Yes, the title of this blog is a spoof of the classic play, “Death of a Salesman”.

So, why call it this? well I have been almost killing myself this week. I get tot he local stage on Saturday and help a little with set construction, as we are entering tech week. Tech week is the last week before a show opens where you start adding the technical stuff like lights and sound to the play so the cast can get used to it. Then Sunday, since we are using the local college’s stage because the new company, Encore Theatrical Company, is  still trying to earn capitol to either buy a building or build a new one.

Ok,  Sunday at three pm the local college’s “community band” decided to have their concert. That’s all fine and dandy, but Encore decided to move up the production of Annie so that we would not be interfering with the original scheduled band performance.  Well, apparantly he college moved up the band’s performance too.. Darn college.. Ok, so after the band was done, did they stay and help clear their crap from the stage? Ha! No.. So the sound director, , and the director of the show moved all the chairs, stands, and percussion equipment back tot he band room, and then we started setting the stage for the first real tech rehearsal. Ok, near the end of the rehersal our lighting designer, Travis got there. So at the end of the rehersal Travis and I starting cutting gels for the lights. Side note.. Gels are teh colored pieces of plastic like paper that change the color of the lights on the stage.

Monday, we have tech rehersal. That night Travis, director Micah-Shane, and I stay and start to set the light cues for the show. We stayed till about 3:30 am setting all the levels and recording them into the computer controlled light board. Now here comes the rub. I need to be up at 6 am to start getting ready for Tuesday’s performance of Suessical: The Musical that we are touring some of the Elementary schools with. Besides, I need to take the sound equipment that we borrowed from the college to the school and set the sound system up that morning, which takes about an hour to do. After we end the show, tear down the sound system and the backdrop for th set, and load it into my van, we get a pizza lunch fromt eh school we just performed at. It helps when one of th teachers is the mother of one of the actresses, and who is also in our “mainstage show” of Annie. So at around noon, we head back to the college, unload, and I start the rest of my Tuesday with about 1.5 hours of sleep. So I leave the college and go work and collect the money from the vending machines I work. After i’m done with that, I got home with an hour before I needed to be back at the college for rehersal that night.

Now comesto yesterday, Wednesday. I go to  Knoxville TN that day, which is about an hour from Morristown. I get back around 1 pm, and go tot he college. In there, I have to adjust some of the lighting equipment to take care of “dark spots” and to make sure we can get the baton of one of our flies down for a drop. side note, the fly system is the way of lowering a drop, set pieces, or curtain into place and then raising them back up. Jonathan, one of the actors who I have the upmiost respect  for and I start working on various things to get them done, and some we are goign to work on and end up not because it would be too much money cost for the theatre to get them done. After the rehersal, I end up getting home at around midnight.

Today, I am going back at some point and trying to help get some more stuff done. We still got to work on the catwalk lights, which are the lights that are hanging from a catwalk over the audience. We need to “open” some of them up so that they hit more upstage (toward the back of the stage) to eliminate some more dark spots. We also need to get done with hanging one of our final drops and we also need to paint some onthe stage. Not to mention replace the bulb on one of the “follow spots” that is weak. I say “Follow spot” wiotht he quyotation marks because all these spots are are standard Ellipsodial Reflector Spotlights (Leeko) that are modified with a big handle that allows them to be moved as a spotlight. Who know what else needs to be done before we open n Friday.

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.