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January 4, 2010

From the Archive: How I Got Home from Houston

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 7:26 pm

I was telling this story recently, and as the word “blog” hadn’t been invented when it happened, you haven’t heard it, and it must be told.

Some years back, when I was but a wee professional PSM, I was on tour in Houston. Houston was our last stop before returning to New York for two weeks layoff for Christmas, and then our New York run. As the tour had been a less-than-perfect experience, we were all very much looking forward to the end of the week in Houston, to return home for the holidays and generally escape from work for a while.

We somehow survived the week in Houston without anyone quitting, committing suicide, or murdering anyone (which was an especially precarious feat because due to the two weeks off, we could have quit at the end of the Houston stop without breaching our contracts).

This backstory informs the desperate events that followed.

Our flight out of Houston was from George Bush Intercontinental Airport, around 8AM. We had four actors, myself, my assistant, and the production manager. We arrived at the airport and lined up to check our bags, thrilled that we would be home in just a few hours. When we checked in we were told it was snowing in New York and our connecting flight had been canceled. We decided to take the first leg of the flight to Atlanta and see if we could get on another flight if the weather cleared up. I should also mention, we were flying AirTran, which if you didn’t know, is the name that Valujet changed themselves to after they killed all those people due to their negligence. I also should mention that our producer and some other folks I can’t remember were also flying out that day, but had a direct flight on Continental.

We checked in, went through security, and arrived at our gate. Our flight to Atlanta was delayed. And delayed. And delayed. The other flight on Continental was boarding nearby, and we said goodbye to our colleagues, and waited more hours.

Sometime during this waiting period, we started to go a little crazy (this is where you have to bear in mind all the things leading up to this day, and why just getting home was of such great importance). We had a fake cake in the show, that our set designer had lovingly built. It really did look like a realistic ice cream cake. Due to its delicacy, whenever we flew it traveled with someone as a carry-on. This day was my turn to guard the cake. It was in a cardboard box, which if I’m remembering correctly, was tied up with string so it could be carried.

I’m sure so many years later I can’t adequately explain how it started, but we began creating an entire scenario about the importance of protecting this cake. Everywhere we went, we would say, “Do you have the cake? Is the cake OK? The flight’s cancelled, but the cake is still safe!”

Sometime around 3:00 (so 7 hours after we were supposed to leave Houston), our flight to Atlanta finally made it into the air. We landed in Atlanta in the early evening.

We went to the AirTran desk, where they were totally unhelpful, and because they’re a terrible airline, they had no relationships with other airlines and couldn’t help us transfer to another flight to New York, Philly, or anywhere nearby. By this point, the people who were on the Continental flight are home in their apartments.

The best we were offered was a flight to Baltimore. We figured if we could get that far we could take Amtrak or drive the rest of the way. While my assistant finished up the arrangements to get us on that flight, I was on the phone to Amtrak making reservations for the last train of the night from Baltimore to Penn Station, and the production manager was on the phone with Hertz renting us a car at the Baltimore airport.

With these options laid out, my assistant made her escape and decided to stay with friends rather than attempt our foolhardy mission to make it home to New York that night. And then we were six.

So we made our way to the new gate, guarding the cake all the way. As we traveled, the legend of the cake grew and grew. I recall at some point, after our flight had been delayed yet again, we began deciding who would be cast in the movie recounting our adventure to protect the cake.

Finally, sometime after 8PM, i think, our flight departed Atlanta for Baltimore. The last train was around 10PM. Nervously we would look up the aisles at each other, wondering if we just might make it. I think we landed at about 9:55. So we made our way to the Hertz counter, so grateful that we had bothered to book two different modes of travel.

I may have my times off a little bit throughout the story, but one thing I remember is that when we crammed all our luggage and 6 people into a minivan and turned the key, the clock said 12:00 midnight exactly.

Our production manager drove with the intensity of our desire to get home (and to protect the cake!) and when we emerged out of the Lincoln Tunnel it was 3:00 exactly.

The funny thing is, I don’t remember what happened to the cake at the end of all that. I remember getting let out of the car at 42nd Street and 9th Ave and making my way home. Someone must have taken the cake home for safekeeping for the two-week layoff. Maybe it was me.

Anyway, that’s my story of travel woes, perseverance, and the insanity that comes from being trapped in the airline system for about sixteen hours. It’s surely far from the worst kind of travel nightmare, but it was the passion with which we wanted to get the hell home that made it an unforgettable experience.


January 1, 2010

Halfway

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 5:32 pm

Today marks the halfway point in our stay in Minneapolis. We arrived here December 1st, and we depart on January 31st, for our next performance in Moorhead, MN (right next to Fargo, apparently), on February 1st.

As one would assume, we are about to go into tech. Nick, Ashley and I will pack up the rehearsal room on Saturday night, and all of our stuff will be moved up to the theatre on Sunday morning. Sunday is a regular rehearsal day, but instead of being in our rehearsal studio, we will be on stage. Our local carpenters, Craig and Sarah, will be there with us for the first time, where they will begin learning the show, and becoming familiar with the props. I’m sure they already know the set better than us since they put it up.

Sunday’s rehearsal is about spacing, getting used to the ins and outs of the set, and troubleshooting any problems we discover in the course of that.

We have Monday off, during which the crew will complete everything that remains to be done before tech, and then on Tuesday morning we have our first day of tech.

My Team

Although being away from our company’s base of operations has its challenges, one of the things that has helped me stay reasonably sane is that I have a stage management team I trust. At this point Nick and I have been working together long enough that we often think of things at exactly the same time. This year we are taking part in the Guthrie system of using Google Talk to communicate in the rehearsal room and between departments and other shows. Usually at least once a day, Nick and I will type the same thing into Google Talk and send it to each other simultaneously. Yesterday I caught us both letting out an exasperated sigh at exactly the same time and duration. That being said, instead of always thinking of the same thing at the same time, we also often think of things the other has forgotten, which is far more useful than two people thinking the same thing.

Nick

I am a big believer in delegation in a stage management team. I believe the ASM should be an independent entity, and not just a someone who does the PSM’s bidding. I think the biggest part of that is not just to assign certain duties to the ASM, but to empower them to be in charge of certain aspects of the production. That might mean maintaining certain paperwork, or keeping track of certain aspects of the production (usually props).

In our production, I do most of the paperwork, because almost all of it is generated by the database I designed, so any changes to its function go through me, but once I get something working, a lot of the data is Nick’s domain.

Nick is also in charge of props, costumes (mostly because last year’s Henry V was so complicated that costume pieces had to be tracked like props), and I have put him in all the fight rehearsals because he likes it, and he was the fight captain for The Spy last year, so he’s got a good eye for fight choreography and weapons maintenance. When we get to the theatre, he will be the one who knows how things are backstage. I know he’s been watching the entire process with an eye towards backstage traffic, prop tracking, where costume changes happen and so forth, and in his head he has a much better picture of what things will be like backstage.

I have been more focused on what happens in front of the audience — blocking, light cues, sound cues, etc. Chances are we will finish the tour with neither of us ever fully understanding what happens in the other’s world, but that’s why we are a team.

Ashley

Ashley, the Guthrie’s stage management intern, is our liason to all things Guthrie. She knows the people in most departments, and knows who we have to talk to about what. Although this is the second time working here for me and Nick, we have a grasp of the way things are done, but we aren’t fully integrated into this well-oiled machine. Ashley has been with numerous productions here, and can keep us on track with what’s expected of us throughout the process, while freeing us from having to personally interact with all the little details of operations in such a large organization.

She is the keeper of the official Guthrie computer (largely because Nick and I prefer to use our own computers, and they don’t allow outside computers access to the network). Aside from the strangeness of switching computers, email systems, and document formats in the middle of our tour — I mean come on, why would we stop using Macbooks to use a Dell?

When emails go out on the G’s system, they go to Ashley and if it’s anything I need to know, she’ll tell me about it or forward it to me.

As we make the schedule every night, I create it in our database, which arranges it in a vertical format (which I’m not really happy with, but it’s the best I could design before we started rehearsal). The best I can say about it is that no one has ever missed a call because they didn’t read the schedule properly, in fact I can’t remember anyone even asking for clarification, even on the craziest days, which may be the best track record of any schedule format I’ve ever created.

Anyway, Ashley looks at my schedule as I’m making it, and copies it into the Guthrie’s format, which is more horizontal, and shows things going on in different rooms side-by-side, which is definitely a more natural way to conceive of it. The fact that we simultaneously create and then proof-read the schedule in two different orientations allows us to catch problems more reliably, and Nick can also watch my schedule from his computer, as we share access to the database over our network. So between the three of us checking our work, we have never made a scheduling conflict.

Ashley also has access to the magical document that shows who is using what rooms in the entire building. On days when we have multiple rehearsals, fight choreography, movement and voice work going, this can be very important. We also now have Macbeth in rehearsal next door, which is the big show in town and requires more space, but we have been very successful in sharing rooms with them, and coordinating our schedules so we can have time with members of our creative team who are working on both shows. Knowing what rooms are available the following day is essential when scheduling things outside the main room, which also affects what gets scheduled in the main room and when.

Honorable Mention: Corey

Corey is not a member of the stage management team. He is the company’s staff repertory director. If you’re wondering what the hell that means, he functions more-or-less like an assistant director in the rehearsal process, and like a resident director once the show opens. He tours with the company, and maintains the artistic integrity of the show. Which I kind of like, because it means I don’t have to do it! While I would enjoy the challenge, it would be very hard in this situation because I don’t travel with the cast, and rarely get to see them outside of performances. Also, with a two-person stage management team, I can’t swing out to watch the show from the audience, which is often vastly different than watching from a booth. Ian and I worked closely last year and would sometimes confer on things, or even watch and discuss the show together if the booth was comfortable and afforded a good view, but ultimately it’s the staff director who evaluates the performance and keeps up the original direction. Since I’m advancing the show with the crew while the actors are just waking up and boarding their bus in the previous city, I maintain the technical integrity of the show, while Corey will have time with the actors on the bus to give any notes he feels are necessary.

In the rehearsal process Corey and I don’t have all that much direct interaction, but sometimes after rehearsal we check in and discuss how things are going, or things we need to plan for in the future. In my experience from last year, I think that relationship is one of the most important for the success of the tour, because it keeps the physical production and the artistic side of the production working in harmony, which keeps the show’s quality consistent.

In Conclusion

So all in all, having a great team in the room with me has made the rehearsal process incredibly smooth, which has left me more time to deal with all the things that need to be coordinated out of the rehearsal room.

I’m very relieved that the hardest part of our process is basically over, or soon to be, and I’m excited to see what comes out on the other end of tech, which will become the show that we will bring to audiences in Minneapolis and all over the country.


December 31, 2009

Getting Close to Tech

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 7:21 pm

We’re in our last couple days in the rehearsal room. This morning Nick, Ashley and I went up to the theatre before rehearsal. The tech tables are already out. That’s mine closest to the stage in the center.

We’ve had some really complicated schedules as we try to squeeze every moment out of our rehearsal time, and finish all the haircuts, costume fittings and wig fittings. Yesterday the day was crazy. In the first 4 hours of rehearsal, we had 24 individual calls scheduled. Some of them were only 15 minutes long. So to keep track of where everyone needed to be, and to make sure they all got required breaks, I had to map out everyone’s day individually, at least prior to lunch. It was insane, but the chart was actually really helpful.

And finally, we used this time to take a portrait of Nick and I on the set. This is the “hobbit hole”: a small doorway tucked under the balcony stairs, used primarily as the entrance to Friar Laurence’s cell. In this photo, I demonstrate how there is absolutely nothing tight or uncomfortable about the size of this doorway. Nick does not seem convinced.


December 25, 2009

Twas the Day Before The Day Off Before Christmas

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 1:12 am

Just a visual tour of our final day of rehearsal prior to Christmas (Dec. 23rd).

The day began with the Guthrie’s weekly production staff meeting, which last year I attended weekly, but this year got a pass on — except for this week because we’re about to load in, and they thought it was, you know, kind of important.

And this year I had backup — Nick and Ashley were with me as well, and I didn’t have to sit in the “inquisition seat” where the rising sun aligns with the narrow yellow windows to blind the person sitting on a certain side of the room. The department heads had some tough questions for me, and I had a few questions for them, but overall it looks like we’re on track.

As the meeting was concluding, our truck showed up at the loading dock, to unload the marley floor so it can thaw and be rolled out flat for a few days before it has to be laid.

Trevor came down to the rehearsal room to return the key to the truck and tells us that the truck is at the dock if we want to take pictures. I love the fact that people are looking out for our interests as bloggers, as well as as stage managers. So naturally, we went to the dock and snapped some pictures, including Nick posing on the dock.


I didn’t get a good opportunity to get a clear shot of the inside of the truck. In fact, besides the endless rows of road boxes (they purposely sent us more than we need, so we would definitely have enough, and can return the unused ones when we play New York in late February), it was hard to see much. The set seems very flat (as well it should be), and is strapped neatly to the walls. The big staircase was in there in pieces, with what look like very handy castors inserted into the banister posts.

As it turns out, the marley was most of the way into the nose of the truck, so all our many, many road boxes had to be unloaded into the elevator to get to it, at which point they ended up loading all the boxes, and our infamous platform, Fred, into the theatre. The trailer was then parked on the other side of the parking lot to await load in day. It can’t remain at the dock because the Guthrie’s dock is this amazing giant garage-door-like thing that flips up. You can kind of see it in the below picture. With a trailer parked, the door can’t be closed, and while that may cause certain logistical or aesthetic problems, I think the primary one comes down to, “Close the door, it’s f***ing cold!!!” There are, of course doors between the dock and inside, but I’m sure the extreme temperature and wind would find its way into the building, especially through the giant freight elevator.

While the marley was being searched for, Nick and I went up to the theatre to examine the boxes that had come up, in the hopes of identifying unfamiliar ones that might be concealing rolls of marley. There we found our box, and without even opening it, saw the infamous message scrawled on it.

Backstory: when the boxes were being loaded on the truck from Spoon Group in New Jersey, where they are stored, our Associate Artistic Director, Ian, called me to check about which boxes we should bring, and so forth. Ian was the Staff Director last year, and probably the person Nick and I worked most closely with on the road, and Nick and Ian got great pleasure out of antagonizing each other for six or seven months. So before we got off the phone, Ian told me to pass word to Nick that there was a message waiting for him on our road box.

Nick and I tried to get to the box when we went out to the truck at its storage lot, but couldn’t get to it. So finally, we got to see what the fuss was about. And as I thought I heard, the message was truly on the box, not in it. And here it is, with physical commentary from Nick:


In a compromise, we have saved the tape, but it’s been moved to inside the box. And here’s a shot of some of our boxes (the other side of the stage has most of them).

All this happened before noon, and by the time rehearsal started I felt like I had so much work to do and so many questions to follow up on that the last thing I had time for was a rehearsal! But it was a big day, and a very rewarding one: we did our first full run of the show. It was a great way to take our two-day break for Christmas. After rehearsal ended, everybody stayed around for maybe a half hour, chatting, hugging, saying goodbye like it was the last day of school. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but we have a little over a week, and now have a greater grasp of the big picture. All that remains is to refine it.

I leave you with a picture of my desk as it has appeared for the last week or so. My mom sent a crazy springy Christmas tree. Last year I had a similarly-sized fiber optic tree, and kept it at my apartment. This one proved to be such a favorite in the rehearsal room on the day it arrived that I had to leave it for people to play with.


December 24, 2009

The Deadliest Catch

I call this: computers,mac,On the Road Again — Posted by KP @ 8:53 pm

or
“What Happened to Your Laptop?”

deadliestcatch
Entertain conjecture of a time in which I’m on the road with Henry V. We have just concluded our very successful run in New York, and have set out on the next leg of the tour. When our story begins, we’re in Nashville. We have arrived there the day before, after a layover in DC, to board our buses to go the rest of the way to our first performance at Mississippi State. No one understands how it could possibly have been cheaper or more efficient to do it this way, but nevertheless that’s why we were in Nashville.

After we spent the night for (as far as we can tell) no particular reason in a Nashville hotel, the cast departed in the afternoon and the crew was given the entire day to hang out in Nashville while our driver slept, as we would be leaving around midnight and sleeping on the ride down.

It wasn’t all that exciting, as the crew had actually been to Nashville earlier in the tour, because our bus’ water pump was broken and we had an extra day between shows, so we took a detour. While the bus was being repaired we ate ribs, listened to the live bands on Broadway, bought cowboy boots, ate way too much, and did all the things one does in Nashville. So for our second visit, we had lunch at a nice outdoor place we had visited the first time, researched potential sushi restaurants for dinner, and otherwise just kind of hung out on the bus watching TV.

Somewhere in the course of watching TV is where things get interesting.

Now I must introduce Daphne. Daphne was our props supervisor. We must have been watching the Discovery Channel, and it was at this point that Daphne realized that the season premiere of Deadliest Catch was coming up, and that we would be in the middle of our first performance in Mississippi while it was airing. My assistant Nick, who you have already met, was also disturbed when this was brought to his attention. Apparently Nick and Daphne really like Deadliest Catch.

It was something of an urban legend that the bus had a DVR. The satellite remote had buttons that referred to it, but when we tried to program the show to record, it became obvious that we were missing something that would allow that to happen, as it could be programmed, but nothing would happen. This was also one of our first experiences with our new bus, which we would later come to realize sucked in every imaginable way. Maybe the original bus had a working DVR, but this one didn’t appear to be fully equipped.

This minor setback was not going to dissuade us, however. We would just have to go a little low-tech. The bus had a VCR, we reasoned. All we have to do is find a place that sells VHS tapes and we can record it the old-fashioned way.

On our way to our sushi dinner, we passed a drug store. Daphne went in, and a few minutes later happily emerged with a set of three VHS tapes.

When we got back to the bus, we naturally set about doing a test run and trying to record a show. What we found was that the VCR apparently could play tapes, but the satellite connection didn’t pass through it, so it couldn’t record anything. This was very annoying! But given that all these electronics are mounted behind panels and on opposite sides of the lounge from each other, we didn’t feel comfortable tearing the whole bus apart to get at the wiring. We accepted defeat, and the VHS tapes were stacked on the kitchen counter.

Fast-forward a few days. My laptop was having battery issues, so after using it in the front lounge after the show, I set it down on the couch where I had been sitting, and left it to charge overnight.

It’s now the middle of the night. All of the crew are asleep in their beds. We encounter some bumpy and/or hilly roads. At some point in the night, a clattering is heard from the kitchen. This isn’t really unusual. Somebody’s coffee container or soda bottle is usually falling off the counter in the night. I, having the bunk on the other side of the kitchen wall, remember hearing this and thinking that it didn’t sound like anything breakable or containing liquid, so I didn’t even really wake up.

In the morning I was alarmed to find my laptop had 3 black smudges on it. I wasn’t concerned about smudges but at first I couldn’t tell if they were smudges or dents. I frantically rubbed on them, and thankfully the black marks came off. Two of them left no sign, but the largest of them revealed a dent in the aluminum cover of the laptop! I was totally confused about how this had happened, until we started to look at the forensic evidence. On the couch, laying casually, were the three VHS tapes. They looked like they had just been tossed there from when we were trying to get the VCR to work, until someone remembered that they had been stacked on the kitchen counter, and most of us had heard the crash from the kitchen during the night. So I went back to the tapes, and sure enough, each of them had a corner bashed in, where their black plastic had been worn off.

And that solved the mystery of how Daphne and Nick’s love for The Deadliest Catch dented my laptop.

The afterword to this story is that whenever I open my laptop I am reminded of Daphne and Nick, and how badly they wanted to see The Deadliest Catch. They never did get to see that episode. I’m not sure if they’ve seen it in reruns yet. I still have never seen an episode, but I am very curious to see what’s so special to have created such a fervor on our bus. And that’s the story of what happened to my laptop.


Overdue Back-to-Tour Shopping Post

I call this: computers,mac,On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 4:56 pm

I ordered a lot of supplies before going on the road. Here’s a run-down.

Business Cards

With this tour I’m switching to using my @headsetchatter.com email address for business and personal use. Naturally I needed new cards. I was going to do new cards anyway because my old ones were designed to match the Go Button site and logo, and I wanted to use the HeadsetChatter site colors and logo as a kind of personal branding.

Once again I ordered the premium business cards from VistaPrint, which are more expensive because they have full graphic images on front and back, and these even more so because I added a foil effect, which looks really cool.
cards

Composite-Toed Shoes

I bought a pair of Sketchers steel-toed shoes about five years ago. They’re sneaker-like, but very heavy and uncomfortable. So heavy that sometimes if I wear them too much they start to hurt my leg muscles in uncomfortable ways because I’m not used to having to work so hard to pick my feet up. I only wear them in very rare cases, where I’m working in a theatre while the set is really still under construction.

Last year on tour, our props supervisor, Daphne, was the only one of the three of us who loaded the nose of the truck who wore safety shoes, so she was the designated person who would kick the scenery into places where it didn’t want to go. On one of our long nights in the truck, I asked her how she liked her shoes, and expressed how I never wore mine because they were so heavy. She informed me that her shoes aren’t steel, and aren’t heavy. At some point, hopefully back on the bus, and not on the truck, she took one off and let me see how light they are. At that point I decided it was something to look into if I returned.

The pair I found are made by Converse, and are a little heavier than Daphne’s, but I think most of the weight is in the heavy rubber sole, not from the toe cap. I wear very lightweight Puma running shoes normally, so the contrast is especially large for me when I switch to the boots. They have an air bubble in the heel, which also helps to make them feel more supportive and sneaker-like. The site where I got them, Steel-Toe-Shoes.com, had some options that really look just like regular sneakers, but I decided to play it safe and go with black, in case I need to wear them for performances. My philosophy about that is that if I am at the stage of production where I need to wear black, and still need to wear safety shoes, something is really wrong. But it’s always good to be safe.
Converse-Composite-Toe-Boots-C4555L
When I had to reduce weight and bulk from my suitcase, they were the obvious thing to cut, but I held onto them, and I’m so glad. As it turns out, I have worn them almost every day. Not because things have been getting dropped on my feet, but because of the snow. Pumas, it turns out, do not make good snow shoes. These are relatively heavy, and my feet get kind of clammy compared to the breathable sneakers I tend to wear, but in the snow the warmth is very welcome, and the thick materials and high-top design gives me a little more confidence about slipping on the ice.

Work Gloves

Last year I did load outs with my leather winter gloves. First of all, it roughed up my gloves pretty bad. And then when it was like 70 degrees, it was really lame to be wearing winter gloves. So then us ladies on the tour all bought weightlifting gloves, because they were made small enough for us and padded, but offered no finger protection. This year I vowed to find serious work gloves that fit properly.

Apparently in order to find serious work gloves for women you have to be willing to buy things marketed as “gardening gloves,” but these gloves by Youngstown Glove Co. are very comfortable, and in my limited amount of frozen-truck-work, they felt great.
41wFSmdp3YL._SL500_AA280_

Hard Drive Upgrade

Maybe surprisingly, this is the only computer upgrade. I have been planning this since I bought my Macbook Pro two and a half years ago. For various reasons of time, place and money, I’ve put it off, but this was the time.

I bought a 320GB 7,200rpm drive from Western Digital which will is my new internal drive. I haven’t noticed a significant decrease in battery life, although I do hear the fans running a lot more, and the drive itself sometimes vibrates so much at random times that when I have my phone next to the computer, I think my phone is ringing.
IMG_0981

I also got a 500GB 5,400rpm drive from Fujitsu (my new secondary Brand I Trust since I can’t believe how well the original drive in the MBP did). This will be my external Time Machine backup drive. As is my style, it’s a 2.5″ laptop drive so that it also serves as an emergency replacement should my internal drive go kaput.

IMG_0979

I ordered these from Newegg, which is pretty much the most reliable seller of anything on all the web, so far as I’m concerned. However, I also wanted two drive enclosures to put the outgoing 160GB drives in, and none of the ones on Newegg filled me with confidence or floated my boat. For that it was back to Other World Computing (macsales.com), who sell the enclosure I currently use and love, and will continue to use.

I was looking for one or two cheaper USB enclosures just to have around, so I wouldn’t have to swap out to use my spare drives. The one I found was so nice, small and so cheap ($20) that I bought two. I ended up bringing one of the old drives on the road with a few seasons of The West Wing and The X-Files on them for entertainment. Just a word about these: they look cool, they match the Mac product line, but they are plastic, not aluminum. They’re $20, and there’s a reason they’re $20. But for a cheap enclosure, they do the job and look good doing it.

IMG_1001

The reasoning behind this upgrade is that I’ve always wanted a faster internal drive, and I’ve got 4 frickin gigs of RAM and rarely feel it, and I was sure that the drive speed is the bottleneck. I’m not a big one for benchmarks, but I will say that since the upgrade I have yet to stare at the spinning beachball of death and wonder what the hell is taking so long.

Also I needed a larger Time Machine drive. The reason both my drives were 160GB is because I bought the backup drive before Time Machine existed, and I was doing exact clones for backup. Naturally if you’re just cloning your drive, you don’t need a bigger drive than the one you’re backing up.

Before the upgrade my Time Machine backups went back about four months. In October I discovered a couple songs missing from my iTunes library. I know I listened to them over the summer, but my backups only went back to July and they weren’t there. I have no idea where they went or why, but they’ve been gone long enough to have outdone the mighty Time Machine. This event had nothing to do with my decision, but it’s a very good illustration of why your Time Machine drive should be as big as possible.

Winter Coat

Screen shot 2009-11-14 at 10.17.48 PMWhat I wanted for Christmas from my family was a new winter coat to get me through December and January in Minneapolis. It had to be super-warm for the weather there, and yet light and flexible enough that I could do load-outs wearing it if the weather was really bad. At my mom’s suggestion, I looked at the offerings from Eddie Bauer, and decided on this one. It’s awesome. I have yet to really be cold in any part of my body covered by the coat.


December 23, 2009

Three

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 1:20 am

Three

Three

Count ’em. Three posts today. I don’t want to hear any crap about some of them being after midnight. You know what I mean.

Well I figured it out. See, most of us here have been feeling a little under the weather. I keep going to bed early because I don’t feel so great. When I get up early, I get back in bed because I feel like my body just needs a little more time to rest.

Well I have unlocked the secret of how some people can blog so much. See I go grocery shopping with some people. And I know some people buy Mountain Dew by the case. I buy a once-daily supply of Monster drinks, but I try to limit myself to one right when I get up, and some coffee when necessary at work, but other than that I try to drink water. As a result, by bedtime, I’m ready for bed. I have been a caffeine addict of varying proportions, and have done my share of blogging, gaming and web coding sessions that last until 6AM. So tonight I thought about how I keep trying to blog and get sleepy, and then realized that getting sleepy at 10:30 is perfectly normal, and that if I drank caffeine at night it would be easy to stay up a few extra hours. So, having enough energy drinks in the fridge to last me till the next grocery run with a few spares, I cracked one open tonight.

Three posts. Fear my blogging stamina!

I could keep going, I just don’t want to tire you guys out with reading. Goodnight.


Week 3… or Something

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:41 am

I have no idea what today is. I have given up trying to describe our process in weeks. I know today is “the day before the day off,” that is, we have one more rehearsal (tomorrow) before the day off — which, conveniently, is an almost unheard-of TWO days off, namely Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

In order to amass this wealth of days off at one time, we’ve been working approximately forever since our last day off, in accordance with the Equity rule that allows you to rehearse more than six consecutive days in order to provide a day off for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, one of which is required to be a day off. By getting both, we screw up our schedule for a couple weeks (continuing the confusion because we took New Years’ Day off as well). The nice thing is that at the end of all this we end up with two days off in close succession right before tech, which will be welcome.

So it’s starting to feel a bit like the last day of school. We finished staging the show today, and then did a run of Act II. Tomorrow we’re doing just a few little pieces and then running the show for the first time. If all goes well we then plan to do notes and will be let out of class early to romp in the snow!

The last few days have been interesting. We’ve been trying various methods to gather up some more accurate rehearsal props — actual wicker baskets instead of backpacks, period rapiers instead of modern fencing swords, cloth handkerchiefs instead of tissues, that kind of thing. With our props having to be built or shopped in New York, we’ve had some setbacks in getting everything, and a few days ago I began what if I were a politician I might term a “surge” to try to get some extreme action taken to help us.

One of the solutions involved our swords. When all is said and done, our dueling families will confront each other with sword canes. We’ve had some delays getting the canes from the supplier, so in order to start fight choreography we had been using some borrowed fencing rapiers. As a halfway point between the modern rapiers and the sword canes, it was suggested that we use the 18th-century rapiers from last year’s The Spy, which were kept in the props box when the road boxes were loaded in New York. Not-so-conveniently, the truck is waiting in a lot about 20 miles from Minneapolis until load-in day. So early Monday morning, Team Stage Management got up and drove out to the trucking facility and climbed a snowbank into the back of the truck to retrieve the swords, and another cardboard box of props that we found. It actually probably took us less than 15 minutes once we got to the truck. We came prepared for the lock, doors and everything else to be frozen shut. We had flashlights, hammers, multitools, and a travel mug filled with hot water. We had permission from the office to break the lock if needed. As it turns out, the only tool we used was the key, which had been overnighted from the office the day before.

The snowbank even helped. My biggest concern about the trip was that I have never successfully climbed into the back of the truck from the ground. I would guess the floor of the truck is about shoulder-height on me. The first step is probably about waist-high, and there’s not really anything to grab onto to hoist myself up with the proper leverage. So when I saw the snowbank, I was relieved. It gave me the few extra inches I needed to get on the step, and from there I found a few little metal protrusions to grab, as well as the handle on the hamper strapped to the wall. Getting down was another ordeal. As I complained about how there aren’t grab irons, and how anyone was expected to do this, Nick was telling me to stop being a wuss and trying to explain what I was supposed to be grabbing, and then as he watched me actually try to do it that way, he says, “Oh, I get it — your arms are just too short!” I was like, “No shit my arms are too short! That’s what I’m talking about!” Anyway, I got in and out without hurting myself, so I was happy about that.

The truck had only arrived the night before, and the lock opened easily. The #2 road box — the weapons case — was the very last box in the truck, as promised. It was strapped with the doors facing the wrong way, which required moving a bunch of blankets and removing a couple load bars that were on the floor in order to pull it out, but after a brief struggle with two load straps, only one of which was ornery, I squeezed between the rows of boxes and pulled out all the weapons that were in any way useful. Then we pushed the box back, strapped it up again, closed the doors without too much fail, put the lock back on, and headed to rehearsal.

The one disappointment of our trip is that we couldn’t get to our stage management road box. We have been given a vague hint that there was a snarky note for Nick put in the box when the truck was loaded. Despite our frustration at having to make this early-morning journey, the bright spot was potentially getting an early look in the box. Unfortunately, behind the weapons box, the wall of road boxes was formed by three wardrobe gondolas and the TD’s box. Without a dock to unload on, and with limited open space in the back of the truck, there was no way to even locate our box, much less play Tetris and try to get to it. And we also couldn’t get a glimpse of any of the set either, which would have been the other item of interest.

Despite the not-wanting-to-go-anywhere-at-eight-AM and not-our-job reactions to this event, it was really fun to see our truck again. Despite the early mornings, late nights, inclement weather and hard physical work that always come along with it, I really enjoyed touring last year. I’ll be honest, I load the truck out of guilt that I’m the only person on the bus who doesn’t have to load the truck. Can I sit in my bunk and watch TV, sleep, or play on the internet while everyone else I live with is working their ass off until 3AM? But despite the obligation of my conscience, I took pride in being part of the crew. I am perfectly capable of getting my hands dirty, though I don’t have to do it anymore. I was a carpenter. I was a (very short) electrician. I can help. So I enjoyed knowing every inch of the truck pack, I even kind of enjoyed the day we all had to build the set ourselves because the venue didn’t hire enough crew. I learned exactly how the set was assembled, bolt by bolt, and for the rest of the tour I was able to use that knowledge to have a better understanding of situations. So of all the people in the employ of The Acting Company or the Guthrie in Minneapolis at the time, Nick and I were uniquely suited to going into the truck, getting what we need, and securing it without any trouble.

I’ve been eagerly looking forward to the truck’s arrival at the Guthrie — the day we walk up to the theatre and see it in profile next to the street, proclaiming our arrival to all passing cars. To me the truck represents our movement, the excitement and anticipation of a new place. It heralds our arrival and our departure. So just to see it sitting in a lot, here in Minnesota, is a step in the right direction. I’ve learned it’s actually going to make an appearance at the Guthrie tomorrow, so they can unload the marley floor — I guess the cold isn’t good for it and they want to give it time to thaw before laying it. I’m not sure if the trailer is staying on the premises or going back to the yard again.

I meant to more heavily document our adventures on the truck, but the whole thing happened so fast (once we got through the 5 or 6 people at the storage yard who had never heard of The Acting Company or a truck arriving the night before from New York, and found the one guy who knew where it was) that I forgot to take pictures until we were pulling away. Take a look at the next Pulitzer for photojournalism here:

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So here’s a brief glimpse of our set, our equipment and our tools, like an embryo in the petri dish of a frozen truck lot.


December 16, 2009

Homework & Coffee

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 1:35 am

Step 1: Coffee

photoI’m kinda tired, and I still have some work to do tonight. So I decided to experiment with an area of domesticity that I don’t generally dabble in: making coffee at home. I don’t generally make coffee. I’m a far better stage manager than a PA. To me, coffee is something you pay $4 for, and a barista makes it using some mathematical formula of beans, water, milk and sugar that I don’t need to be involved in.

When we started rehearsal I brought my travel mug that I bought in New Mexico during the tour last year, and threw together some concoction of ingredients that tasted OK. I was kind of excited by this experiment. Our awesome intern Ashley makes the coffee every morning, and sometimes when I ask, “Is the coffee ready?” I am directed to take note of the freshly made coffee that is already in my mug and on my desk, formed of some combination of creamer and sugar that we have landed upon as “the way I like my coffee”, but that I don’t know how to make myself!

So suffice it to say, I consume a lot of coffee, but the act of putting water in a coffee maker and passing it through a filter filled with coffee grinds into a pot isn’t generally something I do on a regular basis. When I do, it’s because it’s part of my job (which it isn’t, technically, but that’s another story). On tour last year making coffee was usually my job, because on load-in day the crew would be working hard for about 8 hours while I took a nap and played on the internet. The tradeoff for this was that they could call me on the radio about 10 minutes before a break, and I would have fresh coffee waiting on the bus when they arrived.

Anyway, I bought some coffee in the supermarket (for possibly the first time in my life, for my own consumption at least), for reasons I don’t actually remember. I guess I decided that since my apartment is furnished with a coffee maker, I could use it, maybe to save money on energy drinks. And since the day we arrived, the coffee has sat on the kitchen counter unopened. Tonight I was tired and cold, so I actually attempted to make some to solve both problems. I did OK, as seen above.

Step 2: Homework

Now properly caffeinated, I turn to the main bulk of my homework for the night: our company manager, Joseph, has created weekly schedules for the entire tour. These need to be submitted to Equity to be checked for rule violations in terms of travel and performance hours. So my job is to check them for accuracy and any violations before they go to Equity. I’m kind of excited to see.

As many rules as there are about rehearsal hours, there are almost as many about travel. The reason I find it a little more difficult is that I never travel with the cast, so the whole thing is kind of a theoretical math puzzle as opposed to something remembered instinctively after having done it so many times.

After a refresher course through the LORT rulebook section on tours, and transferring the basic rules into a Google Wave that Nick and I (and anyone else we might need to include) can use for reference, I began looking over the schedule, checking each performance time against my database to make sure they all match up.

After having spent 3 hours doing this, I feel like I’ve gone through our entire tour, picturing a chronological trip through what our daily life (or more accurately, what the cast’s daily life) will be like on the road. What time the show will end, what time the bus call is the next day, how long the rest period is, how many hours of travel there are in a day vs. how many performances that day. Also checking to make sure there’s a day free of performances in each week, and a full day off from travel and performances every two weeks.

Joseph sent me the schedules in PDF, which would have been great if I had thought to print them while I was at the theatre. But in absence of a hard copy, I marked up the PDFs in Preview.app, and made notes of rest periods, overtime, and possible problem points if the show runs too long. As I went, I composed an email to Joseph listing my concerns (sometimes just correcting a typo) by date.

Some things may be tweaked a bit to avoid overtime, and sometimes there’s nothing that can be done, and it’s an expense the company just has to pay in order to make the next show. I’m sure the OT is small potatoes compared to the advantages of fitting in an extra performance in the schedule.

I’m just glad there are people at Equity whose job it is to approve this for real. It’s just one really long math problem, and I hate math.

A bus containing the cast of Romeo and Juliet leaves Baton Rouge at 10AM…


December 14, 2009

Rehearsal Update

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:13 am

I know I haven’t blogged much this week. Believe me, with the Guthrie’s most famous blogger sitting next to me 8 hours a day, I get reminded when I’m slacking.

The Meet & Greet

This week we began with our Meet & Greet. Traditionally this would be done on the first day, but it was postponed to allow for a date when the artistic directors of the Guthrie and The Acting Company — Joe Dowling and Margot Harley — could both be present to speak at the ceremonial beginning of the rehearsal process. They both spoke of the great collaboration between the two companies that was started with last year’s Henry V, and how they were looking forward to keeping up the partnership with this production and others to come. Joe introduced our actors individually, who stood for applause from those Guthrie staff members gathered. They then introduced our director, Penny Metropulos, who introduced the production team (myself, Nick, our choreographer Marcela Lorca, and our voice and text consultants, Andrew Wade and Sara Phillips). Penny gave a basic overview of the concept for the show, the set and costume design, and the period the show is set in (roughly 1912), and why these choices were made. She gave a very moving talk about why the show is important and timeless to audiences.

Week Sort-Of-1 (Staging)

Once these festivities were done, we took a five, and crossed the doorway back into our usual rehearsal room, where we began staging from the top of the show. Now that the week is over, we are staged up to the first part of Act V, Scene 1 (Benvolio comes to tell Romeo that Juliet is “dead”). I think it would be safe to say we are about 4/5ths of the way through the show. We also spent the end of today’s rehearsal doing a stumble-through of Part I (i.e. the part of the show before intermission). We have also run other large chunks of the show, which provides a good perspective on how the whole thing fits together. There is still much that needs to be worked in more detail, so we are far from done, but we have a solid structure after little more than a week. Our cast is off book for a surprising amount of the show, and I think we’re all pretty pleased with how much we’ve accomplished so far.

Outside of Rehearsal Room 2, we have had costume measurements, some costume fittings, and a consultation for facial hair provided by the Guthrie’s hair department. Next week we have more fittings, and we begin sessions with our actors and voice/text consultants, where they will get one-on-one work on the text.

Outside of rehearsal hours, we had two conference calls this week. Navigating the schedules of about 20 people in three time zones, and trying to get all of them in the presence of a telephone at the same time has had my head close to exploding for much of the week, but we managed to get a lot hashed out. We had a small call on Wednesday between our set designer, lighting designer, director, staff director, and stage management team. Our designers (one in New York, one in San Francisco) only had 15 minutes each before they had to go to appointments for other shows they’re doing, so we very quickly went through the most pressing questions — new dimensions for our infamous platform (named Fred), and clarification of how the masking allows traffic on and off stage, and access behind the set. Our real production meeting involved a larger selection of Guthrie and Acting Company staff, where we checked in on a number of issues, and I accomplished my main goal of getting everyone to agree to a schedule for the actors’ call times for tech/preview week.

The Database

In technology news, our stage management database has really come into its own this week. I know I always talk about it and never actually explain it in depth. It’s still very much in development so the idea of stopping to blog in depth about it always seems premature. Features get added to it sometimes in the middle of rehearsal when the need for them is discovered.

With Nick and I on the same network, I open the FileMaker file on my computer, and create a local server. Nick opens FileMaker and loads the file that my computer is serving, so we’re both working on the same copy of the database. As long as we’re not trying to work on the same record simultaneously, we can each make independent changes at the same time, which has proven to be very helpful.

The database has a lot of different parts, but the one we’re using most in the context of blocking rehearsals is what I call “tracking.” It’s a chronological log of basically everything that happens in the show: entrances, exits, prop moves, sound cues, costume changes, etc. Initially, it was just filled with entrances and exits based on what is indicated in the script. As we have been rehearsing, that gets filled out and altered to reflect the actual staging, as well as provided with details like where a character enters from. Nick, like most ASMs, is in charge of props, so he primarily deals with adding props to the tracking sheet, as well as to a related sheet which is more for the purposes of prop shopping — it notes whether we have the prop (a rehearsal version, the final show version, something that might become the show version, or none at all), and if we have it, where it came from (so we know who it belongs to when we’re done with it), as well as any design notes, and the date the prop was added to the show (that part came from my good friend Josh, who likes recording dates, and helped me develop and test this part of the database while working on Inventing Avi Off-Broadway this fall).

So since I’m taking blocking, and Nick is tracking props, a lot of the time I fill in the entries related to entrances and exits, and he fills in the props. But sometimes one of us is busy working on something else, so we cross over a lot. And sometimes we neglect to whisper to each other “I got that,” and then we both create a record for the same thing, or both try to edit the same record. But it’s really cool to see the tracking table get filled out by both of us at once.

My favorite part of the database right now is a new one, that didn’t exist at all during Avi: the daily schedule and rehearsal report. The daily schedule has some fun features that inform you of conflicts for the date in question, does some basic math to stop you from breaking the basic Equity rules, and allows for the construction of a work list for the day that then automatically is added to the rehearsal report. The report is basically a bunch of text boxes, but it tells me with color if I’ve left something blank that can’t be left blank, or if I’ve marked it with my customary “(?)” sign, indicating that I need to come back and review something.

The true beauty of the report is what happens after it’s done: I press one button, labled “email,” and it creates a PDF of the rehearsal report, attached to an email addressed to the distribution list (determined by a checkbox on each person’s contact file). It also includes in the body of the email a plain text version of the report — not an exact copy of what’s in the PDF, but a bunch of code that includes exactly what I want, in the format I want. At the same time it creates a PDF of the daily schedule, and a plain text version, addressed to the cast. Filemaker could send these emails with no interaction if I wanted it to, but I prefer to use this opportunity to proof them before hitting “send.” The new little trick I added a few days ago reminds me to update the company Google calendar with the upcoming day’s schedule. It doesn’t do anything automatically, it just prevents me from forgetting by opening Safari to the calendar address. So far I’ve had that step in the script for two days, and both times I would have otherwise forgotten, so I’m very excited about that feature!

Moving On

The rehearsal process is interesting, but I also can’t wait to get to tech. I find rehearsal far more stressful, especially in this coast-to-coast environment. With the parties all spread out, I have to be the switchboard for everyone else on the production, making sure that everyone is in possession of all the knowledge they should have. That’s true in any production, but it’s easier when everyone is in one building, one city, or one time zone. Once we get to tech, we start to have more of the people we need on the scene in real time. We won’t have everyone in Minneapolis with us at once, but the collaboration becomes more and more in-person, until finally the show is frozen and we, the traveling company, will have everything and everyone we need to make the show happen each night, wherever we go. I am excited for all aspects of the process, but I’m trying not to get too much ahead of myself. First we still have a bit of staging and a couple more weeks of exploration to get through!


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