Crazy in Iowa
If Waco was a touring technician rite of passage, I definitely went through a touring wardrobe head rite of passage this past week in Iowa when one of my performers came to me and told me he had body lice.
I'll give you a small clear space to contemplate the implications of that. Those of you with kids in public school should have no trouble.
Got it? (I actually just typed “got nit?” by mistake...)
I imagine some of you are sympathetically scratching right now.
For the rest of you, here's the scene: 24 performers living on a bus, sharing hotel rooms and dressing rooms and occasionally makeup or other personal things, wearing costumes over and over without them being washed or drycleaned, storing costumes together in the same gondolas...
In a word, a grotesque nightmare.
To his credit, he tried to call me in the early afternoon when he found out, but I didn't get the message and so got the news at show call, which is when I tend to find out everything. That then gives me an hour and a half to set up the show, deal with the impending disaster usually meaning that I have to swing one or more people out and frequently conference with the dance captains about the split tracking, train 10 new people to work the show and take a brief moment to breathe deep and pray it all goes well before the overture starts. That isn't ever enough time.
It probably goes without saying that a contagious outbreak like this is one of the biggest costume disasters that can happen to a touring show. We had heard previously that Evita suffered an outbreak of scabies and I remember thinking “A. that's disgusting and B. SO glad that hasn't happened to me.” Everyone in the cast and crew had to be treated and every costume piece had to be washed or dry cleaned. When it did happen to me I thought “A. that's disgusting and B. can I stop this from spreading? and C. how in the world can I possibly clean any clothes on a one nighter schedule?”
In our case, lice is passed primarily through skin to skin contact and secondarily through clothing so the most important thing was to contain the situation. I talked to management and we immediately yanked him out and put our male swing in the show. Jennifer and I must have looked like crazy people as we ran to the deck and started immediatelypulling his clothes out of the gondola and flinging them into a pile on the floor stopping every 30 seconds to say “do you feel itchy? I feel REALLY itchy!” or running over to each other pulling up our sleeve or our pant leg and saying “Does this look like a bite???” In between amateur clinical appointments, we cleared out all his costumes, all his shoes and hats and jewelry and makeup and accessories and threw them all in garbage bags. But he shares a gondola with another performer. So now what?
I called the dance captains over and told them that for all intents and purposes the whole gondola was contaminated and we couldn't use anything in it. That meant 2 male ensemble members were cut from the show. Since we already have a female ensemble member out and we only have 2 swings, we now have to split track the two men's parts. And of course, these are the two tracks that haven't been split tracked before. So while we emptied the gondola, covered it up and did everything but post an enormous HAZMAT sign in blinking lights over it, the dance captains tried to figure out how to run the show short one person. Meanwhile, my crew is coming in so I'm trying to handle this situation, give them the normal instructions on unpacking the show and not tell them what's going on.
I made the executive decision not to tell them about the lice, which may or may not have been the right thing to do. I kept them out of the situation entirely and didn't let any of them handle any potentionally contaminated clothes in that gondola. I admit that it was an entirely selfish move on my part as I didn't need (and couldn't handle) anyone walking off the call. I also figured the chance of contagion for them was low. Again, selfish. I did tell them that one of the performers had a “skin disorder/dermatitis type of thing” and that's why he was out.
Approximately an hour before show time the dance captains came to me and asked if I had enough extra costumes to put one of the performers (the noninfested one) back in the show. They said it was just going to be really difficult to split track those two parts and any scene I could put him in would help them out. Split tracking, for those who aren't familiar, requires going through the show scene by scene and figuring out who can be cut, which two parts one person could play in any given scene and how to rechoreograph it so that the missing person isn't obvious or give the one person time to change costumes so they can play two parts. It's exhausting for everyone, it adds quick changes to my tracking and makes some of our dresser track instructions obsolete. A huge mess.
I ended up putting my performer through an impromptu fitting, scrabbling together as many costumes as I could for him, making sure they were ironed or steamed to be presentable, figuring out which scenes he wasn't in, changing my tracking to accommodate that, pulling all the costumes necessary for my other swing to go in for the lice infested performer and then giving them both somewhere to change since they couldn't use their gondola. At 7PM for a 7:30 show I could finally pass out dresser tracks, explain our show, put presets together and hope for the best. Fortunately I had a decent crew because I gave them little to no instruction. Compared to my normal spiel, I essentially threw dresser tracks at them, pointed them in the direction of the gondolas and walked away.
The show is a blur but we survived it with no major mishaps. Load out was horrendous because I had one gondola out of commission, all the clothes, shoes, hats etc. in huge garbage bags that had to travel somewhere and couldn't be near any of my costume stuff, and my two extra gondolas looked like they had exploded all over the room from my impromptu fitting. On top of that I could look forward to a whole next day of disinfection. I decided to send all of the infected performer's clothes to New York to be cleaned over break, which is next week, since he's out of the show until we come back. But I still had to deal with the noninfected performer that shares his gondola.
About that next day I'll just say 2 things: Lysol and hot water. All day.
It has occurred to me to wonder if all tours are as hard as this one has been. On top of being one person short in my department (by choice, I admit) and on a one nighter schedule that has me loading 15 gondolas worth of wigs and wardrobe in and out of venues every day, we haven't had a show with the full company in over a month. Since we opened in Atlantic City, we've had 4 performers out anywhere from a week to a month each with sickness in their immediate family. On top of that we've had the normal amount of sickness and injury that takes people out of the show, we've had some of the worst and smallest venues in the country and now lice. To any and all in charge of this mess, I say:
Enough already.
I'll give you a small clear space to contemplate the implications of that. Those of you with kids in public school should have no trouble.
Got it? (I actually just typed “got nit?” by mistake...)
I imagine some of you are sympathetically scratching right now.
For the rest of you, here's the scene: 24 performers living on a bus, sharing hotel rooms and dressing rooms and occasionally makeup or other personal things, wearing costumes over and over without them being washed or drycleaned, storing costumes together in the same gondolas...
In a word, a grotesque nightmare.
To his credit, he tried to call me in the early afternoon when he found out, but I didn't get the message and so got the news at show call, which is when I tend to find out everything. That then gives me an hour and a half to set up the show, deal with the impending disaster usually meaning that I have to swing one or more people out and frequently conference with the dance captains about the split tracking, train 10 new people to work the show and take a brief moment to breathe deep and pray it all goes well before the overture starts. That isn't ever enough time.
It probably goes without saying that a contagious outbreak like this is one of the biggest costume disasters that can happen to a touring show. We had heard previously that Evita suffered an outbreak of scabies and I remember thinking “A. that's disgusting and B. SO glad that hasn't happened to me.” Everyone in the cast and crew had to be treated and every costume piece had to be washed or dry cleaned. When it did happen to me I thought “A. that's disgusting and B. can I stop this from spreading? and C. how in the world can I possibly clean any clothes on a one nighter schedule?”
In our case, lice is passed primarily through skin to skin contact and secondarily through clothing so the most important thing was to contain the situation. I talked to management and we immediately yanked him out and put our male swing in the show. Jennifer and I must have looked like crazy people as we ran to the deck and started immediatelypulling his clothes out of the gondola and flinging them into a pile on the floor stopping every 30 seconds to say “do you feel itchy? I feel REALLY itchy!” or running over to each other pulling up our sleeve or our pant leg and saying “Does this look like a bite???” In between amateur clinical appointments, we cleared out all his costumes, all his shoes and hats and jewelry and makeup and accessories and threw them all in garbage bags. But he shares a gondola with another performer. So now what?
I called the dance captains over and told them that for all intents and purposes the whole gondola was contaminated and we couldn't use anything in it. That meant 2 male ensemble members were cut from the show. Since we already have a female ensemble member out and we only have 2 swings, we now have to split track the two men's parts. And of course, these are the two tracks that haven't been split tracked before. So while we emptied the gondola, covered it up and did everything but post an enormous HAZMAT sign in blinking lights over it, the dance captains tried to figure out how to run the show short one person. Meanwhile, my crew is coming in so I'm trying to handle this situation, give them the normal instructions on unpacking the show and not tell them what's going on.
I made the executive decision not to tell them about the lice, which may or may not have been the right thing to do. I kept them out of the situation entirely and didn't let any of them handle any potentionally contaminated clothes in that gondola. I admit that it was an entirely selfish move on my part as I didn't need (and couldn't handle) anyone walking off the call. I also figured the chance of contagion for them was low. Again, selfish. I did tell them that one of the performers had a “skin disorder/dermatitis type of thing” and that's why he was out.
Approximately an hour before show time the dance captains came to me and asked if I had enough extra costumes to put one of the performers (the noninfested one) back in the show. They said it was just going to be really difficult to split track those two parts and any scene I could put him in would help them out. Split tracking, for those who aren't familiar, requires going through the show scene by scene and figuring out who can be cut, which two parts one person could play in any given scene and how to rechoreograph it so that the missing person isn't obvious or give the one person time to change costumes so they can play two parts. It's exhausting for everyone, it adds quick changes to my tracking and makes some of our dresser track instructions obsolete. A huge mess.
I ended up putting my performer through an impromptu fitting, scrabbling together as many costumes as I could for him, making sure they were ironed or steamed to be presentable, figuring out which scenes he wasn't in, changing my tracking to accommodate that, pulling all the costumes necessary for my other swing to go in for the lice infested performer and then giving them both somewhere to change since they couldn't use their gondola. At 7PM for a 7:30 show I could finally pass out dresser tracks, explain our show, put presets together and hope for the best. Fortunately I had a decent crew because I gave them little to no instruction. Compared to my normal spiel, I essentially threw dresser tracks at them, pointed them in the direction of the gondolas and walked away.
The show is a blur but we survived it with no major mishaps. Load out was horrendous because I had one gondola out of commission, all the clothes, shoes, hats etc. in huge garbage bags that had to travel somewhere and couldn't be near any of my costume stuff, and my two extra gondolas looked like they had exploded all over the room from my impromptu fitting. On top of that I could look forward to a whole next day of disinfection. I decided to send all of the infected performer's clothes to New York to be cleaned over break, which is next week, since he's out of the show until we come back. But I still had to deal with the noninfected performer that shares his gondola.
About that next day I'll just say 2 things: Lysol and hot water. All day.
It has occurred to me to wonder if all tours are as hard as this one has been. On top of being one person short in my department (by choice, I admit) and on a one nighter schedule that has me loading 15 gondolas worth of wigs and wardrobe in and out of venues every day, we haven't had a show with the full company in over a month. Since we opened in Atlantic City, we've had 4 performers out anywhere from a week to a month each with sickness in their immediate family. On top of that we've had the normal amount of sickness and injury that takes people out of the show, we've had some of the worst and smallest venues in the country and now lice. To any and all in charge of this mess, I say:
Enough already.
posted by KBARRETT at 1:43 PM
1 Comments:
Good post.
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