Adventures in Live Theatre

This isn't turning into a theatre blog, I swears it.  But I did mention workplace shenanigans at one point recently, and oh, do I have a story to share.

Friday night.  Opening night for The Diary of Anne Frank.  It was about 7:15 in the evening; the show was scheduled to start at 7:30.  I was sitting in the booth, reading Catching Fire (liked the series a lot; didn't love it as much as did the friend who recommended it to me and nowhere NEAR loved it as I love the Potter series but it definitely held my attention), when the Stage Manager, Nathan, came crashing into the booth.

"Shanelle, there's all this water pouring out of the wall upstage, you need to go back and make sure the strip lights are okay."  Crash back out of booth.

My immediate thought went to the spigot near the loading doors; it's for the rare occasion we need to hook up a hose in the stage area.  We tend to shy away from water in the theatre, because hello, water and electricity just can't play nicely.  But people know about that spigot, and if it had been accidentally opened, they'd have been able to shut it off pretty much immediately.  So I followed, at a slightly less-crashing pace, and to settle the marbles still spinning from being wrenched away from my book, asked "Wait wait wait... water where?"  Nathan paused long enough to say "Upstage above the loading doors!" and leave the unspoken "...dumbass!" hanging in the air, then took off rushing to the lobby, presumably to look for staff members who know how to deal with crap like this.

Above the doors.... the aforementioned spigot is down near the floor.  I took off in the opposite direction, hating myself for thinking "This is gonna be good."

Here's the thing about live theatre.  As a concept, we don't like crises.  They throw massive wrenches into our plans.  They're inconvenient and almost always mean more work for someone (or several someones), possibly work that will ruin a weekend or vacation.  In the case of severe damage, or cancellation of shows, it can cost the theatre a boatload of money. 

But in the rare event we do suffer a meltdown of some kind, oh my God, does it make things exciting.  Believe it or not, our schedule can get kind of tedious.  It changes constantly, yet it's always the same.  Particularly for those of us who are directly involved in the day-to-day running of each production.  Imagine reading the same magazine--or watching the same movie--every.single.day.  For six weeks.  Sometimes twice or even three times a day.  It doesn't take long to be completely over it; three performances is about all I personally can take.  Since we do at least three previews before we open, this after a good 3 or 4 days of rehearsals, I'm mentally done by the opening weekend. 

So having an angry, smelly waterfall pouring out of the ceiling on opening night is really, really, really exciting.

Yeah.  Smelly.  Somewhere on the fourth or fifth floor of the building, the HVAC system suffered a burst pipe.  No idea when it started; it clearly had been gushing for a while.  It trickled down through the floors and walls of our 85-year-old building, and by the time it hit the floor on the ground level it was cloudy and greenish and stinking of God-knows-what.  When I reached the most-endangered lights on the ground floor, the girls who take care of things backstage were running around, soaked to the bone and bailing bucket after bucket from a cluster of about a dozen under a ten-foot-wide swath of chiller vomit.  They'd collected every towel in the building, and even a binful of dirty towels from the hotel next door, and had tried to form a sandbag line of sorts to prevent the water from getting downstage where we use lots and lots of electricity.  They were doing their best, but holy crap.  There was a lot of water.

During all this, the audience had no idea what was going on.  They only knew that it was 7:55, the show was to have started nearly half an hour ago, and they were getting "restless."  Well.  The House Manager called them restless.  I'd have probably used "agitated" or "disgruntled" or most likely "pissy," but that's why he has that job and not me.

Anyway.  It all wraps up quickly.  The Artistic Director and Managing Director went onstage for the preshow speech and deftly downplayed the horror that was still unfolding thirty feet upstage of them.  The show started, minus the lights in the line of fire (which was unfortunate, because they were the only things lighting up the sky behind the set, so the entire first act looked like it took place at the same time of night).  The Maintenance Supervisor, whom we regard as a semi-supernatural being because of his awesomeness, managed to get the water shut off quickly, and it was just a matter of time until the remaining water flowed down through the walls.  Some other members of the staff went to the third floor to assess the damage, which was considerable (floors in two rooms are being ripped up and rebuilt this week, luckily there was no damage to electronic equipment).  By intermission, the cascade was down to an increasingly-sporadic drip, so we pulled the tarps off the lights and went ahead with Act II as planned.

And... that was that.  No more excitement.  Hopefully, no more at all for this show.  It's hard enough, what with the starvation and the cabin fever and the Nazis.  We don't need Operation Havasu Falls on top of everything else.

A Look Behind The Scenes: Sharp Mouthfeel With An Extremely Sour Finish

This past week, my blogging has suffered at the hands of my job.  That's one of the hazards of working in theatre; every so often, usually around every 6-8 weeks, it takes over your life to the point of becoming your life.  I do not like this.  I like to keep my life and my job very, very separate (the exception being the fact that some of my friends are through work, but that's kind of typical).  However, there's nothing I can do about it, so I just have to deal. 

"Oh," you may be saying, "you're exaggerating.  Everyone who has a job goes through that now and then."  I'm not whining or trying to play the martyr, but I promise, I am not exaggerating.  Behold:

•  Sunday.  I have a final performance of our theatre's more-or-less resident dance company.  I go to work at 12:30 pm.  After the show we have to strike (which is a really funny word for "work really really hard and take all the lights and set and crap down as fast as possible").  Wrap up around 8 pm.

•  Monday.  Day off for me; coworkers are beginning to load in (set up) the lights and stuff for the next show.  I am not having a restful day.  It's always a bit of a toss-up: sit around and try to enjoy a day off but end up stressing about all the non-job work that needs to be done (laundry, dishes, taking down Christmas tree, grocery shopping, etc etc et effing c), or do all those things and not have any time to sit and enjoy a day off.  Either way, I'm screwed.

• Tuesday.  Continue load-in.  "Normal" work day, as in we start in the morning and finish in the late afternoon just like the rest of the world.  It is, however, a day of pretty continuous physical labor, so we're all bone-tired by the end of the day.

• Wednesday.  Same as Tuesday, only we work a little later, into the early evening, because the next day requires that we have a certain amount of things finished.

• Thursday.  FOCUS DAY.  Sometimes it's not bad.  Sometimes it suuuuucks.  It generally goes like this: morning and early afternoon, tidy up loose ends from day before.  If we're quick, we get a longish break before beginning focus at 4 or 5 pm.  That usually doesn't happen.  As soon as the carpenters/painters/props folks get the set more-or-less ready for us to take over, we starting focusing lights, which is a fancy word for pointing them where they need to go and making them look the way the designer wants.  If it's a small plot with easy shots, this may be a four-or five-hour process.  If it's a big plot, or the set creates a lot of difficult shots, or the lights are shoehorned in, it could take two or three times that long.  This particular plot was on the small side, but the set created enough difficulties that the lights are really crammed together.  We wrapped up at a quarter after midnight.  (My longest focus to date was a few years ago, when we called it quits at six in the morning.)

• Friday is spacing rehearsal, which means the actors get to go onstage for the first time since starting rehearsal.  They've been working in a rehearsal room up to this point, with only tape lines on the floor to represent the set, so this is where they get comfortable with the walls, stairs, and different levels.  They take the stage at 2 pm, which means we usually come in at 9 or 10 am to continue wrapping up loose ends.  This usually involves "practicals," which are props or set elements that light up, like table lamps, car headlights, appliances, things like that.  May I note here that 9 or 10 (depending on how much we need to do) is non-negotiable; if we finished at 3 in the morning the night before, we still have to be there on time to make sure things are ready for the spacing rehearsal.  The aforementioned 6 am finish?  Yep.  We were back at 9.  I didn't even go to bed.  I went home, showered, had a massive breakfast and a bucket of coffee and went right back to work.  If the shower wasn't necessary I wouldn't have even gone home, I'd have just gone to Steak & Shake for a couple hours.  ANYWAY, once the actors start onstage, the lighting designer may start writing cues.  They are allowed to work until 10 pm, and they usually do.  This week, we lucked out; the designer chose not to cue through the second half of rehearsal, so I was done at 6:30 and I made it home in time for dinner with Jason.  That rarely happens, though.

• Saturday and Sunday are the same thing: "ten-out-of-twelve," which means the actors' union allows them to work ten hours in a twelve-hour span.  At my theatre, it's always 10am-10pm with a break from 3-5.  For the technicians, that means we come in before "go", usually at 9, to make sure we're all ready to start and to take care of any notes that came out of the spacing rehearsal.  Once we start, I sit at the light board, with my headset, programming the cues as the designer dictates them.  At the break, we take care of notes that come up in the morning session.  My boss is good about making sure we all get an hour away from the building, which is awesome.  Sometimes I'll go for a walk, even if it's crappy weather, because it's the only daylight I'll see.  The evening session is more of the same.  The actors leave at 10; the production staff always has a meeting to discuss the next day's schedule and goals, which usually takes a half-hour or so.  If I'm lucky, I'm home by 11 or a little after.  Sunday comes along, lather-rinse-repeat.  IF we are able to work our way to the end of the show, which happens about half the time, we will do a run-through on Sunday evening and often are released once we finish.  That didn't happen this time.  We worked right up to the bitter end.  

• This brings us to today, Monday, which is my day off.  Hallelujah.

There you have it.  Not exaggerating.  Particularly from Friday-Sunday, I worked and slept.  This coming week is worse, because the tech process starts on Tuesday, not Thursday.  Some shows are more difficult than others.  This one is more difficult, not because it's a particularly high-tech show, but because it's a hell of a downer.  It's about a young Jewish girl, hiding from the Nazis with her family and a few others during the Holocaust.  It's called The Diary Of Anne Frank, maybe you've heard of it?  Anyway.  It's an excellent script, the set and lights and costumes are exquisite, but WE ALL KNOW THE ENDING AND IT'S TERRIBLE. 

Last night, as we were approaching the end of the show, there was a lull in my programming and I was sitting in the booth working on a crossword puzzle.  After a few minutes I glanced up at the stage to see what the holdup was, and there was a goddamned Nazi on the stage, pointing a gun at the family.  Okay, it wasn't a real Nazi, it was an actor in a (fucking terrifying) black SS uniform, but my stomach still lurched and I started shaking.  Yeah, I knew it was coming, but I was tired and they caught me off-guard with their sneaky silent entrance.  I can guarantee you, when we get an audience in the theatre, there will be audible gasps and quite possibly tears when that happens.

Huh.  I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to ruin your Monday with Nazis, but they tend to ruin everything so I guess I'm not surprised.

So yeah.  That's what I have to look forward to this week.  70 hours on the clock and Nazis.  Now I'm depressed.