Author Topic: Blind in the Booth  (Read 4434 times)

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PSMKay

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Blind in the Booth
« on: Sep 25, 2007, 08:59 am »

So, I have this new headset.  It's a really nifty lightweight
stick-it-behind-your-ear headset.  I am the heppest of hep cats, the most
chic geek in the clique, the toniest SM in the neighborhood.  (You can get
one for yourself at www.toolsforstagecraft.com.) 
It clips to my glasses.  I also have a rail cue from the booth in this
show--not just calling the cue, mind you, but actually physically unwinding the
tie-line that zooms from the stage back to my booth so I can fly in a practical
that hovers at the downstage edge of the apron.  Fun.


I'm unwrapping the tie line.  I'm flying in the very lightweight
practical, letting it go relatively fast so that the weight of the thing pulls
it smoothly past that little notch where the zip cord always gets hung up on the
pulley.  My headset microphone is on, as I'm also calling sound, rail, and
light cues.  Zip cord gets caught on glasses.  Glasses go flying to
the floor, taking headset along.  I quickly finish flying in the practical,
and then start groping about.  Find the headset and quickly get back on,
apologizing to everyone for the tremendous crash they just heard in their
ears.  Sorry, sorry, sorry.  Have five visual light cues coming up,
wherein I have to see an actor cross a spike mark in order to light them in a
pin-special.  Grope around briefly on the floor before the scene shift
ends.  Can't find the glasses.  I'm two stories up in the air and 30
rows back from the stage.  I am near sighted.  I can't even see my
script.  I can't find my glasses anywhere.  I run the first five
minute cue sequence blind.  Doing alright, but really can't see those
visual cue spikes and they crop up through the entire play.  Call a few
sound cues blind while I grope around again.  Wire sliver in the finger,
but no glasses.  I never knew exactly how much crud was on the floor of the
booth until today.


Finally give up and call the rest of the one act blind--another full 20
minutes of cues, exclusively visual.  Can't see the actors at all--I'm
going off of the sound of their feet on the stage.  My sound op, who sits
below me in the back of the house, tells me when they're approaching their spike
marks.  A tag team effort.


At intermission, my sound op walks up to me.  I had already spent a good
five minutes scrounging around on the booth floor, and have notified all and
sundry that we cannot start Act II until I can see.  He hands me my
glasses.  Apparently, when the tie-line knocked them off, the headset on
its cable fell to the floor of the booth, but the specs went flying out the
window to land on the floor of the back row in the house, a full story below me,
and right next to him.  The first thing that runs through my head is,
"I'll never live this one down."  Then I think, "Wow,
I got some good air on that--if only it had been intentional."  And
then I realize that if the tie line had been about three inches closer to me,
I'd have yanked myself out of the booth window instead of just the
glasses.  I'm getting a chain for the glasses tomorrow.  Now if only
my Master Elec would stop humming "She Came in Through the Bathroom
Window" every time he sees me...