Communication is important – especially within a team. No example proves this statement better than the breakdown in communication between the team in the office sourcing with ever approaching shipping dates and the member of the team in rehearsals putting off the question of how many of each item we had to order off for as long as he could. I wasn’t in the room, I can’t pass judgement over why the communication wasn’t there. But coupled with rehearsal notes that left more questions than they answered in regards to ever more extravagant new props, this has taught me, more clearly than anything else, that any talk is better than no talk at all – and that even saying ‘I don’t know yet’ is preferable to feeling like your questions are being ignored. Also, vowels are important. Spending an hour on Amazon and almost £30 of your budged on a spelling error – buying capes instead of caps – is just embarrassing. Although this did manage to crack our stony, stressed exteriors into exhausted tears of laughter.
So, as the props list kept getting bigger and the budget shrank – on an Excel spreadsheet that I am very proud to have formatted – I turned my attention to paper props, using graphics from Kenneth to create a stack of Visa documents, cue cards and newspapers. The last of these was a labour of love as the newsprint we had ordered would jam the printer in every way that we put it in, resulting in me having to split the graphics in photoshop, run them through onto four individual printable sheets then glue and seal them together with sticky backed plastic. In the end, however, I don’t think I have ever been as proud of any prop I have ever made. And, I can honestly say, the appreciation this allocation has given me for the power of a hot glue gun is amazing.
Three props proved to be of notable difficulty to source for this show. Andrew was set on having a turntable-like device for one of the chess boards so it could rotate by itself during Anatoly’s first song. Our first instinct was to search for a lazy-susan-like product so the performer could easily rotate the board. Once it came out that the product was to be mechanised this proved infeasible as battery operated models ran into the hundreds of pounds. Then, by a stroke of genius from one of the other ASMs, we found a battery powered jewellery display stand which rotated. This proved enough to achieve the desired effect, resulting in a very happy director. This was also the first example of how there will always be a solution to a problem, and you cannot afford to disappoint your director by not finding it.
The second of these issues presented themselves in the forms of confetti cannons. Andrew had previously used them on Legally Blonde and swore blind they wold be somewhere within the building. However, despite lots of searching and even more emailing, they could not be found. Following this realisation, I called Blacklight and JustFX in order to get a quote to buy new, reloadable cannons and capsules to last us the run. Seeing as JustFX’s quote ended up totalling 60p shy of our entire Stage Management budget, this option also proved a no-go. Eventually, Babette managed to negotiate Andrew down to only one cannon, shot onto the stage, thus eliminating half of the overall cost of supplying two units and any clean up charge resulting from them being fired by cast in the aisles. This taught me that, occasionally, compromise is your best – and only – way out of a situation. Though you may not wholly like or agree with the result you end up with, it’s better to have two contented artistic parties than someone who feels angered by not being able to get what they want.
This was also nearly the case with pompoms – an item I didn’t expect to be as expensive as they turned out to be. To fit Kenneth’s design brief we needed full poms – not a couple of streamers dangling from a handle – in bright neon colours. The only issue with this was they’d blow our budget to try and buy. A solid day was spent trying to find an affordable option, but none arose that would ship in time. Just as we were reaching break-down stage, however, costume decided that they would be happy to spend some of their surplus on buying them for us, meaning money was less of an issue. This resulted in us getting exactly the poms we wanted without a dent in our budget sheet.