How do I get rid of about 30 untrained people?

[cgimusic]

At my school their is a Christmas fair coming up. Anyway two students are in charge of producing a play and since no one wants to do acting I have 31 people who want to do lighting and sound and only one of them is trained. Should I just give them menial tasks to do? Can anyone think of any? I have tried contacting the students producing the play but no one seems to know who they are. I think I will have to find them after the holidays and convince them to redistribute the 30 people to props and costumes. I talked to a teacher at our school who is in charge of all the equipment and he didn't seem to happy either. If I can't get everyone to move to another group does anyone have any tips on dealing with this?

P.S. I personally think this production will be a joke anyway. Most of the people doing it don't want to be. They were forced to by the school so I seriously doubt any will be willing to cooperate.

[Grog12]

1) Fire them.

2) Repurpose them

3) Train them.

I'm not sure of your role in this show...but you should be able to say "This is more people than my department can handle. Period."

[gafftaper]

Find out who is in charge and tell them you'll take 3 and they have to distribute the other 27 somewhere else. You can't effectively train 30 people with limited time in a show situation... you have work to do. I'm a big fan of students mentoring and training each other but 30 is pointless. You will be working, one or two people will feel guilty and try to help you and the rest will be running around the theater playing tag. 3 people is more than you need but it's a small enough group that you can actually train them and they will be useful members of the crew when the show is over.

[cgimusic]

As gafftaper said I can't train 30 especially when half of them don't even want to be there. I will try to get them transferred if I can find out who is organizing it. Thanks.

[cheef]

I ran into this last summer. We hold a camp for a week. On Monday they pick the script and by Friday night we have a full 2 hour musical production. That is set construction, actor’s memorization, Lighting, sound the whole nine yards) well they let the campers chose to be back stage or acting and about 25 of them wanted to be back stage. Well on my one I can only teach and control about 10 teens with no experience so I spent the time and found the director and camp organizer and said I cannot have these on my stage. It was worth my time to get rid of them. I kept the teachable ones and went from there.

[Wolf]

Also you could tell who ever is in charge that it is dangerous to have that many people. With that amount who have nothing to do are bound to find something to do during the time. Also its a danger to the equipment. If something is used wring it could injure the person using it or the person standing by/under it later.

[Raktor]

Originally Posted by Charc

Train them, then you've gotten rid of 30 untrained people.

I foresee a topic of How do I get rid of about 30 trained people?.

[arik52]

If you're going to be swamped with work to do, then keep the competent ones and see if you can redistribute the others. However, I agree with Charc. I would try to train them. For those who are unwilling to participate, there are jobs for people like them. Have them ladder rat or coil cables or easy but necessary jobs. Anyone who is the slightest bit willing, appreciate their eagerness and train them. Maybe you don't need 30 trained people on one production, but you never know what you'll need in the future and it's part of your job to train new members. While you still have plenty of time, start training them. Then, as it gets to crunch time, have days where you only call the ones who you know you can trust to get work done. That's what happened to me during my current show - I'm Scenery Crewhead and I got a crew of about 23 or so 100% inexperienced workers. Now I have 5 who I trust completely, and a bunch more who are great for jobs like painting.

[GavMJM]

Had a similar experience but with about five people. Gave them a lot of laborious jobs and they soon left.

We normally use a trolley to transport equipment from one side of the school complex to the other. It mysteriously went missing that week

[achstechdirector]

I agee with the fact that this is a safety hazard, and I would use that to my advantage. You have to just plain out tell the producers, directors, whoever that you cannot handle that many people. They should see your side, if they have ever dealt witht theatre, or any performance type event.