You've taken over the booth; everywhere there are notes, lights, and wires, oh my.
Thoughts are scattered everywhere like the pretzels, starburst wrappers, and water bottles that lay strewn about your work space. You've spread out over this area because what is a tech week without a tech, so this is your home now. You have a spare sweater draped over the chair, comfortable fuzzy socks waiting for you in the spare chair, and pizza patiently waiting for you to take a break.
As you look around you realize you've forgotten the cds that you need to be ripping (are they free domain?), as you're looking for them that you realize you were in the middle of setting pre-show lights (it's such a simple show, can I make the pre-show colorful and crazy fun?).
It's tech week.
Breathe, make sure you are taking oxygen in deeply into your lungs, you have several days to get everything ready. This is just day one.
It's a roller coaster sometimes, but it's a ride that you love. There's no great money to be made in a local theatre, but there's an abundance of love and untapped potential. You're here because you love it, there's no where else you would rather be. The world melts away as you aim your lights, set your sounds, and sink your invisible fingers into the script to create subtle nuance behind your actor's words and actions.
The clock is winding up to seven hours spent at the theatre already, three of that spent watching rehearsal and planning what you're going to be doing with your lights once your actors are off the stage. Which means at least five to six hours tomorrow that you'll be at work.
It's tech week, hectic, crazy, and there is no where else you'd rather be.


​Colie Gotcha

So as we rush into shows with all the craziness of tech week, we hardly ever get all of the effects and scenery and lighting and sounds together that we wanted.  Mostly because you give a tech person an infinite amount of time to tweak and they will tweak and add until you stop them.  For me, I like to add and change things up through the performances in week 2, but week 3, I don't try to change anything.  It's kind of a time to run the show and look at what you were able to do, and make notes for next time.
To me that's the great thing about Enter Stage Right, you know there will be a next time.  And next time isn't that far away.  A 12 month schedule let's us play and get better.  I'm trying to keep learning, keep growing, keep improving for the other company members and the audience.  I want to say I have 20 shows worth of experience, not one show's experience 20 times.  And I see that in everyone else at ESR.  I feel lucky to be around a group of people that not only do their best at  this theatre thing for the audiences, but for each other.
I'll probably only be doing one more post before I hand the reigns over to Colie, she's got the conn for Dancing at Lughnasa.  Enjoy the shows, life, and the opportunities presented to us, and I'll see you back here for one more until Robin Hood.  I'm so psyched for that!

Stay Techie my friends!

Brian

So moving the relay worked!  Yea!  Reliable smoke, and Jenny/Darrel did the best magic cue of the whole run last night.  Congrats!

On to other tech things, did you know that the official definition of tech includes lights, sound, effects, costumes, props, and scenery?  Yes?  Probably because you are a theatre person and not a newbie like me.  So, to talk about some of the scenic design for this show..... 

The original production listed in the script as off Broadway talked about the sparse scenery used.  When scenes changed the flats were flown in and out of the stage.  Well, if you've been to the Citadel you know we're not flying anything in and out of the stage, except for maybe Bruce the bat during the warm summer months.

So Regina came up with a unique idea to have rotating stage pieces, each side was a different scene.  Joe helped her build them and now we have 36 flats attached to lazy Susan mechanisms that spin easily with one person.  The three pictures here are all of the same place on the stage, just different sides of the spinner.  If I can remember tonight I'll get some video to post here.

Stay techie my friends!

Brian

So, long day.  Went out of town for work, came back, SWORE I was going home without going to the theatre, but....  The smoke machine needed fixing and tested during the pick up rehersal, and everyone there is tired, so where do I get off laying on my couch while everyone else works hard?  Plus, cool people and my wife is there!  

Moved the relay to the front of the risers, seems to work.  More lights on the link signal are staying lit, so cross your fingers for us.

Also, highlight of the night, Chloe Julio running spot light for the rehearsal.  

Catch y'all tomorrow after the show - #4.

​Brian

Hi Everybody!  So this is a blog we techies are starting to spill our guts to everyone in written word..... and to help the SEO so we end up on the first page of results in google.  I'm nothing if not honest....

Whoever has the stage at the theatre will also have control of this blog, to add things, talk about deep desires, ruminate on how to take over the world....or at least all of the chairs in the booth.

Currently we're running Prelude to a Kiss and Jenny Julio (don't foolio with the Julio), Darrel Hafner (The Magic Man), and I are tickling the ivories on the light and sound systems.  I'm sure in later shows I'll wax poetic about why we aimed this ellipsoidal there, or how the diffusion blue almost looks like it is UV enhanced when it hits a certain actors costume, or how THERE MUST BE SMOKE!!!!!!  Today though I thought I would explain a problem we had last weekend with the wireless relays.  It is a TECH blog after all.

So Jenny was watching Brittany and Mike in the Wedding scene, get closer, and closer, and closer, and there goes the kiss.... she hits #3 on the outlet remote, Darrel pounds the keyboard to get the sound effect going, Jenny hits the play button to advance the lights and activate the mover, and last of all, ever so expertly presses the #1 memory to turn on the geyser set with a rainbow light effect.  Everything was going perfectly, but no FREAKIN smoke?  She looks at me, I look at her, Darrel looks at both of us, then we all lean over the ledge and look at the geyser.

So for this show we stretched the limits by placing the geyser under the 2nd row of seating in the audience.  We thought, hey, we'll make them jump when it goes off, really bring the crowd into the show!  Apparently, the best we can tell, the wireless relay is losing connection with the transmitter.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it don't.  We think it is because the transmitter has to try and get through a bit of the brick wall, there's no straight line of sight.  When the transmitter cuts connection with the relays for 5 or so minutes it also cuts power to whatever is plugged into it.  This is so that when we shut the power down at night the lights in the ceiling don't stay energized.  We've only got about 10,000 hours on the chip sets in the lights, if they don't get disconnected that clock continues to tick and we lose $2,000 lights after the chip sets burn up.

So long story longer, we're going to try and run an extension chord and put the relay under the first row of seats.  The geyser will stay in the same place, there's pleeeeenty of cable length to get the relay in a workable spot.  I'm hoping to get it done during the pickup rehearsal tomorrow, but it depends on how soon I get back from my business trip.

Any who, thanks for reading, and come see Prelude to a Kiss!

Also keep watching for more, shorter, updates to the tech blog.

XXOO

Brian