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April 23, 2012

Eating Crow on Straight Fives

I call this: theatre — Posted by KP @ 10:54 pm

It is April 23rd, and as promised, I have returned to tell you what ended up happening with the rehearsal schedule for Marry Harry. In this post, I described a little of our first production meeting, and the fact that we were planning to do straight 5-hour rehearsals, which made me really happy. To which I said:

Pro tip: if your rehearsal schedule looks too easy, that’s usually because it is, and while you may be the only person to think that in pre-production, and the producer may say, “nope, this is really it — we’ve booked the studio time,” the director will realize it eventually in the middle of rehearsal and that booking will be changed. Let me tell ye: we shall see.

I promised to return once we were in tech, to answer whether as predicted, we ended up extending the rehearsal day. Let me tell ye, we did not. Nor did we deviate from our 11:30-4:30 schedule, once it was decided on during the pre-pro week. As I said, I was very happy to be proven wrong, and to stick to a nice predictable schedule.

I should also mention, lest you think straight fives are a cakewalk, that Brian and I have gone home totally exhausted every day, much to our amazement. As is typical in our profession, five or ten-minute breaks usually contain somewhere between zero and two minutes of actual not-having-to-work, and it’s hard doing that for five hours straight without a meal break to rest, eat, and catch up on paperwork or prop maintenance so that you’re not rushing to keep up in rehearsal. That being said, it was awesome and well worth it to get up long after sunrise, and get home long before sunset every day.

Honestly, once we got down to the last couple days, I almost wished we had done one or two long days, only because five hours is not long when you have a show in development and the writers come in with new material which needs to be rehearsed, scenes and musical numbers need polish, and then you want to get through a run. Once you’re running the show, the benefit of working for a longer period of time at a stretch becomes more important. However, this being a fairly easy contract, we were limited to six-out-of-seven hour days, in which you gain an extra hour of rehearsal, but sacrifice the loss of focus that comes with breaking for lunch. So it’s really not much overall gain over the straight five.

In addition to our awesome schedule, things have been going really well. I haven’t been saying much, but I have a backlog of some things I’ve been saving to talk about, especially how my iPad has been faring in its first production.


March 14, 2012

What I Do – Via West Wing

I call this: theatre — Posted by KP @ 4:39 pm

You may have seen this meme going around the interwebs, in which people illustrate their jobs using a series of photos to depict the perceptions various people have about them. I’ve seen a couple of humorous ones for stage managers, but had stayed away from doing my own, until I somehow realized my ideas could be expressed entirely in terms of West Wing characters. That made it fun for me, and also a bit enlightening, as this exercise requires you to be able to articulate how other people perceive you, what your job truly is, and how you feel about it.

If you haven’t seen West Wing, I’m sorry. Also, get thee to a DVD store. You’d only need Season 1 to get these references.

If you insist on depriving yourself of the best season of television ever made, I will supply a little cheat sheet to give some context:

1) Mrs Landingham, the President’s secretary. She makes sure he always has a pen and keeps him on schedule. She also has cookies.

2) Jed Bartlet, President. The most powerful man in the world.

3) Charlie Young, the President’s personal aide. Sometimes outsiders mistake him for the President’s bitch.

4) Gina Toscano, Secret Service agent. Always on the lookout for danger, and willing to sacrifice herself if necessary to get the job done.

5) Admiral Fitzwallace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. When he says the word “Go,” he can cue some serious pyro.

6) Leo McGarry, White House Chief of Staff. The President sets his agenda, and Leo’s in charge of making it happen.


February 24, 2012

Day -44: Production Meeting

I call this: theatre — Posted by KP @ 5:47 pm

Today I attended my first production meeting for a developmental presentation of a show that starts rehearsal in April. 44 days from now. No, that’s not normal. Also, I’m the ASM. Generally, unless you’re working on Broadway, the ASM’s contract starts 2 or 3 days before the first rehearsal, but I’m a big believer in getting involved ASAP if I’ve got no other work. I figure it’s more helpful in the long run not to have missed anything. Also, one of the biggest things I think I bring to the table as an ASM is my ability to function in place of the PSM when needed, and it’s hard to do that if you don’t have the same information the PSM has. So in pretty much any case where I’m told, “well, you don’t technically have to be there, but if you want…” I’ll go.

Anyway, it’s good I was there, because my friend Brian is the PSM, and he’s doing a show in New Brunswick which had one of those awful 10AM / 8PM two-show days today, and he didn’t make it in time. I took notes in Evernote, and cleaned them up and emailed them to him when I got home.

At the meeting we received a calendar, and an updated contact sheet (which we got in an email the other day). I hadn’t received the script yet, but it was waiting for me in my email by the time I got home from the meeting.

That led to an interesting situation towards the end of the meeting when I was asked, “does stage management have any questions?” I admitted honestly that all I knew about the show was the title, which got a good chuckle from the room. But it’s an interesting illustration that there are lots of things to think about at a meeting like this, that remain the same no matter what the show is. A lot of my initial questions usually revolve around the rehearsal situation: where is it (this was already answered, we have a nice studio at Pearl, which I’m thrilled about), whether we can tape the floor in the rehearsal room (and more importantly, leave the tape down overnight), whether we have storage at the studio. Usually I also want to get some kind of sense of what crew we will have when it comes to the actual run. In this case we’re presenting the show in a large rehearsal studio, and there isn’t planned to be any “backstage” space, so it looks like I won’t even be able to help with the running of the show, much less need a crew. Basically there will be sets, props, staging and choreography, and some level of sound to be determined by the acoustic needs of the space, but no lighting. So it sounds like Brian will be sitting around a lot, too.

With the hour-long meeting completed, I headed home with lots of new things to do.

The first thing I did was send Brian my notes.

Calendar

Then I finished putting the information on the calendar into iCal (which I had been doing a little of during the meeting). I always like this part of the process, when I first get something of a schedule. It makes me feel much more organized, and there’s always a moment of “what have I gotten myself into, anyway?” when I first see it laid out. This one is pretty nice. Straight 5-hour rehearsal days until we get to tech. I say that with the biggest “we shall see” possible!

Pro tip: if your rehearsal schedule looks too easy, that’s usually because it is, and while you may be the only person to think that in pre-production, and the producer may say, “nope, this is really it — we’ve booked the studio time,” the director will realize it eventually in the middle of rehearsal and that booking will be changed. Let me tell ye: we shall see.

I promise to let you know. I’ve got a reminder in OmniFocus for April 23rd, so you know I won’t forget it. I would love to have to admit I was proven wrong.

Contacts

After dealing with the calendar, I put all the contacts into Address Book. About 5 of the people on the production are people I’ve worked with before. When that happens, I generally don’t update their title and company from the first show I met them on, but I add a note listing any subsequent shows I do with them. I currently have 1,498 contacts, because I basically don’t ever remove people I work with. I will usually, but not always, remove someone who drops out of a show before it starts production (if I’ve had literally no contact with them). I also tend to remove non-professional child actors because the odds of working with them again are a bit lower. Of course I’ve still got contact sheets elsewhere, so nothing is ever really lost, but I like to have most of my old contacts at hand (and not have to type them again!)

This allowed for a rather funny exchange before the meeting as those of us getting settled around the table began introducing ourselves. I worked with the set designer about 4 years ago, we hugged and said hello. Then I turned around to meet the choreographer, and we both looked at each other and knew that we had worked together, but had no idea where. I threw out a couple show titles with no luck. I asked what her last name was (I was pretty sure I had matched the name with the face, but wasn’t certain), and began typing it into my phone. She was like, “Wait! Don’t tell me, I want to figure it out!” I pulled up her contact and said, “Wow! I never would have guessed that one!” and we began the meeting. Impressively, a few minutes later she figured it out. Anyway, that’s the most useful reason I never get rid of my contacts: I use the quick search feature on the iPhone constantly when I think, “I know that name — have I worked with that person?” or when I know I’ve worked with the person, but am not sure what show it was or what their role was on it.

If I was the PSM, I would then import all the contacts into my database and begin making my own contact sheet. But since that’s not my job, my involvement with the contacts is limited to making sure I have everybody in Address Book so they’re in my phone if I need to call anyone suddenly.

Props

Ah, props. One of the only jobs of the ASM. One thing was made clear at this meeting, there will be a lot of props. But — halleluja! — we have a prop designer, and he seems really on the ball. I actually kind of like managing props, as my title implies. When someone else makes them appear, and I don’t have to go shopping for them, it’s a source of great pride, as it is, after all, the only thing the ASM really does independently.

I don’t know anything about what the props are yet, except a vague notion that they will be largely kitchen- and restaurant-related, but in preparation for this onslaught, I have prepared my blank prop spreadsheet. You can find the template for it on the templates page.

Script

My last post made it clear that I don’t particularly like reading scripts during pre-production. As a result, this is the only part of all the information I received today that I haven’t fully processed. I still have 44 days. Maybe 42, since I might be able to get a good start on the prop list if the script is descriptive enough.

As is apparently my new M.O., I made the script into a PDF and then emailed it to my Kindle, so the next time I go somewhere I can start reading it on the train. I’m visiting my parents on Monday, that should cover it. Something I just thought of: I can even take notes on the Kindle as I read, to mark mentions of props and other things of import. That would remove the main advantage of reading on paper. I’ll give it a try.

The Cloud

So to recap where all my information on the show is:

  • The calendar is in iCal, which through the magic of Google Apps is synced instantly to my phone, and available on the web with Google Calendar.
  • The contacts are in Address Book, which through the magic of iCloud is synced instantly to my phone, and is available on the web through the iCloud web app, which I have used approximately never, but if my computer and phone fell down a well, it would be an option.
  • The notes from the meeting (along with another note from when I got hired where I jotted down some simple info like my salary, and the dates of employment) are in Evernote, which syncs less-than-magically between all my computers and my phone, and is available on the web in case every piece of electronics I own has fallen in the well.
  • My task list pertaining to the show, which thanks to my work today is now empty except for reading and processing the script, is in OmniFocus, which also syncs less-than-magically between my laptop and my phone, and is not available on the web.
  • The script is on my Kindle, ready for reading. I think it actually saves a copy on Amazon’s servers, but really, who cares?
  • All the files pertaining to the show, which right now are the contact sheet, script, and prop list, are on my Dropbox in a folder I’ve created for the show, which syncs instantly between my computers, and less-than-magically to my phone.

So that’s where everything is now. I should be caught up for some time, and ready to process any smaller bits of information as they trickle in. There was some casual talk about having another meeting in about two weeks. For now, I’m going to do my taxes tonight!


February 22, 2012

eReaders Make Reading Scripts Less of a Pain

I call this: tech,theatre — Posted by KP @ 8:57 pm

Last week I did a reading of a new musical. As with pretty much any process, at some point before the first rehearsal (ideally well before the first rehearsal), you have to read the script. This helps you not look like an idiot when other people on the production start rattling off names of songs and characters and expecting you to have some clue how they relate to each other, and is especially necessary once you start working on the schedule.

No matter how excited I am to do a show, I always have difficulty getting myself to read the script for the first time. Finding a time I want to sit down (or lie in bed) for probably a couple hours is hard for me. Once I get through that initial reading, I don’t mind sitting at my desk and taking notes, and beginning paperwork related to the script. I just need a reason to crack it open and sit through reading it.

Since I purchased a Kindle 4 this fall, I’ve been taking my books everywhere. When I got the script for my recent show, the first thing I did was forward the PDF to my @kindle.com email address, so that it would automatically sync to my Kindle. The next time I left the house, I had the script with me in an easy-to-hold format, and by the time I had completed my round-trip commute, I had read the script. It was also pretty interesting because this particular PDF was formatted with the score and script pages intermixed (which is normally weird, but works great for a reading where the actors have to perform with script in hand). The lyrics on the sheet music were very tiny and hard to read, but it was workable.

I really enjoyed this solution, and plan to keep using it. If you get a script as a PDF or other digital format you can convert to PDF, and have any kind of eReader or tablet, I highly recommend it.


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 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.


October 14, 2011

iOS 5 for Stage Managers

I call this: phones,tech,theatre — Posted by KP @ 1:54 pm

Now that Apple has released iOS 5, here are a few new features I’m finding particularly useful for stage management.

Reminders

If you’re a seriously anal stage manager with some disposable income, you may have already invested in some of the more robust and expensive task management apps like OmniFocus or Things, but if you like to keep your tasks more simple or cost-free, the Reminders app is a great addition. It also syncs with iCloud so you can see your tasks on all your iOS or Mac devices. One of the features of this app, and the new OS in general, that I’m most excited about is geofencing — the ability to have it remind you when you enter or leave a certain place (like your home or theatre) based on your GPS location.

I’m a heavy OmniFocus user, but I think I’ll probably be using Reminders to keep track of simpler short-term tasks like shopping lists. I also want to compare the geofencing abilities of Reminders versus OmniFocus.

Clock

Please note, the timer now has a “pause” function. I’m struggling a little with when you would use this — perhaps if the earth stops rotating for a few minutes while you’re on a ten? But I add it because it’s the kind of feature Phil Schiller is never going to bother to tell you about in a product launch, and you may have more inventive uses for the timer in your workflow than I do.

iCal

Week view in iCal!!!!!!

I don’t know about you, but I always have my calendar in week view on the Mac. With the Retina Display, I couldn’t fathom why I couldn’t have a teeny-tiny week view on my phone, too. Well now if you tip the phone sideways, you can. Only one minor nitpick from a stage management perspective: when you swipe to the side to advance through the days, it has a little division between Saturday and Sunday, denoting the new week. Of course the Equity week starts on Monday, and there’s no way to change this. So if you’re counting hours on your tiny screen, you may be a little distracted by having to break up the week differently than is indicated, but this is a very minor inconvenience compared to the awesomeness of having a week view at all.

Note: there is one roundabout way to do this: under Settings/General/Date-Time/International you can select United Kingdom, and that will fix your week start problem and leave you with a host of other problems in the formatting of your date, time, phone numbers, etc. Unless you’re British, at which point you’re totally set already and are probably wondering why we silly Yanks start the week on Sunday anyway.

Flags in Mail!!!


Finally! Seriously!! How hard was this? This is one of those things that even the simplest mail client on any device should be able to do. I could do a Let Me Tell Ye on this alone, but now it’s fixed and all is forgiven, so I won’t. You may now go about marking emails you need to follow up on, and when you look at them on your phone they won’t blend in with whatever other crap is in your inbox.

I should also mention that I’m having some issues with flag status updating between devices. So it’s more of a theoretical “finally” than an actual solution. It seems to work better on my iCloud account than on Gmail.

Notification Center

Finally iPhone users who don’t jailbreak can have a feature that other smartphone users had over 5 years ago — something we used to call a “today screen” back in the PDA days, which was even longer ago.

One of my favorite things about this little applet is that I was on a train last night and every time I looked at my notifications, the weather had updated with whatever city the train was passing through. I didn’t even notice it, it was just there. This would be great for the road — no more having to remember to update your weather app with where you are.

You can pretty heavily customize (for Apple, at least) the apps that appear on this screen, and how much they show you, and in what order. One problem is that you don’t have control over what calendars you can see. So say I have a work calendar (don’t be silly, I have six work calendars) and a personal calendar, but I don’t want to clutter up my notifications with my personal appointments — you can’t turn that off, even if you hide that calendar in iCal. What’s worse is that you can’t get rid of the birthdays calendar. So one day when I had three contacts with birthdays, that took up most of my 5 appointment slots, and pushed off things like, you know, the performance I had that night. You can have it show you 10 appointments, but then you’d have to scroll to see any other type of notifications. It would be great to be able to hide certain calendars from the notifications screen, and give them an order of importance, the way you can with what apps appear.

It would also be nice to get rid of that nasty linen background, but I assume we will have to jailbreak or wait for several years to pass before that happens. The linen, it grows on me not.

Find Friends

This would be awesome on the road. You’re on lunch break during load-in, and somebody finds a cool restaurant. See where all the members of your cast/crew are during the day and meet up somewhere. Nick and I once walked all the way around the campus of Minnesota State University Moorehead in like a foot of snow, on top of a sheet of ice, looking for our bus, and never found it. Now we could just walk directly to the location of our colleagues on the bus.

Otherwise it’s a little stalkerish, but this app would be amazing for keeping track of a group in an unfamiliar place, which is pretty much the definition of stage management on the road.

iCloud

I don’t think of this as a big deal because I’ve had MobileMe and Google Apps for years, but if you haven’t been syncing your contacts, calendar, emails and bookmarks instantly over the cloud, you now have no excuse not to enjoy the convenience and security of knowing that your data is updated everywhere without you having to do anything.


October 1, 2011

Designer Run

I call this: theatre — Posted by KP @ 10:33 am

A thought from yesterday:

Designer Run: so called because the designers are there, and everybody else is running around trying to finish blocking the show so the designers don’t think we’re idiots.


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