Labor

It is appropriate that this weekend is labor day because that is what I feel like I've done all weekend. On Thursday night we rehearsed My Way. Friday during the day was spent hanging and focusing lights. That means taking many of them down from the studio and putting them up in the main theatre. In addition we had the HVAC repair guys come in. Our air conditioning system has had continuing problems over the years with water condensation leaking into the dressing rooms below the unit. The bottom of the unit fills with water and then overflows onto the floor below it, which leaks through into the dressing rooms on the first floor. Last year we installed a float in the bottom of the unit so that if water rises above a certain level the unit will shut off to prevent the water overflowing. When the units were checked on Friday the floats were working properly but we still have water dripping. The repair guys will be back in on Tuesday to check for other causes.

Friday evening Denise Bristol and I set light cues. Denise is the stage manager for My Way. We started about 6:30 pm and worked until about 10pm. We finished only act one. I was too tired to finish act two. I left the theatre about 11:30 Friday night after closing up. Saturday morning started at 8:30 am with taking my daughter Jade to MHT's footlights classes . April taught until noon. While Jade was in class and for the rest of Saturday I spent working on the set design for High School musical. The challenge is to create the gym, the cafeteria and the theatre sets, that have lots of space and the ability for 30 people to sing and dance on. In our narrow stage that means trying to add levels so people can be seen behind others. The other sets call for small intimate spaces for 2-5 characters. Overall there are over 8 different locations called for in the play. Saturday afternoon, I built a rough wooden model of the set in the scene shop and then taped out the floor plan for the set on the floor up in the classroom space. I went home and spent the evening looking for images to project for the large screen at the back of the My Way set.

Sunday morning dawned early and I was back at. The day started about 6:30 am. I finished designing the lights. Then set up the sound system for the wireless microphones. Most of the plays at the theatre don't use microphones because the acoustics are so good in the theatre. However with a band onstage and the performers having to sing at the extreme ends of the highs and lows of their ranges they need vocal support to be heard over a bass, drums, and baby grand piano. When that was finished I set up the tables for the tech dinner and gathered the cups, plates, and napkins for the after the rehearsal dinner. We did the tech rehearsal. Kim Yocum is running followspot, Vickie Shelby is running the lights, and Bobby Grey is filling in at the both lights and sound. My biggest note to the performers was to nail down their their lines and lyrics. An example was when Victoria sang I like Paris instead of I love Paris. Small little words can really vex the performers. The night before David in one of his introductions was supposed to say "Patt lets light this candle" and instead said Patt lets light this puppy! Patt Lynch the musical director and pianist is still finding spots in the music that are driving him crazy. He found out last night that the bass and percussion music was missing two measures in the middle of a song. For the past two days they have been trying to figure out why there was always a problem when they reached that part. There were times in the past week when the show grinds to a halt and we have to stop and figure out why problems keep happening at that point. The next time we do it that part works fine. It is a messy process. The actors and musicians will walk out of rehearsal and all say "that was awful".

It is times like this that I'm reminded of a quote by Anne Lamont who was talking about the creative process. She said that if anyone ever read the early drafts of an authors work they wouldn't believe that it would ever amount to anything. It's that way in theatre too. Everything works fine until we move into that phase where you take away the scripts the actors have held in their hands since the beginning of rehearsal along with the fact that I quit yelling stop when they make a mistake. We are now at the phase where if they get into trouble they have to get themselves out of trouble. Somebody forgets a line or sings the wrong lyrics we keep going no matter what. That is the only way the show can move to the next level.

After the tech rehearsal Dick Holland and Renie and Don Barger and a couple of other volunteers had made food for the cast, crew, and orchestra. The food was great and very much appreciated!

Today (Monday) I have to climb into the Air conditioning space to clean out the drains again. If I don't the performers won't have air conditioning on stage or in the dressing rooms tonight. After that I have about 10 pages of notes from the rehearsal involving changing my light cues that didn't work that we set on Friday and Sunday. All this has to be done before 6:30 tonight. Just like the actors I have things I need to rework. Some cues look great, some cues need lots of work too!

We have 3 days until opening. Traditionally the week before opening is called Hell Week because it is a lot of long hours fixing and working through the process to make a polished and professional show for opening night. After 30 years of doing shows I would say we are right on track for opening night- if we all work like hell for the next three days- which is the norm for Hell week!