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August 1, 2010

Hairspray Load in Day

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 7:49 pm

I know I haven’t blogged much about Hairspray yet. Usually that means there are problems, but in this case it’s been going very well. Today we did a stumble-through of Act I, which was very exciting, and made our first serious attack on Act II by staging “Big Doll House.”

Today our set (from Wichita Music Theatre) arrived in two trucks, straight from its closing last night at Gateway Playhouse on Long Island. The tight turnaround between the two rentals has been a great concern for us, but so far so good. We have a lot of backup plans for things.

Just wanted to share some very early photos of the pastel megaliths now crowding our stage and shop.

Miss Teenage Hairspray Scoreboard
Hairpray Set Arriving

The magical giant hairspray can in its travel rack.
Hairspray Can

And the back shop has zero floor space at this moment.
Yeah, That's Enough Storage


March 14, 2010

The Midnight Morning

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 3:43 am

Tonight at midnight, my alarm went off. In a more rational world, this might be because I accidentally set it for 12AM instead of 12PM. But no, I set it for 12AM. And I set my other two phone alarms for 12:45AM and 1:00AM. And my bedside hotel alarm clock for 12:45 as well. It is standard procedure for me to set four alarms for a load-in day. You’d be surprised how often I still nearly miss bus call.

Anyway, this midnight alarm was done totally on purpose. You see, yesterday was originally supposed to be our load in day. We have a 3:00PM show today, and when we start with a morning or afternoon show, generally we get in the day before and load in from 8AM to 6PM and then have the night off. Only in this case, there was some kind of beauty pageant at our theatre last night, so we couldn’t load in. Thus, we have to start load in with the same number of hours we would normally need to be ready for an evening show, which in this case means 4AM.

Adding further cruelty to this, it’s daylight savings day. So we are springing forward, meaning that sleep-wise, it’s actually more like a 3AM load in. I generally like an hour-and-a-half to get ready in the morning, because I like to have a little breakfast, drink my energy drink, read my regular websites, and then get in the shower and begin packing up to check out of the hotel. So since our bus call is 3:30 I would have to get up at 2AM, but since the time changes and the hour from 2AM to 3AM won’t exist, I really would need to get up at 1AM. If this is making your head spin, then you may understand why I decided just to set my alarm for midnight and see if I felt like getting up, so that I would be well clear of the whole time-change drama.

Sometimes, depending on my mood, I would rather lose an hour of sleep to have an hour of calm in which to spend more time reading the web, or as I am now, blogging. And since I woke up after three hours of sleep wide awake, I decided not to hit the snooze button. So now it’s 1:30, which will soon skip to 3AM, and I actually have a lot of time. But I did download the trial of Filemaker 11 overnight, so I thought maybe that would be fun to mess around with if I had more free time than I intended.

We had a 5AM load-in once before, in Fairfax, VA. I don’t remember much about it, except that it was very weird getting off the bus in what appeared to be the middle of the night. I was practically comatose, because it was one of the first nights of the Olympics, and I stayed up a bit too late watching speed skating, and then decided that I wanted to go up to the crew room to take a shower before bed. I still must have gotten more sleep than I did tonight, though. But sometimes being woken up by Bobby’s traditional “Good morning, sunshines!” 15 minutes before you have to start working makes you more groggy than waking up in an actual bed, in an actual room, with a shower, and not having to squeeze past six other people just to put your shoes on. There’s something to be said for being able to go to sleep anywhere and knowing you can sleep until 5 minutes before you have to start working, but I also like being able to organize myself and have some free time. I hope that I will have an easier time of it today.


March 12, 2010

Hartford, WI

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 2:33 am

After our Adventure in Brainerd, we moved on to Hartford, WI, where we enjoyed hotel rooms and a day off.

Today we are enjoying a one-nighter, in a cute little theatre known as the Schaeur Arts and Activities Center. We are as close to the edge of the stage as the marley has ever been, which prompted an 8:05AM email to Corey and our fight captain Chris, but Chris determined all would be well.

Again we had a drivable genie. This one has a large platform that can hold more than one person. Again Devon focused himself, and greatly enjoyed scooting around the stage. At the end of focus, we were doing our very last onstage light, and Devon brought the lift down, drove it to centerstage, and then realized he forgot to put the gel back in the light. Making a happy occasion out of it, he offered me a ride in the lift, and let me drive it back to position for him to drop the color, and then back to centerstage. It was really fun.

The show looked fantastic, and the theatre with its bare-wood columns (it used to be some kind of factory — a cannery, I heard) and its wrap-around balcony actually suggested something like Shakespeare’s Globe. I didn’t get a great picture of it, but I did snap this one during load-out.


February 21, 2010

Scotty’s Parking Job

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 1:09 pm

Last week we played at West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV, which is on the top of a big hill. There are two levels of loading docks, which I never quite got the big picture on (it was one of those venues where I never saw anything outside besides the space between the bus door and the entrance to the building, which was maybe 40 feet.)

But I heard tales of how Scotty barely was able to fit the trailer at the dock, and how he had nailed it on the first try. Maybe 10 hours later, I was setting up for the cast’s arrival and had to get something from the dock, where I had never been. By this time it was dark, but as I turned to leave with my stuff, I did a double-take as I saw the wall on the far side of the trailer. The trailer is 53 feet long — the wall looked to be about 54 feet away! And there, at a 90-degree angle, was Scotty’s truck. Wow.

I went back inside and said, “Oh my God, I just saw where the truck is!” and the crew confirmed that Scotty did it in one try, from the bottom of the hill. They also told me he took some pictures of it in the daytime, so I got those from him, so I can show off his handiwork.

The best thing about the above picture is Bam-Bam at the steering wheel, looking very proud of himself.


February 11, 2010

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 10, 2010

Winter Wonderland: I Wonder if We’ll Have a Show

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:39 pm

The big snowstorm has hit the northeast — the forecast to which we said, “Ha! Sucks to be them!” until we realized we were returning to the northeast. Damn!

We’re in New London, CT, which was lovely yesterday for our full day off, but today is quickly filling up with the white stuff. It may not look like much in the photo, but it’s really coming down, and Nick, who has been our bus-based meteorologist, says the forecast predicts 8-12 inches by 6PM.

We had an 8AM load in, which began at 7:30 with Bart driving carefully down streets already covered in a thin layer of snow. By the time we were unloading the truck, it was coming down pretty heavily. The presenter was already in meetings about whether we’d have a show tonight, or a school show tomorrow morning (which has more to do with the schools being closed than the theatre).

Because the theatre has very little storage space, we left the set on the truck until the last minute (and also because if the shows were cancelled early, we wouldn’t have to unload it). Also, there’s no loading dock, so taking things up and down the ramp and down the sidewalk in the snow is not something you really want to do if you don’t have to.

Here’s Juliet’s balcony, just delivered to the theatre, having accumulated a thin layer of snow on its trip around the corner from the truck.

We’re moving along at a very good pace, and at this, our lunch break, have most of the walls up. I’m calling focus again, and we’re most of the way through all the instruments we can focus before the set is finished. We’ve had three or four electricians going at once, so I’m getting a little more of a mental workout.

In other news, it’s very nice to be back in the northeast. Yesterday on our day off, Nick and I walked down to the waterfront, where the Amtrak station is, and the pier looks out on the river. I wanted to see a submarine float by, but no such luck (or maybe it did, and I wouldn’t know!) Being around the waters of Long Island and Connecticut reminds me of my childhood, so it was a nice way to come home to this region after being away since late November.

UPDATE!

The evening show is canceled. Tomorrow’s morning student show may still happen, so we have to continue working.


February 4, 2010

Tour Week 1

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 5:47 pm

We are now halfway through Week 1 of our actual touring schedule. Apparently, unless my dashboard widget is lying to me, it’s Thursday. Before I looked at it, I thought it was Saturday, but felt that was probably just my imagination and it’s really Friday. But no, I guess it’s Thursday.

Our last venue was in Grand Rapids, MN. The venue was in a high school, but gets a lot of touring shows. It was a very nice, intimate theatre with a semi-thrust stage. Unfortunately our show is designed for a proscenium, so due to the lighting needs, the first electric has to be over the edge of our marley deck, so we couldn’t use the apron as a playing space.

We’re in Appleton, Wisconsin. Last night during load-out in Grand Rapids, MN, a bunch of us were sitting in the green room finishing up paperwork, and I pulled up my venue database, which has many features, including that it automatically pulls up the Wikipedia page of the city in question. We learned many things about Appleton. Apparently in the late 1800s it was kind of a big deal — it had a large paper industry, which spurred development of electricity far ahead of most cities. We also found this interesting because our show takes place in 1912, and has a little throughline about how excited the Capulets are to have electric lights at their party. As I said to the assembled crew in the greenroom, “Appleton’s gaslit streets were replaced with electric lights in the year…” and everyone said, “1912!”

In addition to having been a pretty big deal back in the day, Appleton also has a very new, very fancy theatre, the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center. The theatre seats almost 2,000 and has three balconies, in a horseshoe configuration.

We’ve had some young and eager student crews (I have no idea what has happened to the poor high school kids we kept up till 3AM last night, but their parents must be pissed at us!), but today we have an honest-to-goodness IATSE crew. Sometimes that can be a mixed blessing, because a non-union crew can be used more flexibly, and we can pitch in to do more of the work ourselves if necessary. But at one point today a few of us were standing around watching a group of about six or seven stagehand-looking stagehands (men and women) putting up the walls and platforms of the set, and we remarked to each other how exciting it was to have an IATSE crew. It’s really a completely different energy.

Here’s a picture of our set facing out towards the house.

Last night at some point late in the day, our lighting director, Devon, mentioned that to speed things along, he would like me to call focus. Now, I am well aware that in the “real world” of touring, one of the stage managers generally does so. I have hung out with friends doing focus on the Phantom tour, but I am a bit embarrassed to confess I’d never had to do it myself. So when I was asked, I was rather excited because it’s something I need to get experience doing, so that I don’t make an ass of myself when Broadway calls, now that I supposedly have “touring experience.” Then I realized where we were going today, and I was kind of mortified. I told Devon, “You couldn’t have asked me to call focus with the high school kids? I would have been perfectly confident to do it with a high school or college crew. But I have to do it for the first time with an IATSE crew?”

It actually went really well. We only had one or two guys focusing at once, which was a relatively easy way to get into it. I also had no familiarity with the lighting channels used in our show and what they do, and now that I’ve seen it once, the order in which one would want to focus makes logical sense. We aren’t completely done at this point — we had to skip the lights that need to be focused on the balcony, because it’s not assembled yet.

For once, we don’t have a show tonight — but we do have a 9:30AM show in the morning, so all our work has to be done. It’s good that we have some flexibility because we got here late. The driving time between our load-out last night and this morning’s supposed 8AM load-in was far longer than the time we had. Once load-in is done we will get to check into our hotel and have a shower for the first time in a few days. Then we’ll do the early show and have the rest of the day to spend in Appleton.

For additional reading, I suggest the following of Nick’s blog posts. He has already said pretty much exactly what I would say if I went into detail about our first two venues:
Moorhead, MN
Grand Rapids, MN


February 2, 2010

Tour Stop: Moorhead, MN / Fargo, ND

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 6:04 pm

We have completed our first tour stop since leaving the Guthrie. We performed Romeo and Juliet at Minnesota State University Moorhead — home of the Dragons, which Nick and I thought was so awesome that we each spent $20 on a cool “Dragons” baseball cap, as well as our customary sticker for the road box.

The crew here was really great, and worked their butts off to get the show ready on time, on a very tight schedule. We had originally been scheduled to play tonight instead of last night, but the venue had to move it up a day, losing us of a day of prep time to work out the kinks of our first load-in (remember, most of our crew was not present for load-in at the Guthrie, during tech, or most of the run, so we were doing it for the first time).

The balcony stairs were assembled just a few minutes before the cast arrived, the cast was constrained to the house and the apron for their warm-up, and we did fight call with a Genie lift and about four electricians hanging set mounts inside the door of the “house” on our set. They were placing floor-mounted pars in the wings while the house was open, and Nick was following them around with white gaff tape, marking all the lights and cable for the cast. Because the balcony was finished so late, we didn’t have time to install the decorative lightbulbs that go on the stairs, and figure into the setting of the story at the time of the dawn of electricity. There are three specific moments in the show that reference the lightbulbs, and I called Corey (our staff director) when it became apparent that we definitely wouldn’t have time. Their absence was covered very well, and nobody would have known something was missing.

There wasn’t any time to double-check things the way we normally would, so there were some surprises. A few programming differences popped up in the transition between the Guthrie’s light and sound consoles/computers to our own, and my comm went haywire twice early in the show, before we tracked down the bad cable. We were minutes without comm, but the proximity of the booth and front of house positions, and where in the show it happened, were in our favor, and we didn’t miss any cues.

We loaded out this morning instead of last night, which is rather unusual. That also took an abnormally long time, partly because we had a student crew who had to work around their classes, and partially because we’re working on our truck pack, and were moving slowly to make sure we were making the best choices. We still have room for improvement, but we did a good job, I think. The truck is definitely full, although we have quite a few excess road boxes that are going away when we return to New York.

My job for load out officially was to stand around with a notepad and document the truck pack. In addition to this, I did some labor myself. The highlight of the doing-things-that-aren’t-my-job day was getting to run the hydraulic lift that brings things from ground level up to truck level. The vast majority of the time, I was on the truck, but I did get to run the lift once up and down, just because I wanted to. My proudest moment of the day came when I was successfully the Person Who Can Cram Into a Small Space. We were storing our stair pieces overhead and needed to strap them around the load bars, but had already packed the balcony and stair landing underneath them before we decided to do that. Nick was looking hopelessly at the spot on the wall of the truck where we needed to attach the strap, but I felt I might able to climb up and reach it. I don’t always feel very small or very light, but in this case I was small and light enough.

We have checked out of our hotel in Fargo, and are hanging out on the bus until 2AM when Bart will wake up and drive us to Grand Rapids, MN for our next show tomorrow night. Some people are napping, some playing/working on the computer, and some chatting in the front lounge. I think there are plans for dinner, which would be our first dinner as a crew. Right now I’m going to get out of my bunk and snack on some Goldfish and/or jerky until dinner time.


February 1, 2010

On the Road

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 5:15 pm

This morning was our first load-in. We finished load-out from the Guthrie around 2:30am, and after saying goodbye to our local crew, were on the road and in bed by around 3:30.

At around 7:45am I was greeted by a voice outside the curtain of my bunk saying, “Good morning! Happy first load-in! It’s one degree outside!”

In some sort of tour-booking cruelty, after two months in Minneapolis we’re going north, to Moorhead, MN. It’s right next to Fargo, if that helps you place it on the scale of places-you-know-are-generally-cold-in-February.

It is indeed cold, but not as windy as Minneapolis tends to be. The entire surface of the ground is covered in about a half-inch sheet of ice, and it’s been snowing all day. To add to this, our bus could not park near the theatre, so it’s either a long walk or a short drive away. Nick and I searched for it for an hour, missing it by just a few yards at one point, but we did get to see the four corners of the campus of the University of Minnesota at Moorhead while looking. That was hours ago, and my feet are still frozen.

We’ve been working on our signage today, and once we leave the bus, we’ll be hanging it up, and then getting ready for the arrival of the cast. The crew here seems great — very eager and friendly, so I think it will be a fun show.

I already miss our Guthrie friends a lot, but I’m also excited to see who we’ll meet in all our other cities.


December 28, 2009

Load In

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 10:30 pm

One of my favorite stories from the tour so far:

This morning I came into the rehearsal room to find a shipping receipt folded on my desk. This isn’t completely out of the ordinary. Sometimes things get sent to the theatre in my name, such as props, the payroll/mail packet from New York, and so forth, and whoever receives it leaves the receipt for my records.

I didn’t recognize it, so I picked it up to see what it was. The delivery was itemized thusly:

Qty Description of contents Weight
1 trailer load of theatrical effects 21,000lbs.

It was a slightly bigger package than what I was imagining when I saw the receipt. I think the dimensions of the box are something like 53ft(L) x 8ft(W) x 13ft(H). I wonder if the Postal Service offers a flat rate box for that.


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