10-10-10

I've always liked dates that have symmetry.

We have officially entered Tech Week for Alice in Wonderland Jr. That means that a tremendous amount of work has to be completed in a short time. Costumer Janice Peterson has been burning the midnight oil trying to get costumes ready and she still has a ways to go before we open Thursday. Some of the actors had complete costumes, but other were still wearing street clothes because their costumes were still awaiting assembly in the costume shop. The set was about 3/4 completed, lacking mostly just the final painting for Wonderland. Stools that Tech Director Jim Keeney had built remained raw wood and some of the prop pieces that drop from the "sky" were still "do-fers". For instance the bottle that magically appears for Alice to drink from was a green plastic Sprite bottle for rehearsal until the real bottle is created and attached. Jim Keeney is still working on the shades that we are using to create the look of the scenery growning and shrinking as Alice changes size during the show. They have to rise to a height of 10 feet and shrink to as little as 2 feet.

The scenic projections were purchased from Istock photo and Creststock photo. Some of them were Photoshopped to create a more illustrated look to match the painting on the set walls. I must have looked at almost 2,000 photos and illustrations to find the 10 images that will end up being in the show. In addition there is some video for Alice falling down the rabbit hole. I purchased the video and then opened it in video editing software to expand the length of the looped software. After several tries I finally got the 20 second video clip extended to 5 minutes. We projected the video and I immediately realized that I needed to put the video in slow motion. When I went back in and edited the video to create a slow motion effect the video slowed down but became jerky as it seemed to pause just slightly every so often. That lost the fluid movement that the extended video had so we then changed it back to the first video.

Tech week is full taking an idea that you have created which works in theory and then putting it into practice. What usually happens is that part of it works and part of it doesn't so you then begin to redesign and rebuild to work through the problems at each phase of the process until you have a finished product. I loaded the sound into the computer and April edited it into the software that we use for playback. We found there was a loud buzz in the system. After spending time making sure that all of the power sources were run through a power conditioner to eliminate any grounding problems I was no closer to solving the mystery of the buzz. I then began to change out all of the sound cables to see if one of them was laying across a power source or was unshielded. After several cords were changed out I finally found the culprit and eliminated about 90% of the buzz. There is still a few more cables to move and check but that requires ladders to trace the sound cables over 75 feet that winds its way from the back of the theatre to the stage.

All of this can lead to incredible stress on the director of the show. April is trying to pull all the actors together while the technical elements are added and sometimes eliminated for re-working and then re-added. Trying to make decisions as to what is acceptable, and what must change is a constant battle for all directors and designers. An example from yesterday's tech rehearsal were actors who were standing on the edge of the light at the front of the stage. Do you move the actors about a foot or do you refocus the lights a foot further over. If you refocus then the lights may light up an area that you are trying not to light because you want to reduce the acting area so that the entire set isn't lit. I probably have 50 lighting notes about refocusing, or redesigning some lighting cues to eliminate the actors standing at the edge of the scene who are in partially in the dark.

Friday MHT officially closed on the old Arcade theatre building after 2 1/2 months of setbacks. We still have some hurdles to jump getting the building ready for use as a storage space but the deal has at least been completed. This week masons will come in and brick up door openings between the Arcade theatre section and the rest of the Arcade building to create a firewall between the buildings. As soon as that is complete and new electric service is run and attached to the building then we can start moving our current storage space contents into the new building.

Saturday morning after about 2 weeks of smelling random natural gas on the side walk between the offices and the scene shop I called the gas company and they came out and found a small gas leak at a valve under the brick street. Saturday morning the gas company closed off 1/2 of the market house square (right during Market Square Mornings) and dug up part of the street to fix the leak. I was a little concerned about its effects on Market Square Mornings and the Ghost Tours for Saturday night but the street was reopened that afternoon with barricades around the hole in the street and waling and bus tours went on without a hitch. Next Friday and Saturday will conclude the last tours downtown before we move our historic tours to Oak Grove Cemetery on Oct. 22.

On the things to do list for this week are finish up Alice and get it open, story theatre rehearsals for Little Red Riding Hood and get that set design finalized, get a set design finalized so Phil Counts can begin staging for Bloody Murder which is rehearsing each night this week, get the Fall Annual Fund Drive letter printed and processed, get the Arcade ready for storage, read scripts for next season, finish up the research on the Oak Grove Cemetery script and planning for the event, do final details on the Mad Hatter Tea Party in connection with Alice in Wonderland, and hopefully selling lots of tickets to all of the events!