Back in college I was running lighting for a January Term production called "Kennedy's Children." The entire show - two 1-hour acts - was a bar scene where a variety of patrons at tables in the bar spoke in soliloquy to the audience about their life in the early 1960's and how JFK's death affected them. Only 4 lighting cues in the whole show (lights up, lights down, lights up, lights down) so life was easy and the show was boring to say the least.
Attendance for the show on the first of the 2 nights was decent, but by the second act, only a handful of people were still in the audience, most probably the parents of the actors who had yet to speak their part. We probably had over 200 patrons walk out by intermission. Oh, well the show must go on.
For closing night, I invited a friend to stop by and we'd go out barhopping afterward. The lighting console - a Theater Techniques Inc (TTI) 2-scene preset board from 1976 was operated from a table mid-audience, so relative quiet was necessary to avoid distraction from the play. However, to pass the time, my buddy brought a case of Michelob bottles. The first two went down nicely just as the first act began. We were fairly successful to hide the PSSST of the bottle being opened from the packed audience. However, as the show progressed and as the beer was consumed and as people streamed out, we sort of lost our professional demeanor, and each progressive PSSST started to echo as the theater emptied out. Bottles clinked, beer caps rolled, and we got pretty loud. Funny, the audience didn't seem to care, and was probably a little envious and jealous that some people in the theater that night were enjoying themselves.
Finally, the faculty moderator for the theater club sat down next to me at the board and I thought we were going to get expelled. I didn't think he was there that night. I thought we were dead. He looked around the board at all of the empty bottles, looked at the number of people remaining in the audience, leaned in and said, "Is this show really as bad as I think?" I nodded, and was very relieved when he said with a smile, "Got an extra beer?"
Attendance for the show on the first of the 2 nights was decent, but by the second act, only a handful of people were still in the audience, most probably the parents of the actors who had yet to speak their part. We probably had over 200 patrons walk out by intermission. Oh, well the show must go on.
For closing night, I invited a friend to stop by and we'd go out barhopping afterward. The lighting console - a Theater Techniques Inc (TTI) 2-scene preset board from 1976 was operated from a table mid-audience, so relative quiet was necessary to avoid distraction from the play. However, to pass the time, my buddy brought a case of Michelob bottles. The first two went down nicely just as the first act began. We were fairly successful to hide the PSSST of the bottle being opened from the packed audience. However, as the show progressed and as the beer was consumed and as people streamed out, we sort of lost our professional demeanor, and each progressive PSSST started to echo as the theater emptied out. Bottles clinked, beer caps rolled, and we got pretty loud. Funny, the audience didn't seem to care, and was probably a little envious and jealous that some people in the theater that night were enjoying themselves.
Finally, the faculty moderator for the theater club sat down next to me at the board and I thought we were going to get expelled. I didn't think he was there that night. I thought we were dead. He looked around the board at all of the empty bottles, looked at the number of people remaining in the audience, leaned in and said, "Is this show really as bad as I think?" I nodded, and was very relieved when he said with a smile, "Got an extra beer?"
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