Tired, but proud!

I'm VERY TIRED right now. I have arrived home after being out for 19 hours, working officially for 17(ish) of those. We hosted Saturday the touring company for Million Dollar Quartet. This meant arriving around 6AM to ensure the building was prepped and unlocked for the road crew to come in and take over our building. This would be the second touring Broadway show in our building, but our first with our student crews leading the way. Leading up to this, we spent the day Friday stripping the pipes that fly things in and out of the stage that would be used by the show and also cleared the stage of all extraneous equipment. My staff arrived shortly after I did and dove right in. Once I had assigned my team leaders as department heads, then splitting the rest of the crew there into teams, all I really had to do was stand around and, as I said it, 'Keep the building from burning down.' My teams followed directions and got things done efficiently, we were able to unload and have the show ready to go for a 2 PM show. After the 7:30 show ended, we put everyting back into the trucks so the company could go to their next city, St. Louis.  My crews then set the pit for the opera's orchestra (the opera is playing on Friday and Sunday). All day, they stepped it up and made my job easy. They did the work and kept the touring company happy. After the trucks had been loaded and the crew was about to go on their way, one of the crew that I worked closely with throughout the day told me how impressed he was with how well our crews worked. It is one thing for me, who works with them and have seen their progression to say, "Oh yeah, they are coming along really well and they are doing great," and it is another thing for a professional to come in, only work with your employees for one day and express how well they worked. I want to take this opportunity to thank all my staff for the hard work they put into today to make it such a success, we really couldn't have down it without you.

Proud to be a Gorilla

Earlier this week, I was told that I needed to call a colleague in the athletic department about bringing some equipment to a basketball game. This is a touchy subject because we don't want to turn into a lending business, even if it is only across the parking lot. Once I heard what it was for, I couldn't turn it down.The university's athletes had  raised enough money to host a wish celebration for Make-a-wish. The child has a congenital heart disease. She wants to go to New York City and see Les Miserables. Originally, I was asked to provide a spotlight. Unfortunately, our spot lights are a little large and not built to be moved. Instead, I offered a couple of stage lights that would act as spot lights. As we were going through the plans for the day, I was informed that the actor playing ValJean had recorded a video welcoming this girl to come see the show and visit with him backstage. The field house however, does not have a video screen and the plan was to only play the audio. I was having nothing of it and volunteered our portable projector and screen to athletics. On the day of the event, my crews were busy in the morning setting up our small theater space for the upcoming production of Merry Wives of Windsor. This involved removing all the lights and three rows of chairs. We also had to add the thrust to the stage. This project took all morning. The event was to begin at the end of the women's basketball game. At half time of the game, I released my crews to take showers and change in preparation for the event. The request was that all those going to the event dress in black tie and act as paparazzi to create a special afternoon for the young girl.  We went over the the field house and the event was perfect. Pitt State was the only school whose students raised enough money to host this event and I couldn't be more proud to work there.

First big event of the semester

It's late on a Wednesday evening and I am very pleased.Tonight at the Bicknell Center, we hosted two nationally recognized comedians. We have been preparing for this event for quite a while and Tuesday we prepped the stage by placing the monitors, microphones, and stage props (stools). Early in the day today, my audio team leader came in to ensure that she was prepared for the evening. Besides being in charge of the training of our audio engineer for tonight's event, she was also our stage manager. She asked all the right questions and ensured her crew was prepped for the event. Our students arrived and finished the final preps for the event.

An aside. I need to go over all the prep so you have an idea of how much work goes into an event, but that would take too long, so I'll just go over the front of house position AND I may leave a few things out.  Feel free to skip down to the non-italicized part if you don't want to read this. 

Before an event begins, the front of house manager has to ensure that the house (the place where the seats are) is secure (i.e. locked) so that when the building is open, visitors may use all the facilities in the building without disturbing final preps on the stage. The FOH (front of house) manager also needs to set all lights in the lobby and sound in the lobby (pre-show music, etc.) all before anyone arrives at the building. After this is done the FOH manager can open the building. Once visitors start to arrive, the FOH manager and staff are the face of the facility, working directly with visitors to help them enjoy whatever event they have come for. The FOH job is not done once the show starts however. The manager now has to change the lighting and the audio in the lobby. The manager must also work with the stage manager, ushers, and ticket takers to make sure that guests only enter when and where the performer wants them to. I think I've bored you enough, back to the story. 

So we are ready to go, the stage is ready to go with a start time of 8 and the house opening at 7:30. About 7 we discover that the seats that are on our pit have been sold and we cannot use the pit as part of the stage. I call an all-hands so we can get the stage reset and get the seats placed on the pit. we complete the job with time to spare, ready for a 7:30 house opening. Unfortunately, our comedians had not yet arrived. My staff handled it, My FOH manager made announcements to the lobby kept the guests informed. As soon as the comedians arrived, my stage manager and team leader spoke with them to find out what they needed for sound, lights, stage movements, and projection. We discovered that besides the video that we had, there were also pictures that needed to shown during the event. Not only did these need to be shown, but they needed to change at certain times during the show. Our sound technician (who also would be running the A/V) took the script and worked with the artists to make sure that he knew when the changes needed to happen. I was able to spend the evening in my office, working on prepping for a show coming in two weeks, without having to worry if the event was going well. I was only a radio or headset call away, but it wasn't necessary, everyone did their job to the letter and the event went swimmingly. Afterwards, the crew flipped the stage for our next event, taking all of the stuff off the stage from tonight's event and setting the stage for a university event tomorrow.  NOW, I need to take things more in stride, a DID get a LITTLE worked up when I had to change my lighting for the event AND I DID need to eventually just send myself away from the stage so my crew could do their job without me looking over their shoulder, but overall, it was good.

TL,DR version. Things were rough, crews worked their tails off, event was good, I need to calm down and let my crews do their job. I'm proud of them.

Why this? Why now?

After my first post, I thought that I should explain why I needed to put this blog up. I decided that there were a few reasons for this. First, I had the opportunity to speak to the local Kiwanis club about my work in the Bicknell Center. While there, I got kinda emotional about my job and I realized how much I really care about theater and the arts in general. I discussed the tools that my student employees get when they work in the theater. Second, while at the same event, I also realized that most people don't know how much work goes on Behind the Curtain and I hope to share some of that with all my readers. Third, the night that I started this blog, we had hit a road block. I had, the day before, broken the fiber-optic connection between our audio board and our audio mixer, a repair I can't make on my own. Then, we worked on getting our chain hoists up to their home on the grid (60+ feet in the air, each chain hoist is pretty heavy, taking 2-3 people to move). I had managed to hook up an alternative method for communication between our board and the mixer and was looking forward to getting this project completed and out of the way. We had earlier manually carried a 1 ton chain hoist to the grid and were going to use it to lift the remainder of them to the pin rail (the area just below the grid). To my dismay, the 1 ton hoist refused to lower its chain. Rather than stress about it, I had my crew on the grid lower a rope and we lifted a 1/2 ton hoist chain to the grid, then used its own chain to hoist itself. We then used the 1/2 ton hoist to lift the remainder of the chain hoists to the pin rail. Finally, I could see the end in sight. We had received part of an order of pipe that would stay on the grid for future rigging. With getting this pipe of the stage floor, I would have the lifting portion of the job done, only a year after the building was complete...whatever. I lowered the chain and prepped the pipe for lifting...only for the hoist to fail.  My employees were happy because it meant that they could go home as we didn't have time to fix it before they had to leave. I on the other hand, saw it as a failure, another project that was incomplete. I had failed. So many things that need to be done, I finish one job and leave 2 more 'almost done.'  I was frustrated and needed a reminder of why I was doing this. This has helped me remember what it is I love about my work and why I do it. In the future, expect more posts about the past when I'm frustrated and posts about the present when I'm not. This may not always be the case, but generally, that's how it will probably go.

P.S. I think I know why the chain hoists were acting up and have a couple of possible solutions to fix the problem. Keep your eyes on the list below to see what I complete.

My first theater memories

When I was three I first took the stage. Even before then, I had been involved with the theater. I had been blessed with a family that saw the importance of the arts and wanted their family to be a part of them. As my family spent time at the local community center, so did I, even as a toddler. Although I don't recall it personally, my friends and family tell many stories about my early childhood. A longtime stage manager talks of the times she would watch me offstage as my mother would be onstage. My mother describes a time driving home from a rehearsal with me in the backseat singing the musical's songs and filling in the gaps with the proper lines. When I turned three, my family decided that I could 'audition' for a show. I still remember that first performance. The show was "Bye, Bye, Birdie." As we drove to the auditions, I told my mother that I would, "walk across the stage dragging my blanket behind me." My mother laughed and said that I would do whatever it was the director told me to do. I don't recall much else from that particular show except for two things in particular. One, we rehearsed the opening scene over and over again because the entire cast on stage is required to faint from the dancing of the title character. While this seems like not a big deal, when you are a small child on someone's shoulders, fainting without falling off of an adult's shoulders AND having the adult faint without the child falling is quite difficult. After many tries, we figured it out and we made it work. Second, I got to walk across the stage dragging my blanket behind me.