On such a winter's day...
Ah, California, the land of dreams... We so deserve this kind of house after the past week of horrors. Let's evaluate, shall we?
Huge venue with plenty of room backstage for gondolas AND dressers AND actors AND cross throughs. The last time that happened was probably Wilmington, Delaware.
The mid rail for our flyman is at the height of most of the ceilings of our previous venues.
Ingrid has props people that actually watch cue lights and follow directions.
I have dressers that have worked wardrobe before, do their jobs instead of watching the show and appear to know how to read and follow directions.
We had the third truck dumped before lunch and I was doing laundry. That has never happened.
We have a HUGE wardrobe and wig workspace. And it's indoors. And it has plenty of light and chairs and tables and outlets.
Reliable internet connection in the hotel AND at the venue. We haven't had that since Atlantic City.
Walking distance to Target and various restaurants from the hotel.
Walking distance to Starbucks and sushi from the venue.
Christmas has definitely come early for us! We had a load in that went to smoothly and so fast that the majority of the crew was home taking naps and eating an early dinner by 4PM. That has never happened either. However, Jen and I were toiling away in our huge, well lit, well wired space instead of napping. Why, you ask? Well...
Thursday (Thanksgiving, so yes these blogs are posted after the fact) our plane lands in San Diego and I get a voice mail from our company manager saying that our actor who plays Roger Debrides had a death in the family and will be out of the show for the weekend, at least. Now my loyal readers will remember that we have our swing in for our Character Man #1 and our swing is also the Roger cover. Character Man #1 is not supposed to be back in the show until Saturday at the earliest, which leaves us with a principal actor and an ensemble actor out and only one male swing.
And we've had 2 fittings for our swing but we still don't have a reliable set of costumes for him to play Roger. This means that not only are Jen and I loading the show in by ourselves but I have to make time to have a fitting with our swing and alter or create all the costumes necessary for him to play the role in less than 24 hours.
But that's not all! We also were told that same day that there would be a press event at 8AM on Saturday morning. They plan to film one of our numbers - “I Wanna Be a Producer,” which is where Leo Bloom has a fantasy sequence about being a Broadway Producer complete with numerous chorus girls feeding him champagne - on live television for a local morning show. So in addition to loading in and a fitting and an unknown number of alterations, I also have to look over all my chorus girl outfits and make enough repairs to beading and sequins and jewels to have them look good on camera, paint their shoes, Jen has to set wigs and we have to take all the costumes to our hotel room over night and be up and ready to go by 7AM on Saturday morning. Please note all parts of that previous sentence as it will definitely become relevant later in my story...
Fortunately, most of my dressers can sew and they spend all day working on my chorus girl outfits and altering my swing's Roger clothes and we are in really good shape by late afternoon. We spend large portions of the day figuring out how to transport our chorus girl costumes and wigs to the TV studio. And our show also went smoothly. Our character man #1 came back in and we split his track with our female swing. It was now official, we had both our swings in the show so anyone else calling out was going to make it a very complicated situation. The show ran well with some goofs, typical of a first show, but for the most part our dressers and wig people are experienced and competent and can read and follow directions. Miraculous.
Jen and I run around after the show grabbing all the girl's clothes and wigs and makeup and shoes and earrings etc. etc. packing them into boxes and hauling them all to the bus and then to our hotel rooms. I have to repaint all the girl's shoes so I go to Jen's room and paint on the balcony at midnight while she fixes wigs in her room. We have dinner and hang out and I go to bed around 1AM.
At 3AM I get a phone call that wakes me up but I don't answer it. It's followed immediately by a text message from jen:
“Did we bring any costumes for Austin (our actor who plays Leo Bloom)?”
...
...
Oh Dear Lord.
It's 3AM in Escondido California and I have a live TV show segment at 7AM and no clothes for our principal lead who will also be giving an interview... And I'm acting in Wardrobe Head capacity so it's totally and completely my responsibility. I somehow got all the girl's stuff but forgot about Leo Bloom!
Let me consolidate the next hour and a half. We spent an hour talking about what to do and trying various phone numbers for the theatre, once we remembered the name of the theatre. With much trepidation we decided we should call our TD and have him call the house TD and get him to open up the theatre so we could get the costumes. Imagine calling your boss at 3AM to have him call some unknown bigwig to drive downtown at 3AM and open up a theatre because you were an idiot, and you have some idea of how I felt making that call. But my TD didn't pick up the phone. I called him again and and he still didn't pick up so I figured that was a sign. I called Jen back and told her that confession wasn't an option, we would have to try something else.
We finally found the theatre website and there was a number for security. When we called, the security guard at the theatre picked up! We explained our predicament and he told us he'd let us in. So we hopped in a cab and drove downtown at 4AM to the theatre where the guard let us in. He immediately told us that he had seen the show the night before, and loved it and showed us his ticket stub and followed us around talking about the show as we collected costumes. We grabbed a handful of things, made multiple trips back and forth after shoes, t-shirts etc. and finally got back in our cab and went back to the hotel. Very surreal, the feeling of climbing back in bed after an hour and a half of stress and running about.
Got one more hour of sleep (3 total) and woke up to go watch TV filmed live. Everyone did great and the segment was really short. Jen and I had several moments throughout the process laughing to ourselves about our surreal evening and our ability to keep it a secret! Ok, clearly not a secret now that I'm writing about it but the moment has passed so it's not as big of a deal...
As we drove home, we discovered that our character man #2 had called out of the show. Now we had a principal man out, a character man out and both our swings already in. At this point, I'm no longer horrified or stressed by this development as it has become our regular show routine. So, more fittings, some scrabbling around, some more and different split tracking, changing of lines and blocking etc. etc. Despite that we had a perfect show. No dresser problems and no major costume problems.
Everything is still TBA regarding Jen's and my titles, any kind of raise for us each doing 1.5 people's work, possibility of us getting as assistant, possibility of Michael coming back or not... etc.
Word I hate? bureaucracy
Huge venue with plenty of room backstage for gondolas AND dressers AND actors AND cross throughs. The last time that happened was probably Wilmington, Delaware.
The mid rail for our flyman is at the height of most of the ceilings of our previous venues.
Ingrid has props people that actually watch cue lights and follow directions.
I have dressers that have worked wardrobe before, do their jobs instead of watching the show and appear to know how to read and follow directions.
We had the third truck dumped before lunch and I was doing laundry. That has never happened.
We have a HUGE wardrobe and wig workspace. And it's indoors. And it has plenty of light and chairs and tables and outlets.
Reliable internet connection in the hotel AND at the venue. We haven't had that since Atlantic City.
Walking distance to Target and various restaurants from the hotel.
Walking distance to Starbucks and sushi from the venue.
Christmas has definitely come early for us! We had a load in that went to smoothly and so fast that the majority of the crew was home taking naps and eating an early dinner by 4PM. That has never happened either. However, Jen and I were toiling away in our huge, well lit, well wired space instead of napping. Why, you ask? Well...
Thursday (Thanksgiving, so yes these blogs are posted after the fact) our plane lands in San Diego and I get a voice mail from our company manager saying that our actor who plays Roger Debrides had a death in the family and will be out of the show for the weekend, at least. Now my loyal readers will remember that we have our swing in for our Character Man #1 and our swing is also the Roger cover. Character Man #1 is not supposed to be back in the show until Saturday at the earliest, which leaves us with a principal actor and an ensemble actor out and only one male swing.
And we've had 2 fittings for our swing but we still don't have a reliable set of costumes for him to play Roger. This means that not only are Jen and I loading the show in by ourselves but I have to make time to have a fitting with our swing and alter or create all the costumes necessary for him to play the role in less than 24 hours.
But that's not all! We also were told that same day that there would be a press event at 8AM on Saturday morning. They plan to film one of our numbers - “I Wanna Be a Producer,” which is where Leo Bloom has a fantasy sequence about being a Broadway Producer complete with numerous chorus girls feeding him champagne - on live television for a local morning show. So in addition to loading in and a fitting and an unknown number of alterations, I also have to look over all my chorus girl outfits and make enough repairs to beading and sequins and jewels to have them look good on camera, paint their shoes, Jen has to set wigs and we have to take all the costumes to our hotel room over night and be up and ready to go by 7AM on Saturday morning. Please note all parts of that previous sentence as it will definitely become relevant later in my story...
Fortunately, most of my dressers can sew and they spend all day working on my chorus girl outfits and altering my swing's Roger clothes and we are in really good shape by late afternoon. We spend large portions of the day figuring out how to transport our chorus girl costumes and wigs to the TV studio. And our show also went smoothly. Our character man #1 came back in and we split his track with our female swing. It was now official, we had both our swings in the show so anyone else calling out was going to make it a very complicated situation. The show ran well with some goofs, typical of a first show, but for the most part our dressers and wig people are experienced and competent and can read and follow directions. Miraculous.
Jen and I run around after the show grabbing all the girl's clothes and wigs and makeup and shoes and earrings etc. etc. packing them into boxes and hauling them all to the bus and then to our hotel rooms. I have to repaint all the girl's shoes so I go to Jen's room and paint on the balcony at midnight while she fixes wigs in her room. We have dinner and hang out and I go to bed around 1AM.
At 3AM I get a phone call that wakes me up but I don't answer it. It's followed immediately by a text message from jen:
“Did we bring any costumes for Austin (our actor who plays Leo Bloom)?”
...
...
Oh Dear Lord.
It's 3AM in Escondido California and I have a live TV show segment at 7AM and no clothes for our principal lead who will also be giving an interview... And I'm acting in Wardrobe Head capacity so it's totally and completely my responsibility. I somehow got all the girl's stuff but forgot about Leo Bloom!
Let me consolidate the next hour and a half. We spent an hour talking about what to do and trying various phone numbers for the theatre, once we remembered the name of the theatre. With much trepidation we decided we should call our TD and have him call the house TD and get him to open up the theatre so we could get the costumes. Imagine calling your boss at 3AM to have him call some unknown bigwig to drive downtown at 3AM and open up a theatre because you were an idiot, and you have some idea of how I felt making that call. But my TD didn't pick up the phone. I called him again and and he still didn't pick up so I figured that was a sign. I called Jen back and told her that confession wasn't an option, we would have to try something else.
We finally found the theatre website and there was a number for security. When we called, the security guard at the theatre picked up! We explained our predicament and he told us he'd let us in. So we hopped in a cab and drove downtown at 4AM to the theatre where the guard let us in. He immediately told us that he had seen the show the night before, and loved it and showed us his ticket stub and followed us around talking about the show as we collected costumes. We grabbed a handful of things, made multiple trips back and forth after shoes, t-shirts etc. and finally got back in our cab and went back to the hotel. Very surreal, the feeling of climbing back in bed after an hour and a half of stress and running about.
Got one more hour of sleep (3 total) and woke up to go watch TV filmed live. Everyone did great and the segment was really short. Jen and I had several moments throughout the process laughing to ourselves about our surreal evening and our ability to keep it a secret! Ok, clearly not a secret now that I'm writing about it but the moment has passed so it's not as big of a deal...
As we drove home, we discovered that our character man #2 had called out of the show. Now we had a principal man out, a character man out and both our swings already in. At this point, I'm no longer horrified or stressed by this development as it has become our regular show routine. So, more fittings, some scrabbling around, some more and different split tracking, changing of lines and blocking etc. etc. Despite that we had a perfect show. No dresser problems and no major costume problems.
Everything is still TBA regarding Jen's and my titles, any kind of raise for us each doing 1.5 people's work, possibility of us getting as assistant, possibility of Michael coming back or not... etc.
Word I hate? bureaucracy
posted by KBARRETT at 3:57 PM
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