Gah! This school is killing me! I've been meaning to update for a long time but haven't quite gotten time enough to really even think about booting up the computer (and not be doing homework).
I'm supposed to write the introduction to my essay for Pride and Prejudice by tomorrow for English. #1: This task is hard enough (especially since I haven't had time to finish the book yet. #2: Quote from Ms. Drummond: "Don't be surprised if I ask you to read your introduction out loud to the class. That put way too much pressure on me...
Anyway, mostly this update is supposed to be about The Music Man. We've now been open for 2 nights.
Three people are doing tech for The Music Man. Genevieve-Stage manager Janessa and I-Her assistants.
Well, for the first two nights our stage manager had a family get-together campout thingy so she was gone. So Gavin added his daughter to our crew (Kyrsten) and we never rehearsed this setup.
By my tone of voice, you can probably tell that what happened was a disaster.
Friday, our first night, we had a set change that we never practiced (even with Genevieve). We basically didn't know how short of a time we had, although it was a set change behind the curtains. We have only the song "Ice Cream" to remove curtains covering the huge set pieces and then get them into a very odd position but center it. Kyrsten thought it was the blue tape so they pushed their piece there (in actuality it was the glow tape). I was left to get the other set piece in by myself. Basically, I opened the curtains when we were only halfway there. Come to find out, Janessa and Kyrsten's side had a HUGE gap where the audience could see directly backstage. I mean, it was like a 3 foot gap. And we had to set for the library with that gap. We would have closed the curtains but Sydnee (light booth person) told us to leave it. I had to set the left side by going all the way around and then crawling on the floor backstage. I know for a fact the audience saw lots of people they weren't supposed to see. Backstage is pretty much black except for when people walk back there. Then the people light up and are clearly seen.
To make matters worse, just tonight Gavin put hooks on the front of the large set pieces to hang cover-up curtains on. Well, these hooks would catch like crazy on the curtains. It was just the next set change when the pieces caught and popped the curtain off a few of it's hooks. The damage was so bad that Gavin had to fix it during intermission. He also took off the hooks (thankfully). Our second act when perfectly. The curtains stay on the top of the set pieces with no hooks what-so-ever. I wish Gavin would have tested this out before hand. He could have saved himself a lot of time drilling the hooks on (and then having to fix the curtain and removing the hooks.)
You have no idea how bad I felt about this night. It made me want to never come back. Poor Gavin worked so hard for all of this (plus playing the lead role!) and then we upstaged a whole scene and broke things. Also, we messed up the first night which is very important for the audience numbers later just because of word-of-mouth.
Thankfully, we proved ourselves for the next night. We proved that we aren't just stupid and we CAN do it without Genevieve. Everything was perfect except Kyrsten didn't close the curtains at one point because she expected a blackout and their wasn't one. She closed them a bit later in the same scene. (They only close there anyway to give tech a chance to prep the two huge pieces.)
After the disasters opening night, there was this huge tension between backstage tech. and Gavin. It's gone now since we did it right the second night. Gavin was in a very good mood after the show (I saw him talking to tons of (pleased?) audience members and gave us an enthusiastic "good job girls!" after the show.
*Sigh* What a hectic opening weekend!
Now I must get onto my Pride and Prejudice essay in which I am procrastinating on...
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