Month: June 2017

How to Build a Chandler Control Desk

For some of the CPP shows this year, the LX team wanted to operate from the seating bank. Unlike in the Ath, no pre-made control desks are kept in the building, so this is how I constructed one.

You will need:

2 x 800mm scaff legs

2 x 1000mm scaff legs

4 x 1400mm scaff pipes (or whatever width is required)

2 x 600mm scaff pipes

16 x T-join kee clamps (or similar)

Wooden Table Top (pre-prepared and somewhere in the dock)

Assembly Instructions:

  1. Build a U shaped frame from your 800 legs, two clamps, and one length of your 1400mm pipe. Repeat, but this time with your 1000mm legs.
  2. Attach two clamps to either side of your two 600mm lengths, and slide onto your U sections, from the bottom. These will butt up to the clamps at the top and form a table.
  3. Attach two clamps to either end of your remaining scaff and slide these onto the table, again from the bottom. It works best to do the two shorter ends first, as these will have to fit over the seating bank chairs.
  4. Once all clamps are tightened your structure is ready for installation. When in position, use the holes in the top board to feed through a ratchet strap and tighten for extra stability. If slightly uneven, use wooden packers to build it up to desired height.

I hope this helps.

CPP - What's it All About?

Due to the nature of Contemporary Performance, and the amount of time the tech team spent with each performance, it was often challenging to pinpoint specific plot points in each piece of work…

Due to the nature of Contemporary Performance, and the amount of time the tech team spent with each performance, it was often challenging to pinpoint specific plot points in each piece of work. However, after conversations with the creatives of each piece, it became apparent that the work is more about emotional responses in audience rather than conveying a story. In light of this, here is what each artist says about their work and the emotional responses I had to each piece.

CPP3 Group A – Birds I View

‘An exploration of the mediated perception of female sexuality versus our reality, through construction and deconstruction of space, sound and image.’

This piece, to me, showed how women are forced by society or external factors to conform to certain, at times garish, standards, and how their own perceptions of beauty and thought are made to feel incorrect and unworthy of consideration or praise by the world.

Production Challenges : Creating and maintaining a white box feel, and facilitating apple, petal and coat drops from the catwalks.

CPP3 Group B – The Church of the Poisoned Mind

This piece felt like it wanted to comment on how broken our current society is by fixating on the real life experiences of the performers and the difficulty they face on an every day basis. These include spending time in prison, to being a single mum on benefits, to having a developed mental disability. They did this through use of shocking imagery, spray paint, and movement.

Production Challenges : Creating the industrial platform design requested by the group, cleaning the venue after the mess created by the show, flying dolls and microphone pieces

CPP3 Group C – The Pains of Being Pink at Heart

‘The Pains of Being Pink at Heart investigates five performers ever changing relationships to this ungraspable, undefinable, crazy little thing called love.’

This piece commented on society’s opinions and reactions to love, examining how each of the performers relate to different kinds of love and how this has impacted each of them on an emotional level. Love was shown through friendship, care for animals, sexual lust, and from an a sexual, scientific standpoint. They explored love through the songs of Mika.

Production Challenges : Hanging a rope swing in the space, creating a seamless, pink floor, flying an inflatable heart

CPP2 – Before History We Danced

This piece seemed to want to explore how dance, as a medium, can bring people together, regardless of factors like race, age, gender or sexual orientation. Through the addition of performers from the Glasgow community, the ensemble performed a one hour improvised dance piece in a club-style environment, performing with each other to convey the ties that join every one of us together – shown through movement.

Production Challenges : Creating an in-the-round club venue, flying a truss square on motors, creating bleacher-style seating banks

CPP1/4 Group A – Balls

‘We’re currently exploring decadence, façade, and class.’

This piece seemed to satirise the concept of wealth and priviledge. The performers portrayed a caricature version of the aristocracy, gorging at banquets, listening to appalling music, and parodying our preconceptions of those of wealth in society. It sought to make the audience feel inferior and unworthy by showing them as the poor, huddled masses.

Production Challenges : Transporting Opera set elements to the Chandler without modification, hanging a valuable chandelier

CPP1/4 Group B – Exercism

‘This performance involves five people and a number of exerting acts including dance numbers, performers colliding with each other and a full 20 metre beep test. The performers are exploring the things they endure, both physically and emotionally.’

This piece, it seemed, wanted to show how far humans will push themselves to try and keep up with others in society. It detailed the extremities that the human body can push itself to, be that to conform with ‘manly’ masculine stereotypes, to try and achieve a fit and healthy physique, to appear beautiful to others, or to show that you are not held back by factors like your race.

Production Challenges : Creating a traverse space in a tight turnaround time, allowing performers freedom of space whilst working within safety guidelines

CPP1/4 Group C – The Big Freeze

‘The show is set is in a frozen landscape. Themes of creating an illusion and breaking it (make-believe and meta) being emotionally frozen, numbness and wanting to feel something.

Being frozen, stuck, in pain – not being frozen – illusion of being frozen.

Frozen in terms of as a reaction of something, creative/process, cold – needing more warmth. ‘

To me, it seemed like the performers were trying to convey the dangers of putting up emotional barriers – shown through the cold of emotional disconnect. They tried to show how, by breaking down those barriers and by trying to reach out and share emotionally with others, we can break free from the isolation we put ourselves in, and become more involved members of society.

Production Challenges : Creating an icy, cold environment in one of the hottest venues known to man, building a seating bank.

CPP1/4 - Balls, Bleep Tests, Back to Normality

By the time we reached CPP1/4 we’d found our way of working, both with each other and with the groups that came through the space…

By the time we reached CPP1/4 we’d found our way of working, both with each other and with the groups that came through the space. I’d also learnt that, in order to make the process go by easier, I should prepare to take on the HOD role at any moment, due to my TSM’s continued ability to disappear from the venue for long periods of time. The first of these groups brought our venue back to how we were used to having it, our seating bank coming back out and another sacrificial floor going down. This time, we had taken elements of the Opera set to create a stately home, with the lower section of the Fledermaus staircase joining us as well, installed along the back wall. What was different about these shows, however, was the turnaround time we had been given. Between each of these performances was only a morning session to install the appropriate scenic elements, an afternoon session to focus and pre-plot and an evening session to tech with cast. Had this been at the beginning of the CPP run, someone would definitely have ended up crying on the floor – and yes, it likely would have been me. However, at the point we were at, we needed a challenge to keep us working effectively, and I felt that this fast a turnaround was exactly what we needed to keep spirits and momentum high.

When Opera Needs to be About 12m Shorter

The only other element of the first group was a chandelier that we had borrowed from the Citizens Theatre – with the job of hanging it falling to me. In an effort to prove I knew what I was doing, and to practice something I had been shown on Opera, I decided to open basket rig from the ground, my equipment taking the form of a couple of one tonne shackles and a two metre strop which would be lashed round the bar and secured onto itself. We then strung a line to the chandelier which I tied with a figure of eight onto a further shackle to ensure that, no matter how much pressure was applied, it was in no danger of falling. Like all of my other rig plans, Malcy listened as I explained what I wanted to do and, with some minor alterations of shackle positions, we flew the beast with James in the air to affix it to its final point. We then took the tied on line up onto the catwalks and left it coiled, so as to make our strike easier as our point was already on our fixture. It was nice to have been given a challenge like this again, and be put in a position to think on my feet. Whereas earlier this seemed an undue burden, I now felt in a position where I could speak with self belief, which was a refreshing change.

After the first group had finished their performance, we set about turning the venue into a traverse space – striking everything to turn it into a black box with only steel deck risers and a piano to give it character. As the LX rig was the main focus of this show, I joined their team, working from the air with my knowledge of rope work to safely raise and lower their boom poles and Solar Spot fixtures, before jumping to the ground to help with a plug up. This cross discipline kind of work was the only way this turnaround could have been done in the time and – for future – I feel it is very important that this should be stressed by all parties and HODs as the primary method of working and crewing festival style allocations like this. As an added bonus of these shows, I was given the opportunity to DSM, putting into a production context my favourite part of the Stage Management experience; calling the shows. To do this with Group B, directed by Tammy, was a joy as she was really supportive and constructive when dealing with the production process. Having never called a CPP show before it was a strange experience not working from a script or score, but with the guidance of Miranda – our SM – and Sue I worked out my own way of notation and began to build up a book that I felt comfortable using. It was also nice to have James as an LX op, a recurring factor in almost every show I have called in my SM career. So, from my SM desk, I watched as Group B went up, the two performances and three rehearsal sessions passing slickly and with few faults, to the surprise of everyone involved. It had felt, by this point, that the learning side of the experience had mostly passed, feeling more like a professional working festival environment producing professional level content.

My Beautiful (Freshly Cleaned) DSM Booth

Due to this, I was given the chance to call the final show as well, something I wouldn’t live to regret, but would certainly challenge my ability. In our continuing style, our flooring went down, this time in our best time of six minutes, working around LX raising boom poles and fellow Stage crew assembling a seating bank out of our steel deck and pucks from previous performances. The directors wanted to create a projection screen out of wadding, which we cable tied to conduit and flew on hemp from the upstage right corner, creating a snow drift effect which was quite beautiful when lit from the right angle. Though not our most impressive rig, it was certainly the cleanest and quickest to go up, which I thought was a nice way to end our CPP experience.

DSMing in a Winter Wonderland

Clean and quick could in no way be used to describe the tech process, however, as directors clashing on ideas and not understanding the process of how a tech session works, combined with actors who didn’t appear like they wanted to be in the space, left me with what was quite a complex show in a book that was rewritten three times before we had the chance to run it. Combined with overlapping sound cues, AV cues, and performers unwilling to take cues from anything except cue lights, this really tested my ability to work under time pressured circumstances, pushing me to focus and drown out everything except the improvised text and the book in front of me. And yet, we did it. The shows ended up remarkably clean and both performers and directors were happy with what we’d all managed to achieve. Five hours later the venue was pristine again, the catwalks hoovered, the floor painted, and everything back where it should be. CPP had left the Chandler better than it had found it – something I can relate to as well.

That One Time The Chandler Was Clean

So why was this the best allocation I could have hoped to end first year with? Because, in short, it made me believe that I could keep up with this course. These shows tested my ability to work in conditions I wasn’t comfortable with, and come out stronger because of it. They pushed me to think for myself, to take control of a team, and to have faith in my own ability. They have allowed me to expand my learning in so many different ways and have given me the opportunity to fail and learn from those failures whilst still pulling off great work at the end. Taking this forward into next year, I would hope to give others the ability to experience what I have here, whilst giving them all the support they may need so that they never feel under the same strain and pressure that I did. I understand that asking for help doesn’t mean that you are inherently weak, so I would like to create an environment where questions are seen as opportunities for learning rather than as a threat to my way of doing things. In management roles, I have learned that support is vital, yet sometimes trusting the ability of others can give them such pride in the work they do that freedom is vital too.

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