I'm "guest appearing" at the Ramshorn Theatre tommorrow night as their Sound Guy. It's been at least a year since the last play I did there!
The play will be "Much Ado About Nothing".
Recently in Shows Category
Spoke to my injured ASM the other day, just to check out how she was doing. The Fracture Clinic have said it'll take 8 weeks for her toe to knit.
Just my luck...
And everything was going so well. Last night one of my ASMs got injured. A section of rostra fell on her foot (ouch) and broke her toe.
I guess I have to look on the upside that it wasn't too life threatening and it had to happen eventually. I've been doing shows for 7 odd years now and this is the first major incident to have happened.
On the down side is that I kinda foresaw the incident happening earlier in the evening but it slipped my mind to talk to the people involved to get them to change the way that the rostra had been stacked. And it didn't help that just before I was the one saying that everyone else had bumped in to something and she hadn't. So not only did I not prevent the situation every arising, I actively jinxed her too.
Ironically someone from the NHS had tried to deliver a wheel chair to her earlier...
Anyway shouts out to her, hope she's taking it easy (and writing her essay) and I owe you...well...I dunno...a lot of alcohol probably.
-update-
Oh I should mention that another of my ASMs was clipped by the same bit of rostra but was much less injured, so props to you too!
People keep asking me what I'm working on at the moment, and keep saying an "Old Time Music Hall". To which they say "which one?". ITS MUSIC HALL not Musical!
But in all seriousness it is a type of show that I really enjoy doing, especially as it is the perfect Anti-panto christmas show. Ok there's no real reference to Christmas in the whole show,but it does give a nice (and I am choosing to use that word here) warm feeling, and audiences love it! We have had all sorts of audiences, older folk right through to your modern urban twenty somethings. And all of them come out of the show feeling quite chirpy and perky.
Of course audience participation makes a big different. All of the songs are catchy and easy to pick up.
All I do have to say is next year we bring back the "Green Eyed Idol" cos its absolutely freaking fantastic!
I really must be mad, straight off the back I'm in to working on not 1 show but 2 of them! Jane Eyre and The Homecoming. I think I am now certifiably mad! It should be interesting as the plays are being presented as "rep". That is they are alternating each night. Its not strictly repertory as both shows have a separate cast, but with our limitations on time and such like thats not really practical. It does mean that the stage crew will have to do a complete change over of sets after every show.
Penultimate night and we're busier than ever, we have two full houses lined up and the standby list is growing by the medium. This has introduced a number of logistic issues, the first of which is trying to fit them all in a relatively short time. In the theatre we open the doors to the auditorium at 19:30, and we have to shoe horn them in as close to no-time as is possible. With small houses this isn't a problem, but 74 people is a bit more of a problem.
I think I'd like to see the doors opening just a bit earlier. As a stage manager I can have all of the actors ready slightly earlier, and we can get the audience in, with their bums on seats ready to watch at 19:30. And these 5 small minutes can make the difference between an audience coming out annoyed at 22:35 or happy at 22:25.
but all in all its been very good. We're now past the half way mark for the run, and its been very good. A couple of full houses (1 or 2) and one reviewer.
Our first night audience was full of friends of the cast and it was good for the first night to be so busy and full of sympathetic members. The second night was a very difficult crowd, they sat through the whole of the first act without cracking a smile. That said they apparently all enjoyed the show, and they did waken up in the second half (right when Silvio made his appearance).
And this show hasn't even finished its run and the planning for the next one has started (The Homecoming/Jane Eyre). Hopefully these shows will involve less work as I'm not stage managing either of them, more greasing the axles.
Pretty quickly too, what at the start of the week was looking like a rather large Himalayan mountain, is looking rather more like a series of speedbumps along the M8 (small and inconvenient). Of course this has only been possible through the hard work of everyone involved, which has been made all the more difficult by my somewhat shorter than normal level of tolerance. So sorry to anyone that I've growled at, or ignored or generally slighted, I'm grateful to everything that you're doing (shout outs to Jules, Sharon and Jackie).
Also BIG shouts to Jock, who's doing the sound for us at very late notice and with a lot on his plate the rest of the time...Huge Thanks (I'll keep trying to find some one else!)
Only a couple more days to go, and a couple of coats of paint to sort out and we'll be there...finally.
