Monday, November 15, 2010

Tech Weekend - WHITE CHRISTMAS

We survived tech weekend for WHITE CHRISTMAS. If you've never participated, it's a long - but necessary - part of the process, especially for a musical. We worked on Act II on Friday night, and I was back on Saturday morning doing some backstage work. Those with wireless microphones arrived at Noon on Saturday for balancing with Eddie Taylor (lights and sound) and the sound operators (Cole and Ryan for this show). The cast arrived at 1 p.m. and we were off and working through the whole show.

Ran into an interesting problem on Saturday - the new mid-stage traveler broke in the middle of our tech of Act One. We had purchased a new curtain and rigged the motor to work on this curtain line that's been there for years but we've rarely used. So, we were faced with a problem - how do we move forward with tech on the show when it depends upon this curtain? After 10 minutes, the guys realized it would take about 30 minutes to fix it - rather than 2-3 hours - so we jumped ahead and went through the tech of Act Two, took a 30 minute break while they fixed it and then came back and picked up Act One. We could go forward to Act Two because it uses the mid-stage curtain only twice, where as Act One depends upon it. In the end, we got all our work done and were actually done around 6 p.m. Not a bad Saturday afternoon tech!

Sunday started around Noon and we had an actor run through at 2 p.m. with just acting, singing and dancing - no props, set pieces or lighting and sound. Judith (choreographer), Bert (musical director) and I were able to make some improvements and adjustments with the actors onstage - that's our last chance. From here on out, we'll have to give notes after the show and hope that the actors remember our notes and incorporate them into the show. We then had a cast and crew dinner in the lobby - always a great bonding experience for the group as we head towards opening night - and the hair and makeup people did their meetings with the cast. We had a quick change rehearsal to prepare for the dress rehearsal on Monday, and then on Sunday night we ran the show again with full tech - lights, sound, sets and props. Tonight (Monday) we add costumes and on Tuesday we add makeup and hair.

No comments: