The WIZ...read on...

[HandyMan]

ok, so tonight was our opening night for the musical The Wiz, and it was a pretty good show after all....except for a few minor details...

first off, i wasnt even at school today, i was in manhatten kansas for a film contest that i had entered into last minute...like 2 days before..and so i couldnt do any type of tech during the day, since i was about 2 hours away...and wow...once i got back to the theatre..i started to lose it...our spot light, the one that works, was being tempermental, and wouldnt catch any of the gels and hold them in place, so that took every bit of 15 mins to figure out how to fix..(oh yea, did i mention how i was 2 hours away, well i got back about an hour before the show was suppossed to start...at 630..ish)..and on top of that, i had to go and make sure all the mics were working...that was fun..had to figure out why the mics wernt workin after the sound check...turns out one of the 1/4 inch cables was still broken, and hadnt been replaced yet, so it was a nightmare waiting on the replacement to show up...and all this was just the hour before the show...

During the Show....there were a few mishaps, due to both tech, and the actors..and a few beyond our control...since we only had 2 days for full dress rehersals, i had begged the director to give me another day to smooth the edges out, but he insisted on a wednesday night performance... anyways, heres the hightlights...stage crew miss placed a few platforms on stage between scene changes, so i had to run back out there and man-handle stuff to the opposite side of the stage...my curtain crew....well lets just say that i need to find replacements tomarow during school...umm..the actors kept swapin the wrong mics between each other, so the ones on a list i had spent the day at kstate makin was rendered obsolite b/c of this, and thus mics endin up being muted when they should of been on, and vice versa...lights actually went pretty well...no major issues there...thank gawd... and now, for the major mistake of the night...during the second act, about scene 6(almost done with the show)i had told the curtain guys the night before, to wait untill a specific song/ line before they did anything with the curtain...and what do you know...they jump the gun by about a whole 2 pages...even tho they didnt have a script...go figure... anyway, jason had us stop what we were doing backstage, and restart the scene...from the mess up..thankgawd...and we continued from there...but when said mess up occured...two of the actors/resses started to cuss...while their mics were on...but thanks to the dalay on the board, the sound girl caught most of it before it made its way to the audiance...even though there was a good 2 dozen ppl there.. other than taht the show went pretty good...ah, well if you leave out the part where my spot guys wouldnt stay off the mic during intermission...kept saying 'things' while i was talkin to my girlfriend...finally i decided to take their mic...wont be hearing from them soon...

i really must thank my friends for helping me do all the backstage work that i've got them doing...1st off i would like to say thank you to Meghan and B-rad, with out you two, iuno if i would of been able to get this show off the ground, 2nd to my rotc friend james, dude, i've got to say i've taugh you well enuff, you've learnd how to run the light board in 5 days whats taken me most of the year...mr dodds and mr cole, if you guys hadnt of trusted me so much, i prolly would of enjoyed this year very much...if any..my friend mark & jasmyne...thanks guys for doing what you could, i appreaciated the help...and most of all...thank you kayla...babe, if you hadnt of shown up tonight, more than likly i would of quit an gone home...but you gave me what i needed to get the job done...and thats why i love you...and thanks to everyone else's name that i didnt mention either b/c i forgot...or for the simple fact that its 1am..and i've been up since 5am...woo 20 hrs...yea...ima crash during class tomarow...oh joy!..

 

[HandyMan]

*ok, so i thought that lastnight was interesting....noo...tonight wanted to be different as well....lets see....had a few similar problems from the night before, the mics were acting up again, actually, it was the same one both nights...odd??...not really, considreing that the antenna is way-beyond repair...so mid scene i had to run out on stage an pass her the wireless mic and take her body mic to try an fix it...luckyly enuff, after a little bit of tinkerin with it...it worked untill the end of the show....but that wasnt the only mic problem, oh no...the wiz decided to wear his mic about a good 5 inches away from his mouth...and when he was talkin/ singin, you couldnt hear him, unless one of the other actors was cloes enuff...and then BAM!!! Feedback out the arse....and then some...and this goes on untill i tell him, loudly from stage right, to fix his **** mic...ahhh....are these actors tryin to drive me insane or what???...

*got to return to my pasion tonight, my light guy had a baquet for rotc to go to, so i was back running the board for the night, and during pre-show, i found put that one of my other stage hands was grounded b/c he had gotten home late two nights in a row for helping me, first i was like what?...then i was told about it, and then i was just wtf...great, wasnt mad at him, just his arse of a father... so i was down two techs, and i was starting to wonder if help was going to arrive soon or what...

*following lastnights mis-hap with the curtains, the director and i both decided it was time to find new help.. and my curtain crew was replaced within 5 mins of showing up at school...and it worked out wonderfully tonight....not once was the curtain opend too soon or late...and she was very helpfull....she even managed to stay at her post unless she was asked to help...

*stage tech...what a nightmare...nothing was really misplaced this time...we walked thru all the changes and talked about what goes where, so most of the problems were solved then an there...but tonight..ahh...how great...first, about mid scene during the lion's debute, after he jumps off one of the platforms, me and my right hand man hear something CRACK...and we look at each other like 'you herd that too right?"...and we turn to the stage and we see the platform bowing down in the middle a good, oh, iuno...5-7 inches...and were like oh crap...what to do, what to do...so i get stage tech ready for the next scene change, and then i run all the way from the stage, down the hall, and to the foye, to tell the as. director about the incident...and i tell him that ill need about a good 5 mins more during intermission to try and fix the problem...then i hurry back to my post just in time to help with the scene change...
a little later on, during the wiz throne room scene, as im flying up the 'throne door', one of the support cables decids that it wants to take a break...and snaps...so i happen to look on stage while im hoisting it up to see the leads jump away from it, then i pull it down and my rhm goes out there, along with a few other stage hands, and they just completely take it off the fly...i have no idea why or how it happened...im just very lucky that no-one got hurt or anything worse...im not even sure the audience was as shocked as either of the directors or i was...

*after the show ended, and all the actors were in the foye, me and my crew were talkin with the directors about both incidents...along with the principal...and at the same time, all of us told him that the show was completly different everynight...kinda erie...both mr dodds, and mr cole said that we (stage tech) had handled both incidents extreamly well, concidering the fact that none of us were exactly prepaired for something of that nature to occur...much less happen during the show
i guess that im just lucky enuff to have extreamly good luck..or a VERY watchfull angel....hopfuly both, ill need them...

*special note*
thanks to
~everyone that helped out tonight...even those angels i had pull double duty on stage...i just cant get that out of my mind...wow...
~my friends for not freaking out when said actions above occured...
~ and kayla...for tellin me that i would do great tonight...b/c in way, we all did great...espceially thru everything that happened ....

 

[HandyMan]

and finally..my 3rd, and hopfully final installment of the wiz...

maybe it was just because of the date...or maybe i had possibly offended the techie gods...but tonight was horrible...

*sound, first off, jason moved the sound board out in the house, and placed it where it was an extream fire hazard....and then i moved it back, to its rightful place to backstage left...and hooked everything back up in like 2 mins...extreamly quick condisering that it usually takes about 15 to just make sure the board....but those **** body mics....gawd....i wana break 'em just so the distric has to buy new ones.....one of them craps out everynight...about the second act or so...but tonight....ohh, it couldnt wait to be special....it crapped out within the 1st 2 scenes....and was shitty for the rest of the play...we ended up having to toss out the wireless mic, and play around with the body pack to fix it...and this goes on and on and on....throughout the whole play...

lights went fine....my 2nd in command returned...so i was back to regular stage manager....

stage was a nightmare the 1st scene change....everyone was lost, as if this was the 1st time ever that they had been apart of a production.....omg...i wanted to knock some poor soul out....scene changes went rather well after that....

props...yea...umm, half the things that could of went wrong, did....and for the rest...they were forgotten about...a few special things like a strobe light, and a falling bucket of lizards/frogs... the fog machine actually worked no prob....for the 1st time...

riggin...wow...i thought lastnight was bad...tonight as the emerald city flats are being flown down, they catch onto one of the front stage quarter curtains, and wont budge one way or another....had to keep raising and lowering the **** thing about a good dozen or so times...then it finally came loose...

i really think that tonight was just crappy simply b/c it could of been, i mean really, each of the other nights, it got progressivly worse as the show went on..but still...everyting seemd like it wanted to just frak the heck up tonight....gahhhh.....im glad that its over...but then again im not...b/c its the last play of my senior year...and it ended horribly...

after the show finally concluded, the cast presented jason with a frame along with eveyones sig...but tech's...oh well...

i was freaking out big time back stage while everything was fallin apart....and after the show was over, and cast had bowed...and tech walked on stage...i was ready to leave....i really was, i had both of my bags packed an ready to go, when jason had me come on stage for some reconigicaton...i was shocked....im like wow....even after everything thats happened....im gettin credit for stuff...

and something else that really pissed me off...one of the actors...mister i know all, there fore when i speak, you must listen, gawd...he was really bout to get it tonight....with all the problems both backstage and on stage.. my r.h.m had herd him ***** about was how everything was the techies faults...and when he came and told me about this, i almost lost it...but i didnt....i pacitnetly waited till after the show to say anything to him...and when i did, i asked him what was the comment he had made about tech, and he tried to deny it, and i told him, dont blame what happend on tech, we're doing what we can with what we have, and techs work just as hard as the actors do, if not more, often times much more...dont ever blame what goes wrong on tech..., there were things that you were messing up on, but i wasnt going off and saying crap bout it...i kept it to myself... gawd... i wanted to beat him with the **** wireless mic after i heard about it...if thers one thing that i hate more than an argonante tech, its an argoante actor...with out tech, you'd be alone..in the dark, talkin to no-one...with out actors, tech would have to find another career type...but ****...dont talk crap about the other...espcially when one does an amazing amont of work to help the other....gahh....i need sanity....where can i get some extra???

iuno....im just rambleing....runnin on 5 hours of sleep...and i think i have something to do later on today...but right now im soo brain dead, i cant think....im just glad that i could vent...