# And this is why we have dress rehearsals...



## Clifford (May 24, 2008)

Last night, our high school's Performing Arts Center hosted the Philippino Culture Night. Imagine a disastrous trainwreck. Got it? Yeah, that's what we had. I'm not too sure where to start on this one. How about the beginning?

A few months ago, we were getting ready for this PCN, until it was pushed back. Well that's annoying, but it did give us time--until we realized it had been moved to the busiest time of the year, the last month and a half of school. We had multiple showings of drama's in-class play during the day this week, and dance concerts in the evenings. On top of the three shows we were getting ready for for this week, we also have the HUGE annual Broadway Review next week. Four big shows, four techies. (We actually have more, but of the people working shows, there are four of us.)

I have just been informed that there _was_ a dress rehersal. This news makes me even more scared. Given the fact that we had to give a speech about not talking backstage and staying away from drapes and lights shortly before house openned, I don't think they did much. This is also when they told me they needed a light behind the rear traveller so they could see when crossing the stage. :neutral: I grab a light stand, a PAR, and a dark blue gel, and set it up to reflect on the cyc. This required finding a 30' twistlock and running behind a set of massive pillars (given to us by another school, we all want to burn them), behind all the strip lights from the dance concert, and up to the light in a way that the performers couldn't get at it.

I know I'm sort of rambling, stay with me.

When I get back to the booth, the CD player isn't working. Our theatre is a bit senile and a bit of a pile. Something can work fine one night and not at all the next. It took twenty minutes and our TD driving 65 down a 45 mph road to get to us to fix the problem. She pushed some buttons, kicked a few things, and cursed the show a couple of time and things worked. 

Because nothing had been done at rehersal, we had no cues, no list of acts or tracks, and we found out AFTER the show started there were 2 movies they had to play. Not knowing this, I hadn't shown their person backstage how to operate the screen. Get on headset and just tell her, right? Wrong. Headsets don't work. They took 45 minutes to work out, thanks to our old and almighty TD who kindly drove down for us. We were using walky-talkies from the school's office, and PCN's person kept putting it down. Not that it made much difference, because she didn't use it when she had it. I had to go and show her how to raise and lower the screen (I thought about letting her just figure it out, but I feared she would lower the omnis, which are on the same panel). 

I won't go too much into how that actual show ran, but needless to say it was horrible. We were alternately cringing and laughing in the booth, and occasionally franctically trying to get something to work or patching or running backstage (they managed to unplug the blue light I set up). Eventually, another person from PCN (who I actually know) got on headset and the show ran considerably smoother. I've said about a third of what actually happened, but I don't want to write a book. In conclusion, I am mandating dress rehersals next year. And bringing a large, blunt object.


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## bobgaggle (May 24, 2008)

I know what you're feeling. When our school had a multi-cultural night, we have 3 techies trying to run things. We had a dress rehearsal, but that night i had a little mishap with the electric battens that made admin refuse to let us lower them to position lights until they had the "technicians" take a look at them. So for the little fashion part of the show, where everyone shows off their ethnic garb, the "runway" lighting was more of a dim zigzag on the stage. I couldn't just bring up a full wash because the two other techies were trying to set up a piano and mic on SL for the next act.

And I know what its like trying to get information out of the perfoming group's liaisonto the techies. You ask how many mics they need for a certain act, and they'll tell you "a few". you ask when they need lights on another act, and they'll say to cue off the sound. You head on over the sound guy and ask what track it is so you'll know when to cue the lights. He'll tell you that the lead dancer said to cue the sound off the lights. By then the liaison has disappeared into an impenetrable mob of saris and and other colorful dress so you and the sound guy decide to just bring up lights and sound at the same time. When the act starts, the leader of the whole thing runs up to the booth and starts yelling at you that you had to wait until the dancers were on the stage before you started the music, and the dancers weren't on stage because you hadn't brought the lights up yet.


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## Clifford (May 24, 2008)

For our show, the people just yelled at us from the stage. It was the most unprofessional night I have ever seen.

I forgot about the mics. 


> "We only have three working mics tonight, so how can I set them up?"
> 
> "We need one on each side of the stage and one for each of the three singers."
> 
> ...



I didn't say the last bit, but I was sorely tempted.


The other thing that really pissed us off was the fact that we were given 4 CDs and 3 iPods. They started explaining which tracks they wanted from each, but our sound tech stopped them and told them to go burn them all onto one disk.


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## Eboy87 (May 24, 2008)

Clifford said:


> And bringing a large, blunt object.



To quote Spinal Tap's manager on why he carries a cricket bat with him, "Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful."

Bobgaggle, did we work the same show? We had a "similar ethnic group" a few years ago, and that was the worst show I've ever put my name on. Seems we had the same difficulty.


Clifford said:


> They started explaining which tracks they wanted from each, but our sound tech stopped them and told them to go burn them all onto one disk.



Which is why I'm looking into a USB pre and ProTools (currently using the line in on my MBP with GarageBand). I'm A1'ing a Broadway Revue this coming week, and I know the dancers are gonna hand me a cassette tape with three different tracks not in the order they want them played. *sighs* 

Yet this is what we do and love it. Here was one of my nights: 

I'm in St. Louis, and during this time, we get a fair amount of severe storms; we're talking tornadic (is that actually a word?). I'm crew chief for the Broadway revue, was it last year or two years ago, can't remember, and in the theater I can't hear the tornado sirens when they go off, so I tell my mom to call me if they do. At one point, lightning struck and knocked out the power. So I'm running around making sure everything resets and works, when my phone rings. 

Yes, it's Mom, who tells me the sirens are going off, and a tornado had been spotted on the ground. Great. I'm the only ranking person in the employ of the school, and I know have to get our cast of mostly senior citizens downstairs to a safe place. 

After having Bill and Ted's excellent adventure herding them (I now understand the expression herding cats) to safety, we wound up putting them in our prop room, which is underneath the seating area in a concrete room. That was a bad day.


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## Clifford (May 24, 2008)

That really sucks. I can relate to the herding. During the PCN show, there were two short movies--and this one really gets me--the performers moved into the audience to watch them. Including the ones that were on after the movies. I had to herd dancers, in the dark, silently, while avoiding a group of old people, while helping the sound op figure out what the next sound cue was over the headset.


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## photoatdv (May 24, 2008)

Lets see where do I start? I'll start from the end.

We had to evacuate because of a prank involving mice being released during a show. It took about 2 minutes for the LD, who had been told by security, to tell me over not exactly working walkie-talkies to make an announcement to evacuate. I was SM and had the only working mic. THEN 15 minutes of arguements to get all, no most, of the people out. Then like 15 minutes to catch the mice!

When I do the dance shows people throw all kinds of audio at us. CDs, tapes, ipods, computers that are AT HOME, ect. On the last one we had somebody give us an ipod and want us to edit the track! Well between two pros and myself and like 30 minutes we ended up doing an analog recording. Apparently nobody had the track on there computer and could burn us a CD. 'Can't you guys just pull it off of my ipod... no, I can't give you the CD... I'm sure you guys can figure it out.' URGH-- Dancers!

BEST one though was the girl who had the opening video on her computer at home and VIDEOTAPED THE COMPUTER SCREEN AND BROUGHT US THE CAMCORDER! She didn't even know how to put the video on a DVD. Well her video was unuseable suprise, suprise. So we asked her to burn it onto a DVD from her computer, her computer doesn't have a DVD burner. So we asked her to put it on a CD, well everytime I tell it to save to CD it says insert a blank CD. So we said did you put in a blank CD, well I think so, thats the disk thing, right? So we said save the files on a flash disk, well whats a flask disk? So we said bring in the computer, it's a desktop. So we said SO PUT IT IN YOUR CAR, I can't lift it. So we said to the director you won't be having the opening video unless you get somebody to help her. SHE ACTUALLY WANTED US TO GO TO HER HOUSE AND HELP HER WITH HER COMPUTER!


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## Clifford (May 24, 2008)

My profound sympathies. Dancers always take the cake. Actors are bad, choir is worse, but neither can hold a candle to dancers. My favorites so far are the USB drive we were supposed to plug into the board and the vinyl


> "We don't have a USB port on the sound board."
> 
> "But you have one in the tower-thing."
> 
> "No, we don't. And even if we did, we don't have a graphic display or mouse, so we wouldn't be able to open the file if we did."



My other favorite was the vinyl someone brought in. 


> "Umm, I'm sorry, but we can only play off of CD or players with jack outputs."
> 
> "That's ridiculous. You're set up's worth what, like, $2,000?"
> 
> "Closer to $95,000, actually, but it was installed in '89. We can't play records."



They had to go to Borders and buy the CD. Some people...


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## PropsPupMikel (Jun 7, 2008)

wow.... And I thought I had it bad....

My theatre doesm't like dancers, but we have to have them for some productions, so we just drop things on them from the catwalks, or blind them with follow usually. We did figure out one way to make the lives of the stage people easier though. If you are going to have a group of dancers, there has to be at least on stage person as on of the dancers. They know the rules and are in charge of the other dancers. I did it for the last 2 productions as the head male dancer and both times I had a female partner who was a techie and knew the ropes. Thing went much smoother


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## Clifford (Jun 7, 2008)

As sound as that advice is, the laughs we get out of their shows make up for everything else. Especially considering they usually start practicing a month or two out. And it shows.


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## len (Jun 8, 2008)

I see a lot of those kinds of issues. Mostly, it's people who want to direct lighting and change focuses while the act is on stage. I always say the same thing regarding all those audio/video/lighting changes they want as they're happening:

"You'll need to submit that in writing via e-mail. I need to enter it into the production schedule and make sure everyone knows about it."


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## len (Jun 8, 2008)

Clifford said:


> As sound as that advice is, the laughs we get out of their shows make up for everything else. Especially considering they usually start practicing a month or two out. And it shows.



And I've seen tours get put together in under 2 weeks that look great. 

It's not the amount of time, it's the skill of the people involved.


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## derekleffew (Jun 8, 2008)

charcoaldabs said:


> ...a H.S. "rehearsal" involves a lot of getting kids to focus...


Not a very good LD if he has to have kids focusing during a rehearsal. That should have been done prior to rehearsal, during the "focus call."


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## Clifford (Jun 8, 2008)

Yeah, you'd think that would work. But you'd be wrong. 

TD- "Alright, all the lights are focused, do you like them?"

Director- "What about those ones, can they be higher?"

TD- "The ones you asked to be lowered earlier? Yes, they can be raised."


And then there's the whole can of worms that is followspot cues.


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## len (Jun 8, 2008)

derekleffew said:


> Not a very good LD if he has to have kids focusing during a rehearsal. That should have been done prior to rehearsal, during the "focus call."



And I thought Charc meant "focus" as in pay attention. As in, "stop worrying about who's dating who right now and concentrate on making sure you're where you're supposed to be."


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## Wolf (Jun 15, 2008)

I run on a very simple way of thinking sometimes. If you make yourself easily accessible and they dont come to find you then its in your hands. If you feel you need to find them then you can do so, but if you dont have time anymore or theirs 2 many ppl to talk to then you can do what you want as long as it is good quality.

For example I was lighting a dance show. For the most part I had planed to do it on the fly. I was there with plenty of time to spar and I had groups and submasters programed already so let the chore. know I was there so he could tell each chore. for each number I was there. He made an announcement that I was here to do the lights and to talk to me. The ones that came to me (which was most) I talked to for a few mins on what their piece was and I took notes. and as for the people that didnt come to me I put on stage what I felt was best but mainly I had fun I felt I had free range since they never came to talk to me (but never let something look bad to smite someone it only makes you look bad). I do care about them since I care about myself. I had forgotten to ask them if they had any problem with me using follow spot so for this since it was my slip I went to find them and asked them if they had any issue.

Bottom line everyone needs to take responsibility for their own part.


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## Clifford (Jun 15, 2008)

I see what you mean. Some of the pieces we had free range for. I remember a dance concert too, where the group wanted orange. I can't make orange with strips, but, through a mix of the cyc colors could. It looked a little like vomit, but it was all I had. I had asked them before hand if they wanted any special colors and they said they didn't. WHen they asked for orange right before the show started I did my best, but I really felt they dropped the ball on that one.


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