The Producers Plague
I'm fighting off the cold that's been circulating through the company for the past several weeks. I've been taking Zicam - which is the nastiest tasting stuff ever invented so it better be working! And my congestion isn't bad, just bad enough to make it hard to sleep and make me feel a little bleh...
And I have a massive burn on my leg because at breakfast the other day I dumped an entire cup of the hottest coffee known to mankind in my lap. I now have just the tiniest bit of sympathy for that woman who sued McDonalds after she spilled her coffee...
Needless to say, if there was a game I would not be entirely on top of it.
And the show is reflecting my mood. There have been a lot of injuries and sick outs this past couple of weeks. Plus we've had people out of the show – called “swinging out” - to do other jobs. Some of our actors have an additional job, like assistant stage manager or assistant company manager, so they occasionally swing out of their actor jobs to do their other jobs. And then our swings come in to do their tracks. It's all fine except it's the usual costume madness.
We have one male swing and one female swing and they can play all the parts in the show. So they should have a full set of their own costumes for every character, which is a lot of costumes. Except they don't have a full set. They have a mostly full set. So when Lauren - the swing – goes on for Lara, #22, she wears Lara's fur coat, and her waitress apron and her jewelry. When Lauren goes on for Keleen, #24, she wears Keleen's usherette jacket and her long coat, etc. etc. etc. So the trick is figuring out what is missing and pulling it from the actor's rack to give to the swing. And today we had 2 actors swing out so it was a lot of switching things around. It's a bit of a disorganized mess sometimes...
The other madness has been the deck. Because this show is in the last year of its tour, the production company doesn't want to pay as much money to send it out this last time. So to cut corners, they cut the number of trucks they were giving us from 4 to 3. Now the trucks look like that semi that we packed in NYC and it's how all of our stuff travels from one venue to another. So when you cut a truck, you have to then cut down all the stuff that was going to go in that truck. This means that every department has to pare things down so that all our stuff fits in 3 trucks. Well, we've known since NYC that we have to cut 7 of our 17 gondolas of costume stuff and one of our workboxes. Don't ask me how we plan to fit all the useful things from 17 gondolas into 10 gondolas. So far our plans have defied physics. But it has to happen, so it will. That's the beauty of theatre. Somehow the show always goes up.
The major thing that was cut for space was our deck. The deck is the portable wooden flooring that travels with us. It comes apart and goes back together like a puzzle and we lay it on top of the theatre flooring in each venue. And why would we need a whole extra floor when every theater has a perfectly good floor, you ask? Well apparently the producers of The Producers asked the same question and then said “you wouldn't!” so they cut it to make space in the truck. And instead they gave us a portable floor called a Marley (click on the word to get the details). It's basically just a big piece of vinyl that we tape to the floor.
So we laid the marley in AC and have been using it for the past 3 weeks. Except it sucks. It's vinyl so the dancers' shoes stick to it just a little bit, which puts some stress on their legs that they aren't used to and several of them have gotten injured working on it. It rubs against all the shoes during the dance moves and they are now all scuffed up. But the most important problem is that all our set pieces don't work on it. We have these big set pieces that were tracked to run on grooves in the deck. So you pull them apart and slide them together and they go to the same place every time on the deck. Not so on the marley. With no grooves to run on, the set pieces have to be put together manually and it's almost impossible for them to run in straight lines every time when you have 3 guys hauling them on and off stage. It was complete chaos all during tech as we tried to get the set to run on the marley. Finally after 3 weeks, the producers gave in and let us have the deck back. Yay! Except we still don't have any extra truck space. Booo! So now every other department has to pare down even more so we can fit the deck into the truck. Double Booo! But we have the deck instead of the marley. Yay! You get the picture...
how does this all relate to tonight, kaitlyn? Well... last weekend was the first weekend on the deck so Sunday night was a painting party to repaint the deck that hadn't been used since July. Fortunately I don't have to be a part of the painting because I'm wardrobe! So the stagehands all stay late and paint (and drink a lot of beer, naturally) and the paint dried all day Monday on our day off. Last night they stayed late again to seal the deck. Today we come in for rehearsal and everyone's shoes are leaving big white scuff marks all over the deck... Why oh why is this happening? Well, it turns out that our TD didn't read the instructions on the sealer... So now the deck had to be repainted again tonight. And then it has to be resealed tomorrow night.
Yay!
And every time this happens, the spike marks ( all the tape marks on the floor that tell people where to stand and where set pieces need to be and where props and furniture need to be so that everything is the same every time) all those marks have to be taken off and replaced every time the deck is painted.
Ask me how happy the stagehands are tonight...
Ask me how happy I am not to be a stagehand!
OK, stuffy and tired so I'm off to bed
xox
k
And I have a massive burn on my leg because at breakfast the other day I dumped an entire cup of the hottest coffee known to mankind in my lap. I now have just the tiniest bit of sympathy for that woman who sued McDonalds after she spilled her coffee...
Needless to say, if there was a game I would not be entirely on top of it.
And the show is reflecting my mood. There have been a lot of injuries and sick outs this past couple of weeks. Plus we've had people out of the show – called “swinging out” - to do other jobs. Some of our actors have an additional job, like assistant stage manager or assistant company manager, so they occasionally swing out of their actor jobs to do their other jobs. And then our swings come in to do their tracks. It's all fine except it's the usual costume madness.
We have one male swing and one female swing and they can play all the parts in the show. So they should have a full set of their own costumes for every character, which is a lot of costumes. Except they don't have a full set. They have a mostly full set. So when Lauren - the swing – goes on for Lara, #22, she wears Lara's fur coat, and her waitress apron and her jewelry. When Lauren goes on for Keleen, #24, she wears Keleen's usherette jacket and her long coat, etc. etc. etc. So the trick is figuring out what is missing and pulling it from the actor's rack to give to the swing. And today we had 2 actors swing out so it was a lot of switching things around. It's a bit of a disorganized mess sometimes...
The other madness has been the deck. Because this show is in the last year of its tour, the production company doesn't want to pay as much money to send it out this last time. So to cut corners, they cut the number of trucks they were giving us from 4 to 3. Now the trucks look like that semi that we packed in NYC and it's how all of our stuff travels from one venue to another. So when you cut a truck, you have to then cut down all the stuff that was going to go in that truck. This means that every department has to pare things down so that all our stuff fits in 3 trucks. Well, we've known since NYC that we have to cut 7 of our 17 gondolas of costume stuff and one of our workboxes. Don't ask me how we plan to fit all the useful things from 17 gondolas into 10 gondolas. So far our plans have defied physics. But it has to happen, so it will. That's the beauty of theatre. Somehow the show always goes up.
The major thing that was cut for space was our deck. The deck is the portable wooden flooring that travels with us. It comes apart and goes back together like a puzzle and we lay it on top of the theatre flooring in each venue. And why would we need a whole extra floor when every theater has a perfectly good floor, you ask? Well apparently the producers of The Producers asked the same question and then said “you wouldn't!” so they cut it to make space in the truck. And instead they gave us a portable floor called a Marley (click on the word to get the details). It's basically just a big piece of vinyl that we tape to the floor.
So we laid the marley in AC and have been using it for the past 3 weeks. Except it sucks. It's vinyl so the dancers' shoes stick to it just a little bit, which puts some stress on their legs that they aren't used to and several of them have gotten injured working on it. It rubs against all the shoes during the dance moves and they are now all scuffed up. But the most important problem is that all our set pieces don't work on it. We have these big set pieces that were tracked to run on grooves in the deck. So you pull them apart and slide them together and they go to the same place every time on the deck. Not so on the marley. With no grooves to run on, the set pieces have to be put together manually and it's almost impossible for them to run in straight lines every time when you have 3 guys hauling them on and off stage. It was complete chaos all during tech as we tried to get the set to run on the marley. Finally after 3 weeks, the producers gave in and let us have the deck back. Yay! Except we still don't have any extra truck space. Booo! So now every other department has to pare down even more so we can fit the deck into the truck. Double Booo! But we have the deck instead of the marley. Yay! You get the picture...
how does this all relate to tonight, kaitlyn? Well... last weekend was the first weekend on the deck so Sunday night was a painting party to repaint the deck that hadn't been used since July. Fortunately I don't have to be a part of the painting because I'm wardrobe! So the stagehands all stay late and paint (and drink a lot of beer, naturally) and the paint dried all day Monday on our day off. Last night they stayed late again to seal the deck. Today we come in for rehearsal and everyone's shoes are leaving big white scuff marks all over the deck... Why oh why is this happening? Well, it turns out that our TD didn't read the instructions on the sealer... So now the deck had to be repainted again tonight. And then it has to be resealed tomorrow night.
Yay!
And every time this happens, the spike marks ( all the tape marks on the floor that tell people where to stand and where set pieces need to be and where props and furniture need to be so that everything is the same every time) all those marks have to be taken off and replaced every time the deck is painted.
Ask me how happy the stagehands are tonight...
Ask me how happy I am not to be a stagehand!
OK, stuffy and tired so I'm off to bed
xox
k
posted by KBARRETT at 9:15 PM
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