Day: April 15, 2017

After arriving in Edinburgh, and following a nights sleep in a very comfortable guest house bed, we arrived at the Festival Theatre, which was to be our home for the next week. Having had the time between Glasgow and Edinburgh split up by the rig for the Introduction to Collaborative Practice module, it was nice to reestablish myself with the show, something which did not take long after stepping onto the identically reassembled set. Babette set us an orienteering task upon our arrival to see if the signs she had erected were easy enough to understand and navigate the building with and, following this, we set about repairing loose or broken safety tape on handrails and stairs and marking out a cast walkway so as to ensure they didn’t walk onto – and break – Sound’s fibre optic cable. What became apparent, through this, was that – though the stage was a lot bigger – it didn’t feel as such, just feeling like an extension of void space onto the show we had produced in Glasgow. Maybe that was why I felt settled in so quickly – and felt a little underwhelmed.  Apart from a few minor re-blocking points, the two Sound-focused runs went smoothly, our only issues resulting from a broken wine glass which was dealt with quickly and safely. The show then opened in Edinburgh, and ran, just as it had in the Ath, with few issues. Except one.

We all knew the table was going to break – it was just a question of when. During the Glasgow run it had become apparent that a coffee table which a performer throws their entire weight onto during a scene was not meant to handle such force  – IKEA furniture made of 1mm box steel rarely is. Following the Saturday matinee performance which had rendered the table at a forty-five-degree angle, I tried to reinforce the item as best I could, putting in more screws and ties in an attempt to strengthen any assembly join that could come loose. This proved effective, as it was the welded joints, in fact, that buckled during the evening’s performance, resulting in the table collapsing on stage during Act One. Though this was then dealt with, I proceeded to analyse what had gone wrong with the table and whether the actor in question was hurt, alongside Babette, whilst Rosie and Rachel began devising ideas of how to best deal with having one less furniture item in Act Two. This is something I really respected them for as, whilst I was immediately focused on what had gone wrong, they chose to focus on how to continue the show – an arguably more important decision. The show continued without further incident.

The Edinburgh strike ended up being a lot more slick than the Glasgow one, with cage and case packed and locked within forty-five minutes of curtain call. Following a debrief, of sorts, in the Stage Management room, I proceeded to execute the responsibilities I had undertaken in Glasgow, first stripping AV and camera cables, then moving onto flooring with the extra members of the TSM crew who had been brought in to help. As a result of everyone’s determination – and a sheer need to get to bed – the show was down and packed by 3am. This was an incredibly rewarding experience, as to do a strike like this to industry standards get you into a work ethic which a twelve-hour strike doesn’t – something I found very beneficial. It also let me learn from the EFT venues crew, drawing on their experience to teach me better ways of doing things like hauling in bars or lifting flats from irons and strops.

So, covered in steel dust and with some of the worse hard hat hair of my life, I left EFT and Chess, after a show which had taught me so much – not only about practice and technique, but also about myself and what kind of practitioner I should aspire to be.

Tech week hit harder than it should have and left scars that will last a while. Prior to the first session, Babette once again outlined her expectations for us, introducing us into a process that I personally had had no experience of at this scale. These calming words proved to have little reflection on what actually happened, however, as the scale of the production, and the snail’s pace at which we were piecing it through, led to tensions running abnormally high and people becoming more stressed than they likely should have been for the environment they were in. For crew who have watched a show once and are still in the process of writing and learning their own track, I felt very stressed and out my comfort zone as, those who I had looked to for answers previously, became unavailable, leaving me without a point of reference for tasks like resets – about which I had no clue as I had never seen parts of the performance. It also proved infuriating to be scorned for not executing tasks or actions which I thought I had been doing, such as making myself visible during holds and assisting the cast with changes. Reflecting on these now, I understand my shortfallings on these but, in the new situation as it was, I felt some responses – from other team members particularly – should have been more restrained in their tone.

But tech went as fast as it had arrived and I could feel myself beginning to feel more comfortable with the running of the show and executing the cues on my running list. Though a note for the future: BNC cable was invented by Satan. Do not use if it could be avoided.

As we actually got into performances, the team settled into a rhythm – setting aside the need to complete all of our jobs as soon as possible by running about the stage frantically – to learning to work over and around one another, realising the importance of one another, and anticipating how you could assist someone else without doing their cues for them. By building the show into muscle memory it becomes easier and more pleasurable to run, and took the stress out of the experience.

The Glasgow strike went as well as it could have done. I had dry-packed all of our props into the cage and flight case when we first loaded into the Ath, compiling packing lists and images which we could then utilise for the transfer. With these as a basis, our pack was completed within two hours of the show coming down, allowing us the opportunity to jump on to and assist other departments with their strike on the Sunday. I ended up assisting AV programmer Fraser with his strike, which I found to be an invaluable experience, as he spent time explaining how everything was rigged and connected in a way I could understand. This gave me an insight into a side of electrics I had no prior knowledge or experience of and, by examining things like that in a production context, it gave me the opportunity to further my understanding. Twelve hours and four cups of coffee later, the show was in two Arctic lorries, prepped to meet the Stage Techs, Lighting and Sound teams at the Festival Theatre on Monday. Thought this allocation was a Stage Management one, I will hold out that the strikes – both in Glasgow and Edinburgh – were some of the high points of this show allocation.