When Technology Fails

The light and sound systems at the local college are pretty state of the art. I mean it they should be with a one hundred thousand dollar grant. So if something goes wrong, technology fails us.

Tonight was one of those nights. James Templin was operating the light board in the second act of Glass Menagarie, in the scene between Amanda and Laura just before Amanda goes to get changed before teh Gentleman Caller and Tom arrive. I look over from my seat at the sound board to see the display monitor for the light board show the load screen. I knew in a flash what it meant.. The light board was rebooting. James had never had that happen, but I had. I quickly asked him what cue (lighting scene number) we were in, he told me (matter of fact, he told me a few cues later, but it still worked). As soon as the board finished the boot it went back to the default of no lights on at all. I quickly hit the correct buttons to load the right cue. Luckily, I had had something similar happen to me just over a hear and a half before.

Back in the summer of 06, one of the local theatre guild’s was presenting a show called “UnrineTown” (say it as ‘You’re In Town’) , and one Sunday afternoon we had bad storms where the power was reset. So here comes the board up, but unluckily for me the lights went out on the boot (for james, since power didn’t go out, the board kept all light up till last moments). I mean good thing is in the scene where it went out for me it was in a dialogue scene where everyone stood pretty still for the scene. Also my baclout (the term used for all lights being out) lasted about 60-70 seconds, whereas James’s only lasted like 10 seconds top.

As far as I know, the computer on the lightboard wither crashed for a moment and rebooted, a power surge, or just got some sort of whacky signal that made it reboot. I saw the sound board do something similar back this past November for Shenandoah. Bill Strader was operating the sound board when i looked over and the entire thing shut off and then came back. While it would have been more timely to have done that rebooting like 45 seconds later, it happened during the reprise of “Papa’s gonna make it all right”, where Jenny is singing to the baby. The actress playing Jenny has a right pretty voice, just not really loud without amplification. However, Lindsey being a trooper went on, and then the sound came back..

So yeah, no matter how advanced your stage tech systems are, they can fail you. Luckily for us, it was just a minor hiccup and no hardware was damaged.