God's Favorite Tech rehearsal

Yesterday was the technical rehearsal for God's Favorite. The crew came in for the first time and the lighting and sound were added along with costumes. A funny moment came when Al Knudsen playing Sydney Lipton rushes onstage after a bolt of lightning has come so close that it sets Sydney's rain coat on fire. Al came rushing onstage and Tom Dolan grabbed the seltzer bottle and sprayed the back of Al with it. They had never rehearsed this with the real seltzer bottle before and when Tom sprayed Al suddenly whirled around looking at Tom with a "What did you just do to me!" Tom and Al started laughing but quickly got things back under control.

The beginning of the show is a difficult tech moment and it took us several tries to get it right. The shows starts with the stage in darkness and the sound of a clock striking midnight. As soon as the last chime is heard the french doors onstage are opened setting off an alarm. Actors run on stage turn on the lights and run to a panel to shut off the alarm. Immediately after the alarm stops the telephone rings. While this may seem simple it is quite complex to work through for first time crew members at a tech. At one point got stuck in a loop and struck 14 times, then when the doors opened instead of the alarm going off the phone rang. It is also hard to see when the actors hand reaches the light switch in the dark for the lights to come up so we had to practice that as well. Actor Landon Baker who is supposed to answer the phone kept picking it up at different points in the ring and it is hard to stop it mid ring so the phone would sometimes keep ringing after he picked it up or stop ringing just before he picked it up. Eventually all was worked through and we moved on. Most often the hardest part of a show is actually starting the show with the several people who all have to work together.

The new chairs are in place. Today I pick up the row and seat numbers to apply to the chairs. The plaques for the arms are being made and we will pick those up hopefully Wednesday. They shipped the wrong arms for the chairs so we will be replacing over 150 arms with new ones that have the cut out for the seat plaques. This is in addition to finishing the set for the show. Al Knudsen has done a great job of painting the set. He came in and did a nice glaze on the upper wall section and a marble effect on the lower section. We are still working on how to easily install and remove the upper section for Act Two when the set has to look as if it has burned down in a fire.

Opening night is Thursday and we are in good shape. The show if very funny and the cast and Diane Byrd the director have done a great job. Ilist Paducah has done a nice feature on the show with some publicity photos and a video clip I took a week ago of rehearsal. We are promoting the group of 10 or more discount with $2 of each ticket sale from the group going to support Paducah Cooperative Ministry Food Bank.