James McQueen

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.

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.

The rest of this week was spent propping, either from our own props store, from the internet, or setting up props visits to stores throughout Glasgow. The main issues that became immediately apparent to us was the wealth of 80s technology required for the show, and the fact that Andrew wanted to fill every ensemble scene with as many items as he could – be them notepads, microphones, or lanyards. These difficulties made themselves present from our first visit to the RCS props store, along with the realisation that – due to many pieces being unavailable – most of our props list would have to be sourced elsewhere. However, a set of rehearsal props managed to be cobbled together and we put them into rehearsals. Propping in Glasgow is hard. My first responsibility was to phone up company props stores over the city to see if we could arrange visits and borrows – thus limiting the amount of our reasonable, yet tight, budget that we would have to spend on new items. The first problem that arose, however, are that there are very few stores in Glasgow, and – of those – even fewer open to the idea of people borrowing from them. *cough* Scottish Opera *cough*. Despite this, meetings were arranged with Titan Props, as well as with the National Theatre of Scotland and the Tron theatre to go and browse. Thankfully Kenneth’s props references had been thorough enough to a point where I could send the stores an idea of what we were looking for prior to our arrival, saving time and effort on the part of both parties and limiting mindless browsing. This was especially evident with Titan, the manager of which ushered us directly to what she thought we’d need as soon as we stepped through the gap where the door should probably have been.

Titan Props appeared, certainly to me, a Godsend. The cave of memorabilia and items identical to our reference images let to us all leaving on a high – filled with the pride and knowledge that basically everything we needed, they had. However, we still had two more stores to look over so concealed our adoration until we found out what else we could get for free. This proved to be a good idea, as when Titan finally sent us their costings it became swiftly evident that we would be hiring little, if any, from them, lest we break the bank.

NTS was our next stop, this time with Kenneth in tow. This proved very useful as he was able to give us immediate answers to proposed items rather than having us wait for him to reply to an email. Emma, who showed us around, was very useful in pointing us in the right direction to what she believed could be useful to us. However, she did explain that NTS tend to quarantine props from previous productions, resulting in a store that I think, proved smaller than we had expected – or hoped – it would be. However, we did end up sourcing a couple of suitcases and chairs from there later on which was very useful.

Lastly, came Tron. We were not expecting to find very many items from here as – Babette explained – they tend to buy in pieces based on what show they’re doing for the length of that run. However, the woman who showed us around was a former production student so understood exactly he position we were in and so was able to talk us through suggestions for things like pick-ups and returns of larger items. Having someone like this made the experience so much easier and really showed the benefits of links like this. Tron also had a box filled with retro tech and broken cans sets and belt packs which was promptly raided and shoved into a bag with a borrow sheet. Overall, the stores were an invaluable resource for use as a team, and made the part of the process which I was looking forward to the least, vaguely pleasant.

This allocation began with a coffee meeting with our Stage Manager, Babette, at 9am on a Tuesday morning. In our chat, she outlined for us exactly what she expected out of each member of the team and what help and support she was there to provide us with. Furthermore, she asked us to comment on what we felt our personal strongest skills were and how we felt we could best use them to contribute to the process – be that creatively through making props or using people skills to set up meetings. To have a chat with an H.O.D. like this at the beginning of an allocation was great as it immediately broke down any barriers and informed us of where we stood in regards to our duties. It was also nice to reflect on what we felt our strongest skills were and what we knew we had to improve on; and the free coffee was a perk.

Following this conversation we made our way to the rehearsal studio where we set up for the model box presentation. This gave us a chance to hear from our designer, Kenneth, and director, Andrew, on how they envisioned the show looking, both from a visual and directorial standpoint. It also let the cast become aware of who we were and what we do, a dynamic that would become important later on.

Day two came with the sound of steel deck and drills as we assisted the Technical Stage crew to install the rehearsal platform into the room, so that the cast and creatives could begin to gain an understanding of what space they had available. This experience was also greatly beneficial to us as Stage Management as having a real life representation of a set in front of you immediately propels you into thinking about what the practicalities and challenges of such a huge space could be. The deck, combined with the markup which we then laid down gave me my first realisation of just how big this show would be. The markup itself was not without its challenges, however, as Babette had pre-taken all of her measurements from points that, as it turned out, were not present within the rehearsal room. This led to us having to re-measure the plans from different points and navigating through scaff legs and under deck with our tape lines. I also had to restrain my compulsion to work measurements in millimetres as it led to more communication trouble than was worth the hassle.

‘Chess’ is a musical – with score by Benny Anderson, Bjorn Ulvaeus, and Tim Rice – which is set at the height of the Cold War in 1975. It follows two chess players – Frederick Trumper of the United States and Anatoly Sergievsky of the Soviet Union – as they compete against one another at the World Chess Championship in Merano, Italy. However, Freddie’s drug habits and bad temper cause him to lose his world championship title to his Russian counterpart – along with his ‘second’, and assistant, Florence, who falls in love with the emotionally troubled Soviet. After winning, Anatoly defects to the West, leaving his wife, Svetlana, and his two children, in order to live with Florence in England. A year later, the competition resumes in Bangkok, Thailand. Here, Anatoly tries to defend his title, whilst his former adviser – Molokov – uses Svetlana to try and blackmail him into returning to the USSR. Anatoly wins the championship again, but decides to return to the Soviet Union anyway in order to help free Western prisoners of war from the Russian regime.

My responsibility on this show is to be an Assistant Stage Manager, working alongside fellow ASMs, Rosie and Rachel, Deputy Stage Manager, Ryan, and Stage Manager, Babette. This involves responsibilities like assisting in propping the show, along with helping to run the wings and stage when we reach tech and performance. As I had never ASMd a show of this scale before I was initially excited to see how it would contrast with my former experiences of Stage Management. This show also comes with the added technical challenge of touring to another venue, meaning each prop would need to be catalogued and able to be transported, something that we would need to consider from the outset. As the design of the stage also expanded into the wings, this would also place additional pressure on on the SM team, as we would have to ensure our props cabinets and furniture storage was organised in a way so as to be easily accessible to actors, but without restricting their ability to navigate the backstage areas – something that would be particularly challenging on the smaller Athenaeum stage.