I survived

Made it through the massive load-in, now drinking a beer, trying to catch up on life.

In other news, I was recently asked to give an example of a time that a show tech went horribly awry. I explained to the asker that once, I worked on a show where not only did we break a neon light sculpture, but also all the transformers for the neon were busted (that week I learned more about transformers than I ever wanted to know), and there were motorized wheels whose motors couldn't handle the weight of the wheels, which pulled downward at a 45-degree angle. While we tried to fix these motors (for hours), a super-dramatic soundtrack played over the PA at full blast. There were also walls that were built to meet our 22-foot grid, and we had to chain up our fly pipes (which are just sandbag-to-ac cable-to pulleys) to accommodate that, and never quite got them back in working order again.

So let's hear some of your tech stories- describe a time when everything went wrong, and what you learned from it!

Next week...

I'll be lighting a dance show with 7 choreographers on Monday morning and running it that night, and then I will be loading in a show with multiple rooms, a running shower, 12-16 video sources and an almost entire re-work of our rep plot. Apologies if new posts are slow to come!

Lady Gaga

I was asked, yesterday, for my thoughts on Lady Gaga, after having called Cirque du Soleil "somewhat cheesy". Don't get me wrong- Cirque does some really amazing things, technically. I just have a hard time getting behind those mass-entertainment corporate types of things.



Now, Gaga is ALSO cheesy (if anyone on Project Runway ever made something approximating one of her costumes, the Klumster would would call it trashy and "just weird", and Michael Kors would come up with some snotty, musical-based critique that said the same). And she's also become a corporate establishment. But, unlike Cirque, the things that she does onstage are somehow unexpected. You KNOW when you go see a Cirque or Gaga show that you are going to be wowed. But when Gaga does it, it has that element of surprise, and it's sometimes darkly comedic. Like when she covered poor Elton John in soot at the Golden Globes. Or when she sings on crutches with a broken neck in her video for "Bad Romance"

She has shot fireworks out of her bra:
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Set her piano aflame while wearing glowing PVC pipes:


And met the Queen of England while dressed in a red vinyl sack:


I guess the thing I like about Lady Gaga the most is that so much of what she does is nonsensical, something my five-year-old self could have come up with, and my 27-year-old self still delights in. She's also giving us a female pop icon who's not about looking skinny and sexual and perfect all the time. All of this, and the woman makes some damn catchy music.

How much would I LOVE to make costumes for this woman...

Anybody out there working on her current tour? Tell us all how fucking amazing it is so we can be jealous...

Hatred #901

We have an abundance of Altman endcaps at the theatre which do not work. Upon taking apart the connectors, all seems well with the world: correct wiring, no corroded copper, nothing crispy. Tracing the entire tail, having removed the sleeve, there are no crimps in the wires, or breaks. The ground is tacked in place where it should be. Which brings me to the inside of the cap, where the lamp housing lives. WHY must the wires be stuck under a riveted housing? Even if I DO manage to get that apart and repair the wiring, I will never get it back together, because I own neither a riveter nor the will to survive after repairing 15-some-odd endcaps.

Colbert mocks the sound editors

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Superbowl Half-time

I've often wondered exactly how it's possible to put up those huge SuperBowl stages, with all their lights and projectors and pyrotechnics, etc. Now I know: with a fuckton of stagehands.

Fire Code Shenanigans

Patrick over at Backstagejobs has a great article on how effing difficult it is to find information on theatre fire codes.



I've run into this problem myself on more than one occasion- in New York City, one would presumably go to the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting website to find out, for example, how many chairs can legally be put together in a row before an aisle interrupts them, or how many and what type of fire extinguishers should be on hand. One might also think that the FDNY site could be a good resource. Now, I know I've found *some* info online before, but I remember digging around for hours before finding out that every audience member must be no more than 7 seats away from an aisle (or was it 6?).

A logical stagehand might think that the city would put this information out there for fire-prevention at the many theaters here. Use a phone, you might say? I've tried that, too. The best I usually get as a response is "the dude who knows all that stuff is out today" or "call so-and-so and such-and-such-a-theater, he's great with all that".

The theater I work at is blessed with many a visit from the fire department, as standard procedure. They send an army of four or five men decked out in full fire gear, five minutes before a show to scare the bejeezus out of anyone waiting in the lobby. Then I have the dubious pleasure of showing them around, making sure to point out exit signs and fire extinguishers.

On one such visit, dude came with a clipboard and a list of questions. One question on his form was "thrust stage, proscenium, other?"
Dude turned to me and asked what a thrust stage was.

I'm not saying that your average fireman has to know what a thrust stage is, but one would hope that the team that is inspecting theatres for public safety might have to know.

Anywho. That's my rant of the day.