Author Topic: I need advice. My run crew backed out. Tech starts Sunday.  (Read 4383 times)

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zayit shachor

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College production. We go into tech on Sunday (as in, two days from now) and the two guys who said they would do run crew (we only really need a crew of three - them plus the ASM) backed out today. Throwing me into a frenzy of phone calls to anyone I can think of, but the answer has been no, no, no so far.

Last semester on the show I worked on, no one could do run crew and we ended up making the actors do it. It worked pretty well, but sucked for the actors.

The scene changes in this show are very small: I think the most involved one is moving on a set of subway seats. So the advice I need is this:

Go crazy continuing to make dozens of phone calls and sending a million emails looking for people? Or, use the actors since the scene changes are really uninvolved anyway?

I'm leaning towards actors, but I'd really like to know what you all think.

birdie4113

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Re: I need advice. My run crew backed out. Tech starts Sunday.
« Reply #1 on: Mar 02, 2007, 06:00 pm »
When I was in college, we used actors all the time for run crew.  It basically came down to how many actors were sitting backstage with nothing to do.  I say put them to work.  Now if you are doing a show where the majority of actors have little backstage time, then I would try to find other people.  What show are you doing?
Bridget

zayit shachor

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Re: I need advice. My run crew backed out. Tech starts Sunday.
« Reply #2 on: Mar 02, 2007, 06:06 pm »
It's a show called A Devil Inside by David Lindsay-Abaire...some of the actors have more downtime than others. I have to take a look at the scene plot with my ASM to figure out who will be able to help when...

birdie4113

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Re: I need advice. My run crew backed out. Tech starts Sunday.
« Reply #3 on: Mar 02, 2007, 06:09 pm »
Depending on how much downtime they have, and how much you need your run crew to do, it's possible to split up the actors so that not one actor is doing too much. 
Bridget

callumsmith1234

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Re: I need advice. My run crew backed out. Tech starts Sunday.
« Reply #4 on: Mar 14, 2007, 04:02 pm »
My feelings are that it often looks BETTER to use actors for the small scene changes at least. There is little worse than getting an inexperienced team of runners who clamber about the stage and indeed backstage.

At least when you use actors, They KNOW what is going on and wont cause you any more problems backstage.

good luck

callum

zayit shachor

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Re: I need advice. My run crew backed out. Tech starts Sunday.
« Reply #5 on: Mar 14, 2007, 08:42 pm »
Thanks all - we ended up with the ASM and one very awesome volunteer being able to do most of it with some actor help - it worked out very well in the end!

 

riotous