"I try to change my levels as little as possible after
sound check."
Two problems with that:
1) most of these shows have casts under the age of 15; their levels jump all over hell, all the time, even intra-show. Of course, my experience is that that's true of the adults, too, in the environment I work in.
2) my
house has 3 *really nasty* resonant peaks; to get enough
GBF for the actors to be audible, even with only 2 or 3 mics open, I have to ride the hairy
edge of
feedback; there's no way I can just pick a
level and leave it there.
The corollary, which is an answer to someone else's comment back there: I'm
overhire; if I quit in mid show, it's the last gig I'll do for the
house, and they paid slightly more than half my bills last year.