Tag: ChristmasAtTheConservatoire

Part 3 - Snow Long, Farewell

On the third day of Christmas [at the Conservatoire], Reece gave to me…

And then – there was nothing. This is the kind of show that requires a large fit up crew and then perhaps two – maybe three – people to run it. As it turned out, we had an entire first year crew to find jobs for; a task we tried so hard to be good at. Every job we found was given to a crew member, however small it was, and I resorted to teaching knots classes out of a necessity to kill time. To be in a Deputy or Acting HOD position and see your crew get bored in front of you is quite a disheartening experience – not least because you feel they’re not achieving the learning experience you know you should be helping to provide them. I don’t know what the solution to this is yet – though if a similar thing were to happen in future, I feel my approach of constantly offering my time to teach and answer any question I can would be a useful one, as it would allow those with an interest to attain any extra knowledge I could give them, and make some better use of otherwise lengthy down time.

Testing How Fire Retardent our Blacks Were

Our one moment of excitement in the process came in the form of a broken chain motor. Between one pyro reset and the next, Chain Motor four on the back truss jammed, meaning we could not lower or raise the truss at all. This, at first, did not seem that urgent an issue, as the TSM was happy to dead the truss till the strike and rig an extra bar for pyro to be rigged onto, which could be flown in and out between performances. However, the lighting designer was unhappy with this fix, as he pointed out that the units on that truss were known to fail, and – should this happen – we had no safe way of switching them out. Whilst I held down fort in the venue, Reece, Steve, and Kev set about trying to locate another of the same type and speed of motor which we could replace out in order to solve our issue. Eventually, one was found, and with Malki’s help, was switched with the broken one, thereby meaning that the truss was fully operational once again. This demonstrated two things to me. One – that the Scottish theatre industry is small enough that Steve and Kev could both end up contacting the same person with the same request within half an hour of each other. And two – that no matter how well you think a project is going, there will always be something that throws you off balance. In the sessions that followed, I chatted with Reece about other ways we could have fixed the problem. My suggestion was that we stagger the truss in between the three remaining 1/4Ts and a 1/2T from stock, and then re-rig in such a way that the two outside points hung from 1/4Ts and we created a centre point, bridled from the beams, and hanging on a 1/2T. This idea clearly had issues – it didn’t solve the problem of different motor speeds at all, and the additional calculations would mean it wouldn’t have been a fast fix – but it was nice to be able to work through my ideas with someone, as it challenged me to  justify and find issues with my own ideas, rather than assuming them to be flawless.

Blacks Go Up (and Down and Up and Down)

After five performances – and a shortened performance rehearsal session which saw one of the MDs question why the show was being cut to suit ‘the tech people’ – we started the strike. As this followed the final performance, it had an energy about it often missing from RCS strikes; the crew well aware that the sooner we finished, the sooner we got to leave. The back black was the first thing to come in, as we were stowing it on the ground for Grant and Blacklight crew to re-rig the following Monday. Because of this, we de-rigged the steels and sent only the lines back up with sand bags on them, as it would be easier to just raise the bar on hemp and not worry about the harnessing required to dead hang it as before. The side tabs came down next and were completely struck, followed by all hard masking, and finally the deck at the back. After the catwalks were hoovered and the stage swept, all equipment was returned to the dock and the venue left as ‘spotless’ as it was when we found it. We left the Stevenson Hall at six o’clock – two hours after the performance had come down.

Raising it to the Ground

In conclusion, this year’s Christmas at the Conservatoire taught me two major things. It taught me the importance of planning – not just before a project begins, but at every stage, and the necessity to always formulate solutions to problems which haven’t occurred yet; because at one point they will. The second thing it taught me, was how to manage a crew. Reece deliberately took a hands-off approach to his role on this show, allowing me the chance to coordinate the crew and what they were doing. This was a great environment to learn these skills in, as I felt like I was actively learning how to be an HOD and how to put those skills into practice, whilst not having the fear of being on my own without someone there to support me – something I am very grateful to him for. Overall, this allocation is always a good one to round out the year with, and made me look forward even more to a Christmas and New Year’s rest.

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Part 2 - Snow Laughing Matter

On the second day of Christmas [at the Conservatoire] Malki gave to me…

Having assisted as much as I felt I could on ‘London Road’, I turned my attention and time to the Christmas at the Conservatoire, and the role which would form the majority of my assessment in this allocation. Unlike a normal production process, this show is always jammed on at the end of the year leaving very little time for prep and planning. As such, my lack of prior involvement was not a massive hurdle in my ability to find things to do, taking the initiative to draw up plans and a basic rig design, taking inspiration from my experience on the same show last year. With Reece incapacitated by his work on London Road, I took the lead in preparation of the show and after Grant had decided what he wanted in the air – and that we should endeavour to work from stock as much as possible – I set about drafting up a Vectorworks plan for TSM and LX to use. This tested my basic knowledge of Vectorworks and forced me to learn more detailed aspects of the programme – from using pre-drawn components like deck and drapes, to rendering three dimensionally within a pre-existing venue plan. That venue plan proved to be an issue for the project, however. As part of a negotiated project for the previous year, a now graduated student had drawn the Stevenson Hall in great detail, and we made the decision to use this detailed plan over the basic PDF one already in existence. We reasoned that, for a show like Christmas at the Conservatoire, beam and bar positions would be integral, as these would be where we ended up rigging pulley points for our blacks, and motor points for our truss. However, upon Steve pointing out a minor discrepancy in the back wall dimension, and through the venue reccie which followed, it became clear that the plan was quite inaccurate. The upstage line of acoustic panelling was shown to be 1.5m into the space when it actually lay against the back wall, the orchestra risers were rendered around a third of their actual size, and the width of the room itself was about a meter out. This was infuriating – not least because of the fact we had already marked out the rehearsal room for the cast and Director. However, upon reflection, I am glad that we found the mistakes when we did, as had we gone any further with the planning process or into the rig with the inaccuracies still present, it would have slowed us down considerably, or forced us to rethink our entire rig plan. In future, I will make sure to check the accuracy of any pre-existing plan before I use it.

Malki Dead Hangs the US Black in a Harness

With venue planned and rig finalised, Reece and I spent a slow prep-week cutting legs for deck, pulling masking and drifts, and ensuring that we had everything looked out and marked up in a way so as to quicken the fit-up on the Sunday. Remarkably – this worked. Once we got started the fit up went relatively smoothly. I took our crew to transport all the equipment from the dock to the venue with Reece staying behind to help swing the front of house motors to the upstage beams in preparation for the new truss. Once this was complete, my team progressed to rigging the upstage and side stage blacks, the former of which was dead hung by Malki onto 1.5m drifts. This gave us a trim height that we could level all masking to, ensuring we didn’t have to eyeball the back black straight. Once we had tied on the side blacks we realised that our pole was around a meter shorter than we thought – mainly because the venue differed from the plan’s sizing. To rectify this, we added a 1m scaff section and coupler to the upstage end, attaching a new barrel clamp to this extension. From the catwalks, Malki then described the knots he wanted me to tie – running the line through the shackle on one clamp, up to an alpine butterfly, and then down to a bowline on the other clamp. This created a bridle in the line which meant we didn’t have to run another down, or lift the upstage side of the bar just from the extension bar. After the blacks had been hung, we flew the back truss which we had hung on the four venue 1/4T motors. And whilst LX rigged their lamps, we fitted braces to the 1.4 x 6m hard masker that would form the DS side of the SL wing, so as no audience could accidentally enter the backstage are. It was at this point that we realised that we could still see some of the red tabs upstage, as the cast entrances were wider than initially thought. Reece suggested using two extra hard maskers, which were promptly brought into the venue and erected – solving the issue quickly. It was this ability to look at a problem, settle on an solution, and set to fixing it that I feel Reece and I achieved quite well, and I certainly respected him for his ability to deal with any issues without making a big deal of their existence. We just got the job done.

‘Tying on the Y’ to Support the Extensions

The risers slid downstage with a lot of pushing and the deck was slotted in behind it, bolted together for stability, and the kickrail screwed in. Due to the nature of the Stevenson Hall and our inability to screw into the floor, we ratchet strapped both sets of treads to the legs of the deck on either side. This ended up being a great test of my communication skills, as the crew member who had volunteered to be under the deck and tighten the strap didn’t actually know how to use a ratchet. I explained to them how the straps worked and how I wanted it done, and they were able to carry out the task.

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Part 1 - No Business Like Snow Business

On the first day of Christmas [at the Conservatoire], Lynfryn gave to me…..

Christmas at the Conservatoire is an annual collaboration between the School of Music and the MA Musical Theatre Programme. It is a Swing Band concert performed in the Stevenson Hall on the last week of term. This year, my role would be Deputy Technical Stage Manager, taking on the planning and pre-prep process of the production whilst my HOD was still allocated to another show, and assisting with the rig, performance, and strike of the final concert.

Though at first it appears quite simple, there were many technical challenges present in this show. This year, our designer had requested that the stage be surrounded by blacks, as he didn’t want to use the red tabs usually present at the back of the Stevenson Hall. We accomplished this by hanging a full black on a 10m length of scaff to cover the majority of the back wall, two 6m scaff lengths with half blacks on them for SR and SL of the orchestra riser – in the style of last year – and three 6m x 1.4m hard maskers to fully hide what remained of the red tabs on the back wall and to create a barrier between the DS edge of the SL black and the wall – thus creating a wing. The SR black was tied on in such a way as to lie flush with the edge of the organ, so as to show both the Christmas tree and the ‘Christmas at the Conservatoire’ gobo which the LD wanted to shine on the organ’s DS edge. The side blacks were hung on hemp and tied off to the catwalks and gantries, with the back black being hauled up on hemp and dead hung on 1.5m drifts attached to strops and turnbuckles hung from the roof beams. This back bar was also covered in fairy lights on the DS side, provided and rigged by the electrics department.

The US truss was switched out for a 10m span of H30V (comprised of two 3m and two 2m sections) which we hung on four 1/4T Lodestar motors – two of which were already in situ with the other two being swung from the FOH truss and hung on two additional beam clamps. The FOH truss was then flown on two Lodestar 1/2T motors. As in previous years, we extended the orchestra risers to the rear – this time with four 2’ x 8’ and one 2’ x 4’ deck sections on 585mm deck legs, so as to reach the – awkward – 610mm height of the back riser. Due to the narrowness of the new deck, and the fact that we were unable to screw into the Stevenson Hall floor, we were pressed to find ways to secure treads to either side for cast access, settling on ratchet strapping them around the legs of the deck to keep them secure and in place. A kick rail was fitted along the back for safety.

Snow formed a big part of the concert this year, with Grant purchasing bales of wadding to use over the stage, forming ‘snow drifts’ in front of the risers, along the kick rail, and over the band wedges and subs. This effect was achieved by teasing the fibres of the wadding at the edges to make it look less like it had been cut off a roll, and taping and securing it to look like it had naturally been ruffled and had been blown about by the wind. This task was repeated a lot, as the cast kept stumbling into the snow and kicking it out of place during almost every performance. There was also a snow drop during the last song. This involved six crew members on Catwalk One sprinkling snow from buckets onto the stage – the buckets secured to the railings with climbing strops and carabiners to safety them against falling.

Christmas at the Conservatoire

‘Christmas at the Conservatoire’ is an annual event where musicians and the MA Musical Theatre cohort stage a concert to celebrate the festive season. This year, director Andrew Panton based the show on the idea of ‘What Christmas Means to Me’ with each of the performers telling their stories of Christmas and the good memories they had of the holidays…

‘Christmas at the Conservatoire’ is an annual event where musicians and the MA Musical Theatre cohort stage a concert to celebrate the festive season. This year, director Andrew Panton based the show on the idea of ‘What Christmas Means to Me’ with each of the performers telling their stories of Christmas and the good memories they had of the holidays. For this show, I was assigned to an ATSM role, assisting Fee Dalgleish as TSM to rig the necessary staging and truss components to turn the Stevenson Hall into a workable MT performance venue. This gave me the opportunity to work in another new RCS venue from any I had worked in before, which I found very interesting as it showed me all of the differences and challenges a space like this poses.

The team for this production was quite small as the crew on Brigadoon had been spit, with the other half crewing Scavengers in the Chandler. This meant that each of us was required to take on more responsibility, a challenge that I enjoyed. We began with a pre-rig, transporting the steel deck into the venue and fitting its legs. We then moved the pre existing orchestra tier forward and built the deck behind it, extending the top their to the back wall and increasing the amount of raised performance area available. Next, we transported the truss we would be using into the venue, as the truss already flying was not large enough to cope with the amount of lights that the designer wanted to hang from it, and the chain motors suspending it were not rated to hold the amount of weight required. However, after storing the truss under the steel deck, we realised that no cross-bolts had been fitted, meaning the deck could slide apart. This meant that we had to remove the truss so that these could be fitted and then replace it where it was. This was a time consuming mistake, and further showed me the importance of checking that every step of a job is complete before moving on, as you may create more hassle for yourself later on.

At the start of the rig I was assigned to work on the catwalks, cabling up the chain motors on the back and front truss sections so they could be lowered and disconnected / rigged. At first, this seemed a daunting prospect but after having a few minutes with the control system I worked out how to operate it and completed the job. Next, myself, Fee and Dave – the PM – struck the chain motors from the upstage beams as these were to be replaced with motors that could support a heavier load. This involved Dave employing rope access training and equipment, and it was interesting to watch how this was done and the necessary safety steps to ensure nothing went wrong. I was then given the task of cabling up the new chain motors so that they could be operated from stage level.

The next job was to rig two sets of blacks on stage left and stage right, flying them on hemp lines, the points of which Fee had already marked on the catwalks. Between Fee and myself we hung pulleys from the predetermined points and ran hemp lines to the ground where they were then tied off. This was tricky as we had to make sure we didn’t scrape our lines off any of the acoustic panelling or the organ as this could damage them and the integrity of the rope. Then, with the help of other crew members, we raised the blacks to ceiling level and tied them off. Fee then explained the concept of dead hanging, where the black would hang on drifts rather than lines, therefore preventing it being lowered in or slipping and falling. But, after examining it, she had determined that the lines would be the best option for this rig, which I found disappointing as I would have been interested to find out how we would have dead hung from such out of reach points.

After the blacks were hung, the last element to fly was the large wreath which had been cabled and decorated by the production electrics team. This was attached to open ended drifts fitted with bullets and shackled to the upstage truss, with the idea that – as the truss flew out – the wreath would swing upstage and hang in the desired orientation. Dave explained that this was the best way to do this as standing it up and then shackling it off could damage some of the lighting fixtures on whatever point we stood it up on. I was put in charge of the control box for the motors at this point. This was an important job as, due to the safe working loads of the beams, the weight needed to be distributed between all three motors in order to remain safe – yet one motor was slower than the other two. This proved difficult in operation, as I had to pause often to correct the distribution between the motors. However, I would have preferred to do it this way, rather than load the weight onto two points only and exceed their safe working loads – a decision my H.O.D. agreed with me on.
The show had no large set changes or operational challenges from a TSM perspective, which meant that the only thing crew were required to do during the show was throw snow during the final song – this was done from the centre catwalk with the use of buckets which we had secured using slings and caribenars. It did mean, however, that we had to wait out the whole second act on the catwalks, without phones as they were untetherable loose items and therefore unsafe. Though this was a challenging prospect at first, it was nice to get a chance to relax following a long working period and listen to the music of the show, and I ended up finding it quite calming – though I can understand why some may have become agitated.

One unexpected job I was given during the show was the task of micing the cast. As Jamie – the sound op – was suffering from a cold and didn’t want to spread it to the performers, he asked me to give the cast their mics as he’d shown me how to do it properly for Brigadoon. This was an opportunity that I believe I managed to take in my stride as, with my previous experience I had gained, I managed to execute the task quite easily. By learning something as basic as how to put mics on performers properly I was able to assist another department when they were a man down, which highlighted to me the importance of being knowledgeable in components of every technical discipline, not just your own, as it can prove useful in a production setting.

Due to the nature of the show, and the choice to run two BSL interpreted performances on the Friday, the final performance came down just after 5 o’clock, meaning we were able to strike on the same night. Once again, Fee assigned me to the catwalks, my first job being to clean up the excess confetti snow that had accumulated over the past week. This job was monotonous but, I realise, necessary as I would have hated to come into the venue and find it in the state it was in. Next to be lowered in was the front of house and upstage truss’, at which point the wreath was disconnected and laid on flight cases so it could be stripped back down. Next to go were the blacks, with Malcy on hand to show me how to wrap the hemp line around the bar in a way that I was always creating a friction dead on it, preventing it slipping or running away from me. I found this incredibly useful as trying to lower a heavy object in this way is very dangerous and could result in it slipping. Doing it this way prevents that and therefore makes what I am doing safer; and therefore me happier. Once the hemp lines were sorted and all equipment lowered back down to the floor, we re-hung the truss that was present when we entered the venue and disassembled all of the steel deck; transporting it to the Chandler dock door in preparation for its use during the opera.

Overall, I found Christmas at the Conservatoire a much more relaxed experience than Brigadoon, but one on which I was given a lot more freedom and responsibility – challenges which I enjoyed as I felt like I was trusted by my H.O.D. This allocation gave me the ability to work in a new venue and remind myself of the basics of how to strop and hang truss and operate chain motors – tasks I had only done in classroom sessions prior to that point – whilst also getting me in the mood for the festive season.