on the chair.

So during the Friar’s speech, the show is maybe 2 or 3 minutes from ending, and I’m tired, as I think I mentioned. I just wanted to rest my weary feet by kneeling/leaning on the chair, as I had done throughout the show. Well this chair is kind of unusual as folding chairs go, and clearly I kneeled on a part of it that’s not balanced to have weight put specifically on that area. The chair began to tip, dumping me over, and although I didn’t fall all the way to the floor, I couldn’t stop the chair from crashing back to the floor when I fell off it. As clattering folding chairs go, it was a fairly small noise, and as calling desks go, I was relatively far from the stage, but it was unfortunately very quiet onstage. I did not recover quickly enough to look up and see if the actors actually looked offstage to see what the noise was. God I hope not.

Storytime:
While ASM on Frankenstein I had an incident in which I was moving quickly for a cue and tripped with both feet over a prop bag which had been left in the walkway, and went crashing between tables, masking flats, and finally smacking full force into the floor during a quiet duet. I of course couldn’t see it, but I was shown many reenactments of what Hunter Foster and Christiane Noll did in response to the noise. Both of them separately left the stage after the scene and asked me more-or-less if somebody had died. Aside from ruining my pants and getting floor-burn on my knees that left a scar months after the show closed, I did make my cue.

Nick was standing right next to me when the whole thing happened, and the two of us spent the rest of the show gasping for breath from trying to stifle our laughter. He says I need to wear a spike tape “F” for “FAIL” for the evening show. I think that sounds fair.

UPDATE: Nick has dedicated a post to this event, with pictures of my “F.” It’s entitled PSM Fail.

Once the show was over, we grabbed a bite at the student cafeteria, and then all of us took a nice long nap in our bunks (between 4-5 hours for most of us, which is about as much sleep as we sometimes get overnight). In the last hour or so, we’ve all woken up and gathered in the lounge. We’re watching CSI right now. We have to go back in in about 20 minutes, and we’re all rather sad to have to leave the comfort of the bus, but we should be well-rested for load out tonight. We expect this one to be good — we have a loading dock very close to the stage, and an efficient local crew.


March 1, 2010

New York Wrap-Up

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 3:15 am

Tomorrow morning we hit the road again. The entire traveling company is flying together, which is a first in my time. We’re flying to St. Louis, where we will meet our buses and drive to Poplar Bluff, MO for our next show. We spent a day in Poplar Bluff last year, and it was a good day. The students and technicians there were very friendly and eager to work. And the Holiday Inn had surprisingly good internet.

For the Children

Our student matinees turned out a little strangely. First of all, despite the enjoyment of fulfilling the company’s prime mission of educating audiences, a student matinee is usually something approached with a bit of dread, only because for some of us it means getting up at 5:30. In the morning. As opposed to most performances, which require getting up at 5:30, at night. So being home, and therefore for the most part farther from the venue than we would be on the road — in many cases much farther — we stumbled in for our 10AM matinee. The crew arrived for the 8:30 show call, the cast at 9:00 for warmup or 9:15 for fight call.

We drank as much coffee as we needed, and stumbled through our pre-show rituals. I turned the house over to house management, called half hour (or had Nick do it), and went to crash in the greenroom with the rest of the crew and some of the cast. At around fifteen minutes to curtain, Corey noticed that it was awfully quiet — on this particular day the doors were all open from the greenroom to the stage. “Shouldn’t 200 kids be making more noise?”

It’s my personal responsibility to put the show on the stage at the designated curtain time, and as everything was proceeding according to plan for that, I wasn’t really concerned with whether or not the audience was coming. But when Corey and Joseph quickly returned with the news that there was no audience, the greenroom soon emptied out.

We cautiously wandered onto the stage in the empty theatre, feeling a bit like we were trespassing by being on stage so close to curtain time. One actor described it as standing in the middle of an empty Times Square. But sure enough, there was no audience! Joseph got on the phone with the office, and with our education director, Justin, who was upstairs waiting for the kids to arrive. Nobody knew where they were.

I called five, still not knowing whether we were having a show. We learned that all the students were from one school, so if they had all decided not to come, there would be no show. We began fantasizing about going home and going back to bed (we had an 8PM show that night).

At 10AM, there was still no word. This was one of the weirdest experiences of my life. Actors wandered onto the stage in full costume for the prologue, ready to be at places. We all just sort of paced about, waiting to see what would happen, and marveling at the idea of being at places and having no audience.

Now, mind you, I have had the experience before, but in the situation of Off-Off-Broadway shows that legitimately have not sold any tickets. That’s a very weird situation, too, but entirely different when you’ve got a tiny unknown show in some hole-in-the-wall theatre and are aware of the possibility that nobody has heard of you or particularly wants to see you. But this was a sold-out performance, with no indication from the ticketholders that they weren’t coming!
Finally at 10:05 we got word that the first half of the kids were a block away. With the theatre being three stories underground, we knew that would still take a while.

The cast was very patient, conserving their carefully-stored energy for 20 minutes while we waited for all the kids to arrive. They were a student audience like only NYC schools can provide, but despite their talking through the whole show and spitting gum on the marley, they were listening, by golly! I expect student audiences to be rowdy, but personally all I care about is that they’re following the show. If they’re whooping and hollering at the sex jokes, they’ve already succeeded at understanding something about Shakespeare’s writing. This particular audience really got into the fights. I think that was definitely enhanced by the intimacy at Baruch, where the swords were flying just a few feet in front of their faces. One of my favorite moments during a student show is when, after an entire act watching the characters fight with sticks and umbrellas, Mercutio and Tybalt pull apart the canes they’ve been fighting with to reveal sword blades. The two fighting swordcanes were handmade specifically for the show by a weaponsmith in Minneapolis, and are quite badass — basically a long rapier blade with a tiny piece of wood for a handle, no hand guards or anything. I figure if anyone is left in the audience who’s bored or thinks they won’t see anything that catches their interest, that moment will do it. And these particular kids were big fans of that.

Our other student matinee of the week also had problems, but they were much simpler and solved earlier in the day — we got hit with a big snowstorm the day before, and all NYC schools were closed by the mayor. We had to get up, but we had official word by 6:30 that the show was off, and after a hastily-concocted phone chain, the whole company and local crew was notified, and we could go back to bed until our evening show. It’s too bad we didn’t get to do it, because we hadn’t had a talkback with the other group either, because the show started so late. Every time we’re supposed to have a talkback they end up getting canceled.

But other than the drama with the student shows, everything went well. We loaded out after the final show last night, which we feared would take until 5AM or later because of the convoluted route from the theatre to the street, but we closed the truck at 4:00. And thankfully we had today off so we could catch up on sleep during the day. We changed out some of our lighting equipment, which has made the truck pack a little nicer.

Other Thoughts

I miss the road.

I miss seeing the show. Baruch has the worst view I have ever seen from a booth that doesn’t supplement it with video monitors. When the house is full, you can’t see the stage. End of story. Even if there was no one in the audience, you’d have a big fence railing at exactly the height of an average actor’s face when they’re standing centerstage. So one thing I have gained here is a new appreciation for being able to watch the show. I think I may call from the booth at Poplar Bluff just for that reason.

I also noticed I got more sleep doing one-nighters on tour than I got here. Part of that is the painfully long commute from Washington Heights to 24th and Lex, and the other part is that being at home is full of things to do, as opposed to being crammed on a bus, or in a hotel room with 20 channels you hate on the TV. Also, when you’ve been working for 18 hours straight, there are few things more interesting than going the hell to sleep. When you’ve been working for 10 hours and sitting on a train for 3, there’s still a bit of a desire to be active and do fun things to make up for all the work and sitting around.

I am going to miss being home, though. I haven’t had my fill of snacking, playing computer games, and having unrestricted access to a toilet and a shower. I wish we’d had a few days off here before leaving, because our show and rehearsal schedule has been so hectic. But we have a 5-day vacation in about a month, so that will be a good time to just be at home doing nothing.

Oh, look, I’m supposed to get up in an hour-and-a-half. How does this happen? I hate flying. Hate. It. So. Much.


February 16, 2010

On the Bright Side, I Didn’t Die Last Night

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 4:48 pm

OK I’m going to follow up the death of Sadie with a funny story from last night.

We were loading out from Morgantown, WV. Our truck was at the dock, and next to it was parked a little box truck with some sound equipment in it. I’m not sure if it was gear rented by the venue for our show, or a totally unrelated show also going on at the school. Anyway, the point is it was not our stuff.

Shortly after they began loading this other truck, Olivia came back to our truck with some snacks — these things that were kind of like pigs in blankets, but with slices of sausage instead of hotdogs. While we were waiting for the next load to come from the theatre, we began eating.

I had taken one bite, when around the corner comes a giant speaker on a cart. Now to summarize in brief what our duties are on the truck crew, Olivia is the truck boss and calls the items onto the truck. I direct the items to the proper place and orientation according to our truck pack, which ensures that everything will fit. If something comes onto the truck that’s not what I’m expecting, or with different dimensions than usual, it’s potentially a big problem. Not being used to loading the truck alongside another one that didn’t belong to us, I was so startled to see this huge thing I’d never seen before that I inhaled a piece of sausage! After much coughing, and a trip to the hospitality table for water, I recovered.

Everyone was very glad that I didn’t choke on the sausage, because that would have been a really stupid reason to die.


February 11, 2010

Bam-Bam

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 10:07 pm

Last year towards the end of the tour, our truck driver, Scotty D., got a puppy. His name is Bam-Bam.

This was Bam-Bam last year, when his favorite hiding place was on top of the pedals of the truck.

This year he is a lot older and bigger, and has a new attitude: he is the guard dog of the truck. He does a very good job, although he sometimes takes his job a little too seriously, even when friendly people like us go near the truck.

At a recent load out, I saw him sticking his head out the window, so I took a walk down to the cab to say hello. Even with Scotty there talking to me, he wouldn’t stop barking, apparently declaring that this was his truck, and who the hell did I think I was to stand outside of it?

Scotty says that if you pick him up and hold him he’s still very cuddly, but I couldn’t reach up that high to pet him or pick him up, and I was supposed to be working, so I had to settle for taking a picture of him while he barked at me imperiously from his perch.


How Many Technicians Does it Take…?

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 9:52 pm


Apparently the answer is four: one to hold the sconce to the wall, one to hold the head of each bolt in place, and Bobby is unseen behind the wall tightening the nuts.

Installing practicals during load-in in New London, CT.


February 8, 2010

Alternate Stage Directions

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 7:25 pm

We here on the Romeo and Juliet crew decided a few days ago that we were tired of the traditional “stage right” and “stage left” and so forth, and we came up with some better alternatives to the boring “upstage,” “downstage,” etc. Sometimes we actually use them.

Below is our glossary for our new invention. Click to enlarge, and feel free to print, hang in your greenroom, or spread around the web.


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