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The Ghost Light

Started by Midnight, February 28, 2007, 04:16:42 AM

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Midnight

If any of you were wondering where I've been the last month

The curtain has dropped on my second large scale production (Bat Boy: The Musical) and... it was alright. Oh wait... you want to see it? Well just your luck: P1RAT3S FTW!

Hold Me, Bat Boy
Comfort and Joy
Joyful Noise

If you're paying attention, I'm running the shaky spotlight in Comfort and Joy and Joyful Noise. :banghead: And yes, all these songs are stuck in my head.

This show had so many problems on so many levels. My favorite story, and the one I tell everyone about this show is the story about our sound system: It died on opening night and we had to cobble together a new one in the back of the auditorium with direct cable runs to the stage. Fun.

I chalk it up to good learning and it's prepping me for my next show; Betty's Summer Vacation... which is ENTIRELY inappropriate for a family board, so I'll leave it at that.

So... :D

Alaric

Quote from: Midnight on February 28, 2007, 04:16:42 AMThe curtain has dropped on my second large scale production (Bat Boy: The Musical) and... it was alright.

Congratulations... more or less!

El Condor

Bat Boy is a vert cool musical - it ran here in Boston a couple of years ago and was a smash hit.  Sorry about the mishaps; I know how they can drive techies up the wall, in particular.  A fun piggy-back on the sound story I'm sure will bring a chuckle:

Last spring I was in a production of the Hot Mikado, and all the leads wore body mics.  They were each given explicit instructions to turn off their mics when off-stage, and the sound board operators were told likewise to cut them off upon exit.  Unfortunately, our comic lead exited midway through the second act and, heeding the call of nature, made a bee-line for the restroom.  In his haste to reach the promised land, he forgot to turn his mic off. The poor sop of a soundboard operator also failed to kill the mic line.  What happened next, as the rest of the cast made a valiant effort to soldier on through the next scene, I will leave to your ample imaginations.  Let's just say that our sound system (unlike yours, Middy), was working just fine that night.  :P

EC

Glitch Girl

Heh, when we did Godspell in high school, most of our electrical went out in the middle of the second act taking out most of our lighting and our mics.  Luckily, the guy playing Jesus could project when he sung so we kept going and by the time one of hte quiet songs came up, the techs got the power working again.

It wouldn't be theater without something going wrong.  ;)

Gremlin

Betty's Summer Vacation?  God, that show is just wrong.  Good luck with it!

Midnight

A show without problems is... well...


  • Show 1: The sound system died; our sound engineer rebuilt it from scratch in less than 3 hours, mixed and equalized the whole show on the fly.
  • Show 2: The lighting designer decided to mess with cues after opening night. This resulted in a misprogrammed cue that brought up the house lights. During the orgy scene. Oh my.
  • Show 3: The ASM/Flygirl almost hit two actresses with a baton. Whoops. Also, master electrician blew up at lighting designer for previous night's SNAFU.
  • Show 4: ...my car got towed.
  • Show 5: Shelly (the brunette in the astonishingly short skirt) had her mic pack inexplicably die during the third scene. We did a hot swap with one of the less-important characters during a scene change.
  • Show 6: Stage Manager got a mild concussion at previous night's cast party. Details are sketchy. Also, an important Actress/Stage Crewgirl went to the ER with stomach pains 4 hours before curtain. She is replaced (quite admirably) by the dance choreographer... who learned the part in 2 hours.
  • Show 7: Meredith (the shorter brunette) has a mic pack's battery die on her in the third scene. The stage crew chief and head costume girl (who happen to be dating) frantically root around under Meridith's hoop skirt trying to fix the mic pack during a scene change. ASM/Flygirl does a repeat performance; nearly cold-clocks same two actresses in the same scene change.
Like I said, it was an experience. I'm honestly looking forward to Betty's. It's entirely student run/produced and the script is... out there and we have a very talented cast. ;) I've also been saddled with more responsiblity for this show (MASTER Electrician *flex*) so I look forward to... uh... busting my butt. Ah crap.

Lord Elcorion

i was part of the ensemble cast in my highschool production of the wizard of oz.. i don't remember exact nights they happened, but 2 of the snafus i remember distinctly were:

1 : during the tornado scene transfer between kansas and oz, dorthy chages from a plain blue dress into a bright orange floral dress while inside the spinning house stage piece. one night, she had trouble anchoring her mic properly to the new dress.. just after meeting the cowardly lion, we were going to go into the jitterbug scene, ((not featured in the movie)) and just prior to the jitterbug's entrance, the charecters are talking about the jitterbugs, and tin man points at dorthy and shouts "look, there's one there!" and jumps in front of her for several seconds, masking the fact that he is helping her get her mic on properly.

2 : when the wizard is preparing his balloon to take himself and dorthy out of oz, he is supposed to give a pronouncment making scarecrow the new king of oz, etc. the wizard takes off too soon, and dorthy and pals have to adlib the wizard's pronouncment.