Tech Weekend

It all began with a text message Friday morning. Lisa Humphrey-Wynn Assistant Director/Stage Manager for Smoke on the Mountain Homecoming texted me to say she was at her doctors office. She had been experiencing pain and her doctor was checking out her hip where she had had replacement hip surgery. There was a possibility she might have to be hospitalized. The second text arrived one hour later. Lisa was being hospitalized and was going in for surgery on her hip which had developed an extreme infection. She would be hospitalized for 4-5 days and out of the picture for the show. We still had the lighting and the stage crew people so I felt like we were still okay. We all kept Lisa in our thoughts and prayers and we set up the light board backstage so it could be run from there to coordinate with the stage crew. April and I left Sat. morning along with some friends and drove to St. Louis to see the Broadway touring production Mary Poppins at the Fox Theatre.

We had 15th row center seats and the show had some really fun moments but I felt that it was somewhat difficult to hear. I lost part of the dialogue in some of the scenes which made it hard to follow. In addition the lighting designer used lots of mood lighting and used follow spots to light the main characters which tended to make the overall light levels somewhat dark which led to my eyes getting tired. I must confess I fell asleep during part of the first act. The story line and songs for part of the show were also a little less than memorable for me. The second act was delightful and lots of fun effects including watching Bert the chimney sweep dancing in number where he walked up the wall and upside down across the proscenium 20 feet in the air and then back down the other side. We all left the theatre smiling but wishing the sound had been better.

On the drive home I got a voicemail which I didn't listen to until I got home about 9 pm. It was from Debbie the lighting person to tell me that her daughter who was supposed to be on the stage crew had been diagnosed with Swine Flu H1N1 and she and her daughter were out for at least a week. They never even got to see a single rehearsal of the show. With the technical rehearsal on Sunday I was now totally without a crew. I had agreed for Jim to go to Arkansas this weekend to help his wife with her fathers estate.

I moved the light board back out to the front of the house and April agreed to come in to help run lights and do the live sound effects to get through the technical rehearsal. We rehearsed early because one of the actors had an evening engagement and everything went pretty well for a first tech with costumes, lights, and sound.

Tomorrow Jim will be back and musical director Cindy Miller has offered her daughter Maria's help to do the running crew for the show. Jim will jump to lights and stage manager and we will be back on track. I've never had an incident before were I've lost the entire crew the day before the technical rehearsal. With no understudies for the show I always worry about a major character getting sick. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everyone else will remain healthy. We wish a speedy recover to all of the crew members who are out sick. We may have been blown sideways a little this weekend but we will ready for Thursday nights opening!