Tradition!

FTOTY

Member
In my high school theater we have two traditions: Break a Leg, and Break an Actor. Break a Leg involves the entire cast and crew, sharing thoughts and thank-you's. The Break an Actor on the other hand is techies only. The seniors get a bottle of sparkling grape/apple juice and we go the around the circle saying something about life or the show, take a swig, and pass it on. It's great fun. This made me think, "I wonder if there are any other techie traditions out there?" You should write and let them be heard by the masses.
 
My school's major techie tradition is when we all get together about five to ten minutes before the show begins. We hold hands and do a "pulse" around the circle (I press someones hand, then they press the other presons hand they are touching, and they touch the persons hand they are touching and so on.) Then, we all think of something we did wrong last show and a solution in order to fix that. Afterwards, we do some "breathe in, breathe out" excercises. Then we do our little "TECH!" cheer. An LD two years ago started the tradition, and it has been going on ever since.
 
We don't really have a techie tradition, being only the two of us there isn't much more than a "don't screw up!"
 
We have a few traditions in our department.

First is called Circle. It's a warm-up activity mainly for actors before a show. All actors (and most tech crew members) gather in the choir room and gather in a circle. There are three circle leaders (the position is passed down at the end of the year), and they lead us in many different games, such as the hokey pokey, "red leather yellow leather," palindromes, etc. There are also more random games that we play.

Secondly, at the end of each show, all actors and tech crew members run to the black box (our classroom right outside the auditorium) and scream our heads off to celebrate a show well done.

Finally, at the end of the year, we have a Senior Circle where the graduating seniors gather in the center and non-seniors can address the seniors to tell them anything on their mind, how they've touched them, etc.
 
At my school, before every show we have "green room" this is just a time for us to get relaxed and chill. we listen to music and sort of reflect on the show we are about to do. Also at every green room we do the squeeze which is where we all hold hands and pass a squeeze on to another person.

Also when we do our two larger shows the fall play and the spring musical, THe last night of tech week after rehearsal we have "circle" this is were we all sit on the set and there is a stool in the center of all of us with a god light and all other lights out. This is a chance for the seniors to reflect on their experiences in the theatre. And share their experiences.

Finaly, seniors sneek spray paint up to the grid and secretly leave their mark on the wall. IT looks really cool up there.
 
Senior tech's at my old high school always signed their names in spray paints somewhere, in the scene shop, or under the house, or just wherever it wouldn't be seen by the audience, it was always fun going thru, and looking at the names and the quotes and stories people left on the walls. But unfortunatly the new jerk TD thinks it makes the dept. look bad, and so he is doing everything he can to cover up the names, he's been painting over a lot of them, and is trying to get the entire scene shop painted to cover it all up. And the school, or historical society won't do anything about it, it just pisses me off, there are names from the 50's and even a few from the 30's that we've found. And there just going to paint over them. Luckily there are a lot of places around the auditorium that he doesn't know about, so he won't be able to get them all.
 
the wings of our stage and our catwalks are grafiti'd by seniors with their names, shows and graduating year. the booth is black so techs have grafiti'd it with chalk :p and of course there are old programs pinned up
 
My high school actually has quite a lot of traditions. First all teh boys go into the dressing room and start circling around, then they file out past the paintings of the drama mask and as each of them pass it they shout at the sad mask , then they congregate int eh scene shop and jump in rythim. The girls get together and sing the banana song (don't even ask.) Then we have warm ups just for techs. 25 jumping jacks, pushups and situps, followed by a totally silent reenactment of all of our jobs during the show. Since the light people have nothing really to do, we end up being pushed around by runs crew.

Then after the last show, everyone involved gets in a big circle around the stage, grab the face of the person next to us and move their lips while saying, "mm, delicious." Followed immediately by rythmic jumping. Don't quite get that haha.

We also hide the name Reno Blake into every set we ever make. Long story, legendary.
 
ccfan213 said:
the wings of our stage and our catwalks are grafiti'd by seniors with their names, shows and graduating year. the booth is black so techs have grafiti'd it with chalk :p and of course there are old programs pinned up

And you'll find my name/initials in a bunch of places! Class of '99 Sr Variety Show, which IIRC is on the SL wing wall, can't remember DS or US. Then pretty much any show from "The Unexpected Guest" through "Into the Woods", and I even designed the programs for "Into the Woods", "Much Ado...", and a bunch of the band concerts, LOL.
 
We dont really have a tradition... ok well we do say "whoa Bundy" before shows (I dont know why!) so yeah there is that... but other than that I guess theres never anytime for a tradition to start... we are the masters of procrastination! :)
 
we go out for a beer or two with the director and cast. then go do the show then go home.


its not that crazy but we do that before every show
JH
 
I do freelance work, so I get to see a lot of "tradditional" things, but I've never participated in one. At my high school, I was one of the first dedicated techs they had in a long while, so similar to what had been said above, any traddition that was there has since died off.
 
Well... it seems to be a tradition for the ghosts to erase the programing in the light board... other than that...

The last rehearsal is normally rediculas (assuming the cast it good and knows it's stuff) and we just have a blast... And then the last performace we of course change the show a bit... but nothing the audience would notice. And also, we have a few drinking games we (the crew) play as the show week goes on... but we don't need to get into those since this is all mostly high school.
 
Every year our local ballet co and the local ia '354' get together for the nutcracker and have a christmas like dinner. Its a nice tradition, for the ballet to show appreciation to us. Besides the touring show's which are in and out it seems like, the ballet in's become some of the longest and most complicated.
 
After shows its been a tradition since 93 or 94 to sign your name and part in the show that was done in the wings and rooms around the theatre area. Myself and a friend who do mainly lighting are going to sign the actual lights after our senior play--which is kind of another tradition. The last show of the year only seniors act and mainly drama club juniors tech the show... Theres a lot of traditions that come and go and re-appear, our whole school is tradition oriented so theres too amny to list
 
SUNY Purchase is pure tradition. its just sad how much there is here. though, almost all of the tradition revolves around getting drunk, throwing parties or just general drinking.
Yea.
 
Well, our rather strange tradition, is before every showing taking out the can of spaghetti from its resting shelf and place it on the window ledge, next to the audience, I am told this comes from when the current senior members (of our crew) were doing their first show, they went and bought the cheapest form of food they could find, and the can of spaghetti was the cheapest....

We did also have a small very cute turtle which we used to place on the fade time control of our lighting desk, but once when it was just me running lights and sound, one of the evil first years, must have nicked it, when they were being allowed the afternoon off of school to come and watch a show.... *gets annoyed with them!!* lol

Diarmuid
 
Boy, we have a lot of traditions at our school. Well, there's not much pre-show tradition for tech like there is for actors, but there's a lot that we do during/after the show.

Well, in the booth during those long, boring plays with few cues, it has become tradition to throw balls of duct or gaffers tape on the cieling of the booth and try to get other stuff to stick to it.

During the summer, when we do a musical(which spans 2 weekends), we always have a brush up rehearsal, which, sometime in the 90's was turned into what we call bananna rehearsal the cast and crew change the props and costumes slightly, and its really great. Like for es Miserables, all of the ABC cafe members had sock caps, and they stuffed them with blankets so they'd stick straight up during the really emotional scene with Marius. heh.

Well, there are some more, like every show, somebody always manages to stick the playbill and random prop in a really hard to reach place up by the loading dock with loads of duct tape. Anyway, this post is getting kind of lengthy, and seeing as that's hardly even a fraction of our traditions, I'll cut it short here. Man, my school's built off of tradition.
 
well, the techies at both theatres in springfiled mo party after the friday night show. we we have some good shows on the road that have a fun cast we invite them to our parties. The black guy with the big afro in STOMP can really hold his alcohol!
 

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