We just had our annual nights of One Act Plays this year and our stage manager was new to the job. Unfortunately our TD made me in charge of all the technical aspects so we had to put an amateur in charge. She never knew where any sets went, she didn't know how to run anything and the crew was random people from our stagecraft class. Now, our stagecraft class can't be trusted and can't handle more than one job at a time, so the SM sits down with me one day before the plays and give her a rundown on everything she needs to do. I also left her with plans of where sets go. On opening night our TD couldn't be there so she had to run the show, which turned out I had to help her through it over two way radios (funny story about our clearcom system exploding, but thats another thing). The first play seemed to go fine since everything was preset, but when we got to our first change over, she came on the radio asking "how do I get the crew to change sets?" I just started laughing in the booth. So I ended up leaving the booth and getting the crew to do their job using force. The director didn't like the force, but it had to be done. So they got the set on, completely in the wrong place. After a few minutes of trying to get the crew to set it properly, my tech team and I had to reset the stage and get everything moving. We had a twenty minute intermission instead of a five minute intermission. It was horrible.
On another note, One of the last plays on, the actors missed a whole bunch of blocking that put 4 lighitng cues into the script and since I was running a stack on a Leprechaun lighting board, it made it look like I screwed up and everyone is blaming me for it. It ruins my track record of 5 years doing tech without one screw up.
On another note, One of the last plays on, the actors missed a whole bunch of blocking that put 4 lighitng cues into the script and since I was running a stack on a Leprechaun lighting board, it made it look like I screwed up and everyone is blaming me for it. It ruins my track record of 5 years doing tech without one screw up.