4 pumpkins and a gin and tonic

Well, if we thought Idaho was bad, it's only 1:30 in Montana and we already have a totally new system for venue assessment. After losing half our load out crew last night in the middle of load out, our TD arrived in Montana, did a head count of the loaders available and noted that we were 17 people short. He told the house TD that until he had the requisite number of people for load in, our crew wasn't getting off the bus because it was a breach of contract.

So we arrived at the venue at 8AM and didn't get off the bus until 10:30 when they had scrounged up the remaining 17 people. The only pro to this situation is that the head count now matches the contract. The cons are many:

1. Just because we have certain number of people doesn't mean any of them are competent. We now have someone with an atrophied hand, a guy missing part of his arm and some volunteer college students in addition to the old union stagehands with 20 years of experience who can push 200lb boxes by themselves.

2. All of our heads of department in this show range in age from 22-36. In every city these heads manage local help ranging in age from 14-80. The union stage hands and any local over the age of 30 seem skeptical of our ability to manage a crew. This means proving our competency in every city, which means every day having subtle power dramas with the local crew. Sometimes we win, they respect our position and our experience and do things the way we need them done. Sometimes we lose and they do whatever they want, openly defy our position and sometimes walk out in the middle of the show. It's a bit grueling. The heads of department under the age of 25 have an especially hard time not taking all of this personally.

3. This power struggle is not helped when locals arrive at 8AM on a day where it's snowing and 19 degrees outside and then sit around for 2.5 hours wondering why we are still on the bus and not getting the show unloaded. Now the uphill battle has achieved an even steeper grade.

4. We have even less time to load a show into a venue that's too small to begin with and requires a lift to bring boxes to a stage that's actually on the second floor of the venue.

5. But the most important con of this situation is that we need these people for load out. And even if the contract requires that we have a certain number of loaders there, they could just take off leaving only our crew to load the show out. Their presenter is then technically responsible to pay us for that extra time but that is the king of all uphill battles and it only hurts us if it takes 8 hours to get our show out of this venue. We're on a schedule that requires us to be 200 miles away by tomorrow morning whereas the presenter here in Butte has already gotten their show and their money.

So battle won but war lost, so to speak.

And now I have to deal with dresser tracks and pretend like I'm head of wardrobe for another day or so. Let's see how much I can get done in that time...

Much later:
Oh good lord. I think that was worse than Blacksburg. And we're in load out right now, constantly counting heads to make sure people aren't leaving. The situation is really grim, not least because they have monster heaters on the street to melt the ice so we can actually handle the gondolas and keep them from rolling down the street and killing someone. The insides of the trucks are also coated with ice.

The show was unspeakable, mostly because of the inexperience of our dressers and the absolute minuteness of the space. I've never had such large numbers of people changing in such a small space. But once again, everyone made it on stage with mostly everything they needed.

However, Jen and I can't do this alone indefinitely. We would need an assistant. It's too much stuff; and weirdly, we can't be everywhere at once. We could do it if we had longer sit downs but one nighters is impossible. It's too easy to lose things and forget things and leave things in cities. Regardless, I think Michael will be back so it's a moot point.

I'm really tired. We are supposed to be in Billings tomorrow, but I suspect this load out will take us longer than it should. Which puts us behind tomorrow. Argh.

Update:
We were late into Billings but the venue was bigger, the crew more experienced and the overall experience much more pleasant. We had a show and then loaded out and slept in the bus for a couple of hours before getting on a plane for California. It was 10 degrees and snowing when the plane took off...