Hi all, I know I've been absent for a while, but now I'm back!
I'm getting ready to open a production of Chicago a week from Friday. We have two more rehearsals, dry tech on Saturday, and cue to cue plus a run on Sunday. I will admit I am slightly nervous about tech for this show because I have seen zero info about light cues so far and I get the feeling that there will be A LOT of them.
But my question is actually about sound. For those who know the show, Chicago has a lot of "announcement" type things usually done by an Emcee. Originally our Emcee was going to be the band director, as the band is onstage, so the announcements would be read live by the band director. However, this was nixed a few days ago by our director because a) the band director is not comfortable with memorizing lines and he has enough going on and b) he will be missing two performances anyway and we'll have a guest conductor.
So the new plan is to record these announcements and play them as sound cues. However, currently the sound guy is lobbying to just play the announcements from a CD at his position. Now, in this theatre I'm in the booth with my light board op. We typically don't get a sound board op for sound cues, I just play all sound cues using a computer in the booth. The live sound guy is located in the house and he is typically not on headset. In an emergency I can reach him via one of my spot ops (one of the spot towers is directly over the live sound position) but it's not optimal. EVERYONE (sound guy, director, assistant director) seems to think that sound guy playing the cues from a CD at his position will make things easier for me. I don't know yet, but I fear that it won't because then I will be unable to coordinate the light cues with these announcements. If there were only one or two of them, it might work, but there are A LOT of them and they pretty much open almost every musical number in the show. Now, having me run them would add a lot to what I've got going on (again, already nervous about lights) but I'm willing and able to do it if it will make the performance better.
Sound guy isn't planning on miking actors until Tue of tech week, so now I'm concerned about me learning light cues on Sun, calling only light cues Sun and Mon, and then suddenly having him try to run sound cues Tue and all of us going "huh, this isn't working" and then I have ONE NIGHT on Wed to call both sound and light cues before we get our first preview audience on Thursday. I don't want to come across as a controlling diva and I also don't want to give the sound guy the impression that I think he's incompetent or anything like that. I've worked with him before and he's by far the best sound guy I've worked with (this is community theatre, but still). I am just getting nervous about trying to add sound at the last minute and everyone going "oh wait, this won't work" and then I have to change all the cues the night before the first preview.
Thoughts? Advice?
Thanks,
Beth