So as if I was already warned of this enough, I saw the show yesterday and lo and behold the
haze stops center
stage. Then goes up, and over the
curtains, to backstage. Houston we have a problem. This didn't occur at the few rehearsals I was able to run
haze for. After a
bit of investigation, I've come to an educated guess.
Before I left one day I noticed that the vents in the
house blew pretty well, which turns out to be a good thing, as it keeps the
haze out of the
house and just on the
stage.
During the performance, the
haze, even with fans to push it across, refused to make it any further than center
stage.
I then noticed when I walked up to the
stage left door (
hazer SR) backstage, that the door was cracked and a considerable draft was coming through. Okay, I'm thinking, the
stage has negative air pressure. There's a start.
Then I saw that on the other side of the
stage, all the
haze was filling up a hallway that leads to the outside. Now we're getting somewhere.
Cracking the outside door,
haze immediately rushes out.
So the building is pressurized. Specifically, the halls are pressurized, and the theater is acting as a sort of "locks" (think river locks) for the pressure to get outside. So the air is flowing forcefully against us in on the
stage. Argh. Easy fix, move
hazer to the other side. Hah we have one performance left. Oh well, it can look right at least once.