In the burgs

Blacksburg. Wow. Not only can I not believe that we actually had a show here but I can't believe we survived it. And somehow everyone made their entrances in costume. It was a night of miracles.

To begin with, we finished loading out of Bloomsburg at 4AM. And then we had a 400 mile drive to Blacksburg, Virginia. We were supposed to start load in at 8AM but short of a warp in the space time continuum that was simply not possible. We slept for a good 5-6 hours and woke up in Virginia at 10:30. We got to the venue at about 11 and started load in.

So first the pros. The stage is actually larger than our 2 previous venues. So we had wing space AND backstage space. It felt positively cavernous after our last house of quick changing practically on top of the rail. Another pro was the number of people who showed up to help load in. I've literally never seen so many loaders.

And now the cons... Our theatre in Blacksburg is on the Virginia Tech campus. So all our helpers? College students. Lots of them sorority girls who were getting “community service” credit for showing up. I commend them for diving in and doing whatever we needed. It just took a bunch of them at any given time...

Next, the ceiling of the theatre is only 33 feet from the deck. So there is no grid and no real fly rail to speak of. Ergo, we could only hang one backdrop – the New York scene

and you can see here that even when it was flown as high as possible it was still visible.

So the rest of our 8 or so drops never got hung and apparently all of the Producers action happened on Broadway in NYC. Bavarians? In NYC. Hitler? Conquered NYC. Little old ladies and accountants? All did their business on the streets of NYC. It made for an interesting show.

But the real complication was the height of the doorway.
See here how our light towers can just fit?

See here how our decking carts could not possibly fit?

See here where our decking is being carried in piece by piece by an army of college students?

We did nothing but load the show in from 11AM until show time. Of that 8.5 hours, I probably spent 2 hours doing anything wardrobe related. The rest of the time I was a stage hand. When the actors came in at 5:30 for sound check, we were still building scenery on deck. Stage management bought us sandwiches for dinner and most of us found 5 minutes to sit down and eat them.

Then we got our crews of fresh faced eager kids who love theatre and had never worked backstage before. We had so many people milling around that Mike started pulling off pieces of hot pink gaff tape and labeling everyone in Wardrobe land to keep them from getting pulled into other crews. The wig people had bandanas tied around their arms and the props kids had bandanas on their heads. Made it easier to identify your crew. Also made it look like some kind of extreme sport or reality television show... Adding to the team sport factor was the varying competence levels. I think some of the college carpenters got voted off the island :)

Our TD got on headset at the top of show and instead of his normal "just remember...and have a good show" speech, we got the "Hang on everyone. This is going to be a wild ride!" speech. I don't remember much of the show but apparently it went ok. And our wardrobe kids did really well for their first show. I did alot more than I normally do but it all ran very smoothly. Stage management bought us dinner...exactly the same thing as lunch. I think I'm over BLT sandwiches for now.

And now we're loading out. Again. And doing it all in reverse where we hand carry all the scenery out to the loading dock and put it all on carts and then hand carry each piece of decking out.
Here's our “gravity works” solution to carrying the accountant units out of the building. Did I say carrying? I meant dragging... Oy. And it's dark. So who knows what kind of order this is all getting put in. And God only knows what our next load in will look like.

But all I know is that we worked 10 shows straight in 3 cities in 2 different states and now we have a day off! Yay! And it's Halloween! Double hurrah!

For the rest of the week? North Carolina, then Nashville and then Missouri on Sunday. And then Colorado next week...

Addendum from a day or so later: At 2:30AM that night during load out we got wind that we might be losing our crew. We were about half way through load out but due to some contractual agreement with the college, none of our students could work past 3AM. There was a lot of heated conversation within management while our crew tried cracking the whip on our poor tired students to get as much loaded as possible before we lost them.

The penultimate saddest part of the night was watching all of our boxes outside get transported back into the theatre for safe keeping overnight when we lost our crew at 3AM.

The Ultimate Most Wretched part of the night was the realization that we would have to be back at Virginia Tech tomorrow for Load Out Part Deux on what was supposed to be our first day off in 10 days.

That realization was almost equaled by the fact that we would be paying for our hotel room for the night and only spending a total of about 7 hours there. Just long enough to sleep and shower and get back on the bus.

Appropriately enough for Halloween Eve, it was a night of horrors...