Never Again...

...Do I want to work on children's theatre. Never. Ever. Again. The end. I honestly don't know how it is beneficial to me in any way. I can't remember the last time I was in a bigger cluster-fuck of a tech. In 7 hours worth of dry tech I really don't think we are going to make it through this 48 minute long play. Maybe I'm just letting it get to me because I don't care about it and therefore don't want to do it. Maybe I'm just anxious to get to RENT. Or maybe it's I'm a bit bitter about the way things worked with Spring Awakening and how Company Management can't tell me where I'm going to live next week. Maybe its something else all together. More than likely its a combination of all of these things. All I know for certain is this week cannot go by quickly enough. That is all.

When The Lights Go Out...

The joys of live theatre. Today, right in the middle of act 1 of November, a lightning bolt struck a transformer in Ithaca and killed power to much of the city. Including the Hangar. We were without power for a few seconds. After waiting about a minute, the dimmers were turned back on and we once again killed the power. So we took an impromptu Intermission, assessed the situation and after a brief hiatus resumed the show pretty much where we left off.I had to do a manual fade for the scene change that was originally INT but other than that the rest of the show ran as it normally does, very smooth. The amazing part about all of this was how calm, cool, and collected everyone was during this. Not a single member of the cast or crew freaked out or lost their nerve. It was simply realized that we were doing everything we could and the situation wasn't entirely in our control. It's moments exactly like this that make me love my job. To watch and be a part of a small group of people who don't panic and fix problems when shit hits the fan as is typically the case in live theatre. Things go wrong. Its just a fact. Why overreact and just amp up the stress of the situation, right? Bravo to everyone involved tonight. Bravo.

The Tech That Never Ends, Yes It Goes On and On My Friends...

It will never be able to fathom why one gets so unbelievably tired, even though they only sat in a darkened theatre for 10+ hours behind a mixing console and pressed the space bar on the iMac running QLab. There is no physical, strenuous activity being performed, yet I could barely keep my eyes open by the end of it. There also seemed to be a very high amount of stress and tension in the air for a show that in all actuality is on the simpler side of the spectrum. There is something in this conundrum that I'm not picking up on I feel, but I really can't grasp as to what it is right now in this extremely tired state. Tomorrow night poses as the first preview of November, which hopefully will relieve some of these feelings and problems. I guess we'll see tomorrow. Goodnight Blogsphere!

There is something oddly relaxing in the tech process. Yes it can be stressful and crazy at times when its happening, but I always seem to feel more at peace when a day of tech is done then just a day of regular work. At least out here where I only have the one job of running the show to worry about. Designing is a whole other beast and when that is happening tech can be a nightmare, but for now I am realizing how much I love what I do.

If I only take away one thing from this summer, which is definitely not the case as I have already learned very much in a small amount of time, is that this is truly what I want to spend my life doing. I'm not just in theatre because when I got to college my girlfriend was in theatre and I wanted to take a class with her. Yes, that's where it started, but having since moved on from that I know this is where I want to stay.

I am also getting a bunch of crazy ideas I want to try to incorporate into future designs as well as new ways to trouble shoot things. For example, in November, which is the show that is in tech right now there are two phones on stage that ring, constantly. It would be safe to say the phone(s) is a character within itself. However these phones are multi-line phones and therefore will not ring with a simply Tele-Q to activate the internal ringer. So we wired up the phones to operate as a tiny satellite speaker and are playing a pre-recorded phone sound through them. This also allows for more onstage effects to happen in the correct places on stage without wiring and hiding another speaker somewhere in the set.

Wow, two posts in the first day. Maybe this thing will actually survive.

Beginnings

It has been a few years since I've done the whole blogging thing and I feel that it is time to give it another go. Maybe a different approach this time. Yes there will be plenty posts of my ramblings, late night philsophy, and general musings, but along with those will be plenty of my insight into what I'm learning as I try to crave a path through my life in the world of theatre sound amongst other theatre related activities. Do I think anyone will read it? Probably not. Do I care? No. Do with it what you will.