Category: A2 Shakespeares

And so we moved onto Twelfth Night. Due to the turnaround time between the shows being almost unachievable tight – and this, the larger of the two shows, having half the tech time of the prior – It was decided that I would work with Daryl and Jak in the venue to rig everything until the props and cages came out of the rehearsal room and had to be installed into the venue. This led to a really enjoyable Monday, the sunny day outside mirroring the happiness and enthusiasm of all the technicians in the venue – even Steve; I know! Between us, we got the ‘Box of Death’ in the air, with the mirror ball snuggly fitted inside it. This was a really heartening experience, showing that accurate planning can actually pay off, and after installing some pulleys and shimmying some knots it could be controlled from the side gantry with ease. I then jumped on to plugging up Catwalk 3, providing the third body the LX department needed to have one on each walkway and, once this was done, assisted in rigging the drop-down bars, hung lamps on them and plugged up with the cable thrown down to me.

The ‘Box of Death’ Actually Worked

And then came the rehearsal room strike. Tuesday was always going to be a challenging day. Having had my last experience of working with Riona not necessarily end very positively – the strike planning meeting turning into an over-running and frantic van load session, leaving our PLX on the verge of tears after getting hit by ladders thrown at him during what could only be described as a tantrum – I wouldn’t say I was necessarily looking forward to being back under her command. However, keeping an open mind as I’d promised myself I’d do, I loaded the van with the Caesar returns and headed up to Spiers to meet it after it had unloaded at NTS and the Workshop. Upon arrival in the room, I discovered that Poppy – our DSM – had gone on her one break of the day, having been in from nine and it now being five,  and so I was left to single-handedly cart all the cages and props from the room to the doors we would load the van from. The start of a chest infection didn’t make this job easier, and it would have been nice to have had extra hands – though I later had it explained to me in detail why I was more than able to do this alone when it required both the SM and an ASM to white tape two props tables in Renfrew at the same time. However, upon Poppy’s immediate return when she realised I was alone, and after the van had been loaded, I went back down to the main building and Poppy and I took a full dinner break – a rarity which we were forced into by an angry Production Manager who was more than knowledgeable of the fact her entire crew were overworked and under-slept. The set up of the tables and stage was pretty erratic compared to Caesar. It became evident that the SM’s settings lists weren’t entirely accurate, with many duplications, and props left over without a home. When it was suggested that we use the rehearsal room lists prepared by the DSM, this was disregarded- a decision which slowed us down and impacted our ability to be fully prepared for tech.

Due to the number of props which needed altered or fixed, the evening session was spent taking a table each and working left to right fixing those props which were broken and amending those which the director requested be changed. It was very lucky that Andy – our Director – was actually in the venue at this point, as he decided to cut at least two props before tech that hadn’t been sourced and Riona had no knowledge of, despite them appearing in rehearsal notes weeks before. The haphazard nature of the transfer and the erratic nature of how we were forced to do this setup just made me feel unprepared. Having seen this show also only once, I felt as nervous going into this tech as I did the one previously, though the pre-prepared cue list that was given to every ASM, TSM and LX crew member before tech started – however incomplete – did provide a little relief in my ability to get through the tech process. However, it turned out that I would get through a lot less of that process than I would have wished to. The bug that had been going around the cast and technicians eventually fell upon me, heading for my chest and resulting in a cough and dizziness that made it impossible for me to work effectively. With Yvonne covering my shift for the evening, I arrived the next morning feeling better and with notes that were a joy to work from, as they actually provided all the details I needed to transfer them straight into a running list. Before I left sick, however, I was confronted by my Stage Lecturer in the office, who had previously that day had the TSM of the show complain to him about my behaviour. This resulted in a rather forced conversation where, as he did not wish to pick a side in a fight I thought shouldn’t have existed in the first place, I was subjected to being forcibly self-searching on how I may have offended a team member who had never confronted me with his opinions directly. I will hold out that this was the wrong way of doing this. Never had this individual spoken to me about their issue with me, and jumping straight to a higher power to do their fighting on their behalf just led to the situation worsening. Unlike my previous working issue which was sorted at the source, this became blown out of proportion, and led to me having to calm fires that should never have been kindled. The importance of communication and dealing with issues at the source cannot be overstated, and is something that I will hold out is the most important element of professional cooperation.

 

Pretty, Pretty Mirror Ball

Tech passed faster than I thought possible, finishing but an hour before our first dress rehearsal – an open dress for High School kids. I, therefore, ended up running the show like a technician covering a track, rather than one with a real understanding of what he was doing. I stumbled through the cues I knew I had, discovered quickly the ones I didn’t have notes on and stressed through to the end – finishing with a complete running list and a sense of control which had been present from around day two of the Caesar tech. Still stumbling through a combination of three different settings list, the reset which followed was stressful enough as it was, made worse by the fact no one had had a break in the last five or six hours. To then have my HOD cry and run out of the venue because herself and the PM became snappy with each other, and left me to run the room as Jess reset all exterior props tables wasn’t very fair, and I was not in the correct physical capacity to deal with the situation. However, I did. I managed the departments within the room to maximise the time that we had remaining before the next show, compromising the needs of each to reach a happy medium for all. Though my HOD didn’t feel comfortable doing a reset by torchlight this didn’t bother me, and therefore the LX department could have the time they desperately wanted. I’m sad to say that we got more done in the 20 minutes our Stage Manager was absent from the venue than in the 25 which followed, which was filled with stony expressions and having props thrown at me, a fishing net hitting me in the eye. Again – unprofessional. What became more and more apparent as this week passed was, though we were all under pressure and all struggling to cope with the stress that caused, some of us were able to hold it in until we were alone or amongst friends, and some of us let it affect our work. As a HOD I see the importance of adhering to the former, as – no matter how much stress one is under – remaining calm and in control at all times is important to maintain confidence amongst one’s team. If this fails, not only is all authority gone but all trust that you are competent enough to follow through with your job. I’m genuinely sad to say that that was the situation which ended up arising as the show went on.

With 3 Kinds of Confetti, Every Reset was a Challenge

But, against all odds, we got through it. Sniffing, coughing, and many cold and flu tablets later, the whole team choked their way into the strike. The first hour was great. Splitting my time between cutting tokens down from the catwalks and de-rigging mirror balls, black boxes, and trapeze bars, everyone developed a good way of working around each other, finally using all that energy that had been pent-up over the last few shows. And then, like all strikes it seems, it stopped. By eleven, the decision had been made to use the van we had hired to do the Tron and Falkirk ladder returns with to take the cages, costume rails, and ladders to Speirs, rather than wait an extra day and load these on Friday. Jess and I headed up the road to make preparations, a task which ended in a futile attempt to convince Simon to actually take the ladders back into Workshop; a conversation we had assumed our TSM would have already had with him, and one which was eventually dealt with by Malki. Just as we unloaded the cages and started putting props back in the store, Riona informed us that they were now going to return the ladders to Falkirk and she ‘didn’t really see a reason why [she’d] come back to Glasgow’. Knowing that, although our strike was nearly over, there was still a lot left to do down the road, this was a puzzling decision but one Jess and I decided that we could live with, and we bid her farewell.

It took us an hour in total to clear out the cages into the store, then on our return to Renfrew – for what we thought would be a lunch break – we found that the office was still full of bits, pieces, and props that hadn’t been cleared out. We, therefore, used what time we had before our returns to NTS – which I had organised earlier that week – gutting the drawers, submitting the receipts we found to Yvonne, and helping Fran with any last things she required before she left. This was also a good time to find out her opinions on each of us, how we had done, and get one-on-one feedback from an external in a way that wasn’t just a few lines written on a piece of paper, which I found very useful.

NTS returns followed and, just as we’d decided to finally take an hour off and watch the Acting Showcase – it now being just after 3pm -, we received an email from Malki berating the fact everyone had abandoned the PLX and Sound Designer in the venue to finish an as-yet incomplete strike. This was a strange email to read as, despite the fact people were aware the SM team would return and help once their strike was done, I had phoned the TSM earlier that morning who had said that by one o’clock there would be no need to return to the venue, as everyone would be finished. In fact, on passing another crew member in the corridor, I was informed that the TSM had gone home as he felt there was nothing else left to do. In spite of all of this we came back, removed all of our personals from the space – along with a guitar that one of the performers had left behind – and finally left for good at half past four, leaving ‘Twelfth Night’ complete a whole day early.

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Week two of this allocation was spent on the other play – Julius Caesar. As this show was so close to going into the venue, with the LX and part of the TSM rig fitted up the week prior, there was a lot less work to do in preparation, most of it last minute jobs which could only be done once the necessary props and set pieces were brought out of the rehearsal room. One of the tasks we did have to complete was turning a table into a concrete plinth for Brutus and Anthony to address the crowds from. Out of the three people on the team, it was decided I had the most carpentry skills – as much as I tried to deny them – so the task was given to me. I set about cladding the legs with MDF panels, pinning them in at the bottom to prevent it fanning out like a skirt, and painting the entire piece white, texturing it as our scenic art advisor had shown us to. Later, these techniques were repeated on a small statue podium which – when completed – was almost immediately cut by the Director with very few tears shed. This is where Rachel’s management style differentiated itself from Riona’s. Where her’s had been a case of supervision at all times, Rachel split her assets, using every team member’s skills to her advantage to complete many different tasks to a high standard at the same time, rather than slowly completing them one by one. This was a style I enjoyed working with, one where I felt like a valued team member, and one I would seek to emulate later on.

With these items completed and other props like our daggers painted up as the Designer wished them, the show headed into tech. Having only seen the play once in the rehearsal room, I imagined that this would be a train-wreck of an experience. But – it was fine. Everyone in the room seemed conscious to the position that everyone else was in and, as this was the actors’ first public RCS show, Emily – our director – was keen to run sequences over and over again for their benefit, which let us practice our cues over and over again and learn the show ever quicker. Despite two sessions having to be cancelled due to snow disruption, we finished tech on time and even got a dress run in on the Saturday afternoon – leaving us fully prepared for our open dress the following week.

It was that weekend, however, that I was forced to question how well I thought we were doing. On the Sunday morning, I woke up to messages from the other ASM, calling into question my attitude and professionalism during the tech period and saying – quite curtly- that if this didn’t change immediately I would be damaging the show through my ‘misbehaviour’. I was obviously shocked by this, but my first response – alongside checking with my SM whether she had noticed I had been doing anything wrong – was not to argue about the matter but to go and read my feedback from Chess and the diary entries I wrote around that time. Following that allocation, I was forced to reflect on how I worked as an ASM, and I felt that the new style I had adopted for this allocation was in direct response to the feedback I had received on the prior. I went through that feedback, noting that I had avoided many of the pitfalls that had held me back previously, and had to resort to finally questioning exactly what I had done wrong as I couldn’t understand – and therefore couldn’t alter my approach. Though they later apologised and noted their harsh words were inappropriate, this interaction highlighted a valid point – not all styles of work match well with all people. I had changed my working practice so much that it may have swung to the other extreme – so far into uncaring ‘professionalism’ that it appeared cold and abrasive. In future, I will reflect on how I am being perceived and be open to changing my attitude often and quickly in order to work better with those around me. As a side note, I also feel that this kind of interaction was the appropriate way of dealing with this conflict, rather than bitching to others about the issue and never confronting it head-on, as exhibited previously.

Though the shows and hours around them were long, the running of Caesar was smooth and efficient. Our reset cut down to 15 minutes and our cues learned well, each show blended into the next, assisted somewhat by the schedule’s inhumane hours and the severe lack of sleep they promoted amongst the crew. All went well; apart from one show. Our TSM had made clear prior to opening night that he would be unavailable on one date to operate the show and had spent the previous day training a cover TSM to carry out his cues. However, when the time came for the matinee, they were nowhere to be found. I took it upon myself – knowing what had to be prepped as I had written the pre-show running list for the TSM department – to perform the reset, training the PLX and DPLX in how to operate the cues and trusting the TSM’s running list to fill in any holes my education may have left. This didn’t result in an amazing outcome, as the fact the running list was incorrect led to the wrong kabuki triggering at the wrong time and an actor having to quickly cover on stage; though no devastatingly bad outcomes other than that. Through an exchange of words following the publication of the show report that evening it was discovered that an agreement had been made earlier that day that the cover TSM would not do the show as she had ‘too much on her plate’. This was poorly communicated, and no alternative arrangements put in place, resulting in the scenario we found ourselves in and once again highlighted to me the importance of good communication – both verbally to the SM of the show and the Production Manager who didn’t know about the change and, if she did, didn’t tell anyone in the venue when the question came up, and written communication through high quality and accurate running lists which serve the purpose they are designed for; which this one did not. This was a maddening experience though, as with all like it, a valuable one to learn from.

Gretchen the Goose – QLab Operator

As the final show rolled around, and with the strike plan finalised – the deliberation meeting of which will be touched upon later – we set about attacking the venue, our let extended for an extra 45 minutes until 11 o’clock in order to make this viable. In those 45 minutes – though it was closer to 35 including the time to pick up our bags and actually leave – we achieved more than I thought would have been possible. Our team de-rigged Caesar’s confetti drop,  de-rigged three catwalk to catwalk scaff poles, took up the LED tape, sacrificial floor and rubble from the deck, dismantled the dias – storing two pieces in R2 and assembling the rest into the band riser for Twelfth Night – moved the seating banks to their new position, hoovered the catwalks, fully struck the Julius Caesar LX rig, hung most of the Twelfth Night rig, and moved all the props to our props cages and struck these to the dock. It was an amazing feeling working with a really focused team, and was the adrenaline rush I needed to wake myself up after the fourteen hour day that preceded it;  Working Time Directive be damned.

Having attended two final design meetings and a couple of actor/technician meet-and-greets towards the end of last year, I had a basic understanding going into this allocation of what the two Shakespeare shows would look like and how complex they were likely going to end up being. What became the main question upon actually starting work on the shows, however, was ‘what is there actually left to do?’ As both shows had received the luxury of ‘rehearsal ASMs’ in the run-up to Christmas, there was very little of the initial props sourcing left to do, with some small makes and alterations forming the main portion of the work prior to tech.

My first week was spent working on Twelfth Night with Riona as my Stage Manager. As this show was very prop-heavy there were still quite a few items to be worked on, with the morning session of my first day comprising of spray painting and glueing together 40 red jewelled rings which would be hung around the space, as well as being used by the company as personal props. Once these were completed, we spent some time in the rehearsal room and props store dealing with the back-log of rehearsal noted items that the director wanted time to work with, but which hadn’t been sourced yet, along with taking a large mirror from the store to Renfrew Street to work on. It was rickety and falling apart, so the first stage of the project became deconstructing the piece to its component parts, sanding, and filling it back to a good enough standard to work with. After painting every component to the Designer’s requested finish – a gold which still adorns the front of one of my black hoodies – I reassembled it with the appropriate bolts and screws, replacing the broken or too short ones I had taken out. Now complete, this was returned to the rehearsal room and was another tick off our to-do list.

Left: The Dissassembled Mirror, Sanded and Prepped for Paint

Right: 40 Rings, Spray Painted Red and Waiting for Jewels

That to-do list – as a side note – was a document which didn’t actually exist until midway through that week. Upon completion of every task I was set, it always surprised me that we didn’t have an overall tick list of tasks to complete, and were pulling our inspiration for jobs from several different bits of paper, post-it notes, rehearsal emails, and memory. I suggested that we either use some of the whiteboard in the office, or more easily create a Wunderlist page to fix this issue and, after doing both of these, I found that our workload sped up considerably; our new lists acting as great motivation techniques.

Alongside my ASM duties, I had been asked by the TSM of the show to construct a cover which could live in the void between catwalks two and three during the show and hide the mirror ball when not in use. Though this looked like an easy task from the outset, there were quite a few hidden challenges upon further thought. Firstly, the mirror ball which we would be using was massive. Unlike the 300mm diameter ones usually used in the Chandler this unit was 600mm across, and when combined with its chain and motor measured 1200mm from top to bottom. As the catwalks are not that tall, I reasoned that the box I built would have to sit above the standard catwalk to catwalk crossbars, and would, therefore, require a top bar built in that could house the pulley and flying mechanism to allow the ball to come in and out – as there would be no other way of getting a point that high up. With all of these things in mind, I drew up a plan and set about constructing this ‘Box of Death’, skinning it with tatt and installing half couplers on either side so that it could support itself on crossbars by the side. With a bit of packing and paint, this beast was complete and would be fitted-up with the LX rig when the show reached the venue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cutting and Assembling the ‘Box of Death’

Another one of the main tasks we had to complete during the week I prepped this show was the sourcing and purchasing of the food that would be served to the audience during the party scene. Due to the tight nature of our budget – most of which was gone by the time I began working on the show – we resorted to asking supermarkets for charitable donations, though the specificity of our food needs made this challenging.  The entirety of one day was spent making phone calls to supermarkets, with Riona searching Customer Services numbers that I could then phone up. Though this was not, I feel, a useful division of time, we managed to contact enough supermarkets that one finally decided to provide what we asked for, with Riona deciding she would go and pick them up the following week whilst I was in tech for Caesar. This happened to also be the day when the main building’s power failed, made even more annoying by the fact that all the items we needed to spend time working on were locked inside. Losing a day wasn’t fun – especially with so much left to do.

As this week progressed, and as I spent more and more time working with her, a horrible realisation began to form about how myself and my Stage Manager worked together. I don’t know why myself and my HOD never really clicked. I endeavoured, wherever possible, to be professional in my attitude, completing any task I was set as quickly and efficiently as I could, and always proactively asking what we could work on next – something I would expect anyone working with me to do if I had had the to-do list in my hand. But from making every job that we had to complete a ‘Together Task’ – meaning I was constantly under supervision and scrutiny – to roaming Glasgow City Centre carrying bags of lemonade because ‘It’s nice to have a guy to carry the heavy stuff’, I didn’t feel particularly respected or that my applicable skills were being valued. I was made to feel like an assistant of the Stage Manager, rather than an ASM. Now, I grant that this would be fine if this was just the way my H.O.D. chose to work. The allocation is not that long, and I can find ways to work around different management styles I may disagree with; with experiences like CPP and ‘Chess’ last year teaching me how to work better with other people to avoid clashes. But this working environment was unpleasant and unprofessional, and I felt dragged into needless drama that would never have become an issue if she had been more prepared to deal with situations that any SM has to go through – from bitching about the director to me once his back was turned after he asked her for more rehearsal props in the room, to asking whether the DSM was ‘this much of a cold-hearted bitch in real life’ after receiving one pointed email too many. I felt uncomfortable, and that I was forced to take sides in a division that should never have existed in the same team.

Finding positives to take out of this, however, I would say I have a greater appreciation for the importance of a team that sticks together and stick by each other. Though the idea of collective responsibility has the possibility to backfire, I’d say that keeping and dealing with professional differences between the parties involved, rather than outsource to another member of the team in hopes of getting them on side is the right attitude to have. I didn’t want to – and did not – pick sides; it would have compromised my ability to do the job. As a future HOD, I would seek to work out issues like this when they first developed, and find ways of working with challenging individuals before it got to a point where it started to damage the show. Many of the issues that arose from this show were due to a lack of communication and co-operation and has more than clearly demonstrated the dangers that can result from that happening, and the impact it can have on the success of the piece.