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March 11, 2010

Cedar Falls, IA and Our Adventure in Brainerd, MN

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 7:10 pm

I’m a little behind. Here’s a wrap-up of our last two venues from earlier this week.

Cedar Falls

I barely remember Cedar Falls, which is weird because we were only there three or four days ago. What I do remember was our hotel, a Holiday Inn with an indoor atrium containing a pool and an arcade. The day we arrived there was some kind of convention. I think it was the Society for the Promotion of Screaming Running Children and Drunken Parents, but I might be mistaken. Anyway, the rooms had full-wall windows facing directly onto the atrium (mine formed one wall of the arcade) which didn’t quite get completely covered by the curtains, and the beds were closest to the window. So it was very noisy and a bit concerning to one’s privacy.

In comparison to the hotel, the venue (at the University of Northern Iowa) was a breeze. It was a very large theatre (1,600 seats) with the most amazing acoustics we’ve ever encountered. A little too amazing at times, as from my calling position in the down-left corner, I had to be really quiet because my calls could be heard onstage. It was a really beautiful and convenient space. The most unusual thing about it was that for our student matinee they had a big projection screen that flew in, on which they projected excerpts from the show and R&J trivia while the kids filed in and waited for the show to start.

Brainerd, MN

TRIVIA: Brainerd is one of the settings of the movie Fargo (it’s where most of the murders take place, and where the infamous woodchipper scene happens). This was one of those venues where we saw nothing outside the parking lot of the venue, so I don’t have any fun stories about that.

This one was an adventure, but one with a happy ending. When we arrived at 8AM for our load-in, there was no crew. By maybe 8:15 or 8:30 we had found somebody to let us in, and we had one crew member, Josh. Josh, while a big strong guy, was not quite capable of replacing the 15 people our tech rider requires. Without knowing what we were dealing with, we couldn’t even begin to start loading in. Some people were assembled from every corner of the college, but we didn’t have many (any?) people who could work the whole day — most could only work for an hour or two at a time between classes and other things. After some phone calls to the office, we determined that we would do the show somehow, though we definitely wouldn’t have time to attempt to put up the whole set.

Last year, you may recall, we performed Henry V twice without the set. On those occasions we did it on purpose, in venues that were simply too small to fit it. We also knew in advance that we would have to do the show that way, and weeks of planning went into it. It also required about five hours of rehearsal. Eleven hours before the show, we had no plan for how to do R&J on a bare stage, aside from our one-hour version, which could be adapted into the full version, but not without much rehearsal.

I’m going to talk at length about our decision-making process, because while I hope it’s a decision nobody else ever has to make, things do happen on the road and one of the most difficult and most important things about touring is being faced with a situation that looks impossible at first glance, and figuring out how to put on the best show possible.

At first we were kind of stumped. We sat on the bus and tried to brainstorm. The fact that it was 8AM probably didn’t help our minds to work any faster. We had several options immediately, none of which we really liked:

  • we could do the regular show on a bare stage, which would require a very long, probably painful rehearsal
  • we had the one-hour show ready to go, but people have paid to see the whole show, and it seemed like a cop-out
  • we could do the full show with costumes, but using the one-hour staging, but there are some significant differences between the two shows, which would have to be carefully worked out

One thing that we kept hitting upon was that the show can stand well on its own, but the one thing that Romeo and Juliet really requires, that audiences expect to see, is a balcony. Somehow we had to create a balcony, even if it was low to the ground. Jason, our wardrobe supervisor, I think had the idea of using one of our balcony pieces on its travel wheels (the balcony and the stair landing each have four giant casters with brakes that slide into the bottom corners so they can be wheeled for travel). That was the best idea we had so far.

In order to know what we had to work with, here’s a picture of our set as it normally is:

The staff was just arriving at the New York office (at 9AM their time) when we began our ordeal, but once we were able to fill them in on what was happening we began working amongst ourselves to decide what exactly to do. The first step was to call Corey, who is the staff director, and responsible for the artistic decisions on the road. I filled him in on the very quick-and-dirty version of what was going on — that we couldn’t put up the whole set and we had to decide what we could do, and it would probably involve a lengthy emergency rehearsal. Corey immediately began arranging for a cab to get to the theatre.

While he was en route, the rest of us continued racking our brains for a good solution. Bobby continued assessing how much we might be able to accomplish, as more workers showed up. We played off the idea of using the balcony landing on its wheels as the only real set element, but Bobby offered to put up the whole balcony.

“You could do the walls, and the platforms and the escape stairs?” I asked.

Yes.

Now we had something that was functional. Somebody else, maybe Olivia, chimed in, “that would also give us the hobbit hole.” The hobbit hole is the tiny door under the stairs, that’s part of the same wall set that the balcony door is in. Having both the balcony entrance and the hobbit hole would give us most of the distinct areas that exist in the show and help to distinguish the setting for each scene.

With the two farthest stage-left walls in place, the only other entrance we needed was the up-right door, which ideally requires access from upstage center. There was some miscellaneous masking hung, and I concocted a scheme whereby we took one of the curtains and essentially used it to form the rest of the wall between the balcony and the stage-left side of the up-right door, thus giving us an entrance that was identical in function, although it would not be enclosed on the stage-right side. Upstage of it would be a black traveler, which would mask the escape stairs. Because the “wall” curtain wasn’t angled like the set is, the offstage space was a little narrower, but the lack of physical walls upstage actually gave us more space because the area under the escape stairs was open for prop storage, quickchanges and passage by actors and crew.

As we were finalizing this plan, Corey arrived. We proposed our solution, and he agreed it seemed like a very good idea. My favorite part of it was that it didn’t change the blocking at all. Once the actors were introduced to the concept of “this curtain = this wall,” they could go about their business as usual. Corey and I agreed no rehearsal was necessary, and by the time he left had scaled back our estimate of bringing the cast in an hour early, to 15 minutes early. If all went well with the installation, it literally changed nothing.

The set construction went well, as did lighting focus, thanks to the cool drivable Genie they had, which Devon drove around like a kid in a Toys R Us commercial. The main problems we had to solve involved the fact that the proscenium is only 13′ high, and the drops are correspondingly short. Our set is 18′ high, which creates a problem: the drops don’t reach the floor before the pipe hits the set. By like, a lot. Like three feet. So we took some spare legs and pinned them to the bottom of the legs that were there, to extend the length of the downstage “wall” masking, and used some black fabric we bought for the New York run to do the same for the upstage traveler. It wasn’t as pretty as if they had been a single piece of fabric, but under stage lights they looked pretty nice.

We had one gap up-right where the side masking didn’t quite meet up with the upstage traveler, but it was better than some venues we’ve played. Unfortunately that was the side the dressing rooms were on, so cast, crew and dressers were going to be crossing through the gap all the time. We were brainstorming how we could build a flat out of our unused pieces when the venue staff offered to paint one of their stock flats black for us. Problem solved! They also built a very nice railing for us for the downstage side of our escape stairs, which normally don’t need a railing because there’s a wall. I was determined that we had to have some kind of makeshift railing at least on the upper half of the stairs, even if it was made out of spare pipes and cheeseboroughs, but what we got was much more sturdy and appropriate than I had hoped for.

In the late afternoon, when the set and masking were finished, I took this picture and sent it to the cast and Corey, with a basic explanation of how it worked, so they could begin to get used to the idea.

When the cast arrived they were great sports about it. Ray (Friar Laurence) saw that “his” side of the stage, including his favorite offstage chair upstage of the hobbit hole, were completely intact, and decided that as long as that was the case, all was well!

Christine (Lady Capulet), however, is a little more attached to the stage right wall of the set, which often represents the Capulet house, and lamented that somebody had burned her poor house down!

It took very little explanation for them to get used to the idea of the set, and nobody had any concerns to raise about things that wouldn’t be possible with it. Every time we arrive at a venue we do a walkaround right before fight call, where we quickly sketch out the parameters of how the show functions in the venue: which wings are dead, which have hazards like floor-mounted lights or cables, we confirm which wing Tybalt’s body goes off into, and where Fred the Platform (we have recently learned his Equity name is Frederick von Bedthoven) lives offstage. The boundaries of all the pieces of the set are drawn in paint pen on the marley, so I pointed out to the cast that they could look down and see these marks if it helped them with spacing. The process took a few minutes longer, but the cast is used to having to adapt somewhat for every space, and there are alternate plans in place for a lot of things, that we already have a shorthand for (i.e. “we’re using Guthrie masking,” “Fred is onstage similar to the Baruch position”).

And here’s a picture of the set under lights:

The happy ending to the story was that not only was the 284-seat theatre sold out, but they were turning people away at the doors, and crammed every last person they could into every empty seat that was unclaimed at curtain time. When that kind of thing happens, the lucky ticketholders see the commotion at the box office and tend to get really excited about the show they’re about to see. They really enjoyed the show, and were a more vocal audience than we’ve had lately. At intermission I was told that about 80% of the audience had never seen Shakespeare performed before, which was amazing to me given that they were following the show so well. At the end of the show we got a full standing ovation, which has only happened once before. So we left having had a great time, and clearly still were able to educate and entertain our audience.


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 4, 2010

Tour Update: Poplar Bluff, MO and Springfield, IL

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 10:46 pm

We’re back on the road again, for a couple weeks in the Midwest. We have a new bus driver, Jim, and a new bus which is AWESOME. This bus is everything like the buses of legend we’ve heard about for the last two years. First of all, it has a slide, which means that when it’s parked, one wall of the front lounge moves about two feet out from the bus, doubling the amount of legroom between the couches.

Most of the time we spend on the bus when it’s moving, we’re asleep, and most of the time we’re trying to get work done or relax, we’re parked, so this has a huge impact on our comfort. We also like to all hang out together, and the large couches, combined with the slide, make it much more comfortable for all seven of us to be in the front lounge at once, without somebody getting stuck standing in the doorway. Nick and I will be doing a revised bus tour video soon.

Poplar Bluff, MO

Poplar Bluff (Three Rivers Community College) was our second stop on the tour last year. It was also our first one-nighter. This year felt a little bit different because we’re arriving later in the tour. The first couple venues are always a little bit awkward because we haven’t figured out the best way to install the set, load the truck, and set up the backstage area and dressing rooms. So it was a somewhat different experience to return, knowing exactly how things had to go.

We also got to see a little more of the town because our runner took us out to lunch at a local buffet for some Southern cooking. It was really interesting to actually be a part of the small-town atmosphere. The cool thing about Poplar Bluff is that it’s really the epitome of why we tour. There isn’t really any other professional theatre that comes through there, and the students, staff and audiences were very excited to see us. The show was not only sold out, but they were adding extra seats to accommodate all the people who came to buy tickets. At the end of the show we got our first full standing ovation ever (aside from our invited dress, which really doesn’t count).

Springfield, IL

Springfield is pretty much the opposite of Poplar Bluff — a 2,000-seat IATSE house with all the bells and whistles, in a state capital of over 100,000 people. The theatre where we’re playing, the Sangamon Auditorium, is the house where all the national tours play. In fact, about ten years ago I saw the tour of Chicago there (and ended up randomly selling merchandise at the end of the show when one of the workers got sick). I was very excited to see it on our itinerary, and being here has given me a warm fuzzy feeling that I didn’t quite expect. I mean it’s not like I haven’t stage managed in theatres where I grew up seeing shows, but I guess this one is a little more unexpected, so it feels more special.

We completed our load-in today. The crew was great. I did focus for the first time in a couple weeks, and even with only one or two electricians focusing, and having to share the Genie with carpentry, we got through all the lights very quickly.

We have two shows tomorrow (of course, a 9:45AM student show, and an 8PM evening show). We might be getting more sleep on the bus between shows than we’ll get overnight!


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 27, 2010

Crew Portrait

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 11:47 pm

Bobby had an idea to take a crew portrait with all of us posing on the set. We need to try it again in a space with more light, but aside from being too dark, it’s a cute picture. That’s me in the window.


February 25, 2010

Tax Day

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

You may think that Tax Day is April 15th. For many of us on the Acting Company tour, it’s today. This is our one true day off in New York since the beginning of December, and our next one isn’t until April 1. So this is the day that everyone has planned to do all the things one does at home — laundry, haircuts, and this time of year, taxes.

The most shocking thing about my taxes this year is that I only have four W-2’s. Normally I average about 10 employers a year. I take this as a good sign that I was able to work the entire year on just a couple jobs. I think I was unemployed for less than two months (less than half of May, and all of November).

Miraculously, I’m also getting money back this year, about $700. That basically never happens — one reason I think is because I tend to have a lot of little jobs, and little jobs tend to take out little taxes, without regard to what tax bracket your total income is going to put you in.

I still owed New York State $150, and owed Massachusetts $1. $1. I would love to know how much it will cost taxpayers to process my repayment of this shameful debt to the Commonwealth.

Anyway, I’m very happy, as that $700 will make it much easier to pay off my impending computer purchase that I really can’t afford to make just yet.

I did my taxes once again with TurboTax (in the last 2 years I’ve used the desktop version, not the website, because it allows you to fix more things manually). It went very smoothly this year, but I still hate that I have to file taxes for two states because they charge you $20 for an additional state, and then $20 to efile each state — so basically I pay $40 to say, “I made $xxxx.xx in Massachusetts,” which takes about a minute, and is probably the least complicated aspect of my taxes in general. I hate that. But I also hate dealing with taxes and money in general, so the less I have to interact with it and can screw it up, the better.


February 23, 2010

New York

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 5:24 pm

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. We’re running in New York, which you’d think would lead to more free time, but it’s quite the opposite. To start with, I live an hour and a half from the theatre, so that’s three hours less in my day to be productive.

We have rehearsal or two-show days every day except for our opening night, when we just had a 6PM show, followed by a great party at Cibo. However, that party was followed by having to be at the theatre the next morning for a full day of rehearsal and performance. In the middle of all this, we have one day off coming up, but I suspect most people, like me, have a full plate of fun things scheduled for that day, like laundry and doing their taxes.

Baruch is a very different kind of venue from any we’ve played with this show so far. It’s a black box, and the set just barely fits. We actually removed the front row in the middle of the first preview, after spending the entire afternoon figuring out how not to skewer them during the fights. We have some modified blocking, and almost all the spike marks have changed to move the furniture upstage. We have a nice way to handle this though: our deck is marley, and has always had the spikes traced with paint pen in case they peel up. When we needed to respike we just peeled up the tape and put new tape elsewhere, touching up the paint-pen marks where they’ve gotten faded. When we go back on the road we’ll just put the tape back on the pen marks. It also came in handy during understudy rehearsal yesterday, where we wanted the understudies to do the real blocking — the original spikes are still there to use.

So basically this has been no vacation (thankfully we do have a 5-day vacation at the end of March!), but it’s been nice to be home anyway. I wish I could be here long enough to make it worth my while to spend time settling in.


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 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 15, 2010

Fairfax, VA

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 2:29 pm

Yesterday we did a performance in Fairfax, VA. This is the first venue on the tour (besides the Guthrie) where we also performed last year. I could picture the loading dock and some of the backstage hallways and dressing rooms, but didn’t remember much of the stage area. I had forgotten it was so big! Of course everyone on the crew wanted to know what it was like, and my memories of the two days we spent there (doing Henry one night, and The Spy the other) were kind of foggy. I remember it being very warm, and all of us hanging out on the loading dock in tee shirts, watching the sun set, sitting on the Spy columns, which were in storage there while Henry was up. It was such a nice moment, I took a picture of it:

It most certainly was not warm yesterday, especially when we started load-in at 5AM (we had a 4PM show)! Here’s the view of our loading dock. Now remember, we’ve spent the entire tour in Minneapolis, Fargo, etc. and now we’re in Virginia, and it’s supposed to be frickin’ warmer!!

I remembered the path to get to the campus food court very well, but was thwarted when two frickin’ feet of snow blocked the path I knew! And today we’re in West Virginia, and it’s snowing again! People are asking for refunds, the cast is going to arrive late, and apparently our trip to Ohio tomorrow is going to be right in the path of the storm. Lovely!

Anyway, back to Fairfax. The set went up very fast, helped by the fact that the venue had three Genie lifts, so carpentry and lighting could work independently without needing to worry about avoiding doing tasks that require a Genie at the same time. For instance today we’re loading in with one Genie, and it’s a lot slower. We travel with our own Genie, but it’s not the kind you’re probably thinking of with the bucket that goes up and down automatically. It has arms like a forklift, and it’s hand-cranked. We need it to lift the balcony and landing up in the air so they can be bolted to the wall and the legs can get under them, and that’s about all it’s useful for.

I called from backstage, from a rather fancy calling desk that I unfortunately forgot to get a picture of. It had cameras that could be zoomed and panned, which I thought was absolutely amazing, except that I then found out the tilt didn’t work, and whatever I did would affect the front-of-house TVs for the lobby, so basically I couldn’t play with it at all. I was all excited about having infrared, until the blackout at the top of the show, when I realized I couldn’t see anything. I think the camera worked, but the two small screens on the desk were suffering from low brightness or something. I ended up using the larger TV that was mounted over my head.

It was a busy day backstage, as Nick had to take a few days off for personal reasons, and Bobby, our TD, had to learn his track (which is really easy, but it was just a little sudden). Nick left early in the second act, so we had Bobby do the whole show, with Nick watching him as long as he could. This has made my desire to call from backstage more necessary, although I think we’d have been fine even if I couldn’t. Bobby did a great job. He’s a little bummed that he has to work during the show like the rest of us now!

Tonight’s venue doesn’t have a great spot to call from backstage, and no camera, but we’re all going to be on the house wireless comm for the night, so I decided that I could deal with any little table, and if I have to get up and walk to a different wing to call a cue, it will be no problem. It would actually be kind of fun to be able to roam around. I put on one of our wireless towards the end of the show last night so that I could be one of the “candle ninjas” that turn off the remote-controled candles in the final blackout. The calling desk was a good 25 feet from the edge of the proscenium, so I had to be moving toward the stage while calling the last couple cues to get there in time. There wasn’t any technical reason that it had to be me doing it, it’s usually Nick cueing one of the local guys to push the button, but since being backstage, I’ve been determined to get to do it myself because I think it’s awesome.


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