The entire set up to our opening night last night for the west coast premiere of "The Lieutenant of Inishmore" at my college has been less than ideal to say the least. I've been constantly reminded that I'm only 18 and a Freshman as if it makes me feel any less secure in my job as a new stage manager
Well last night I received what was quite possibly one of the most appreciated compliments I've ever received while receiving one of the biggest insults of my life.
Everything was running relatively smoothly which had me nervous (I'm superstitious and if everything seems ok something will probably go wrong). Well, we were about fifteen minutes to going house to half when the board ops and I heard something strange. The unmistakeable sound of complete and utter silence from the sound system. At first we thought maybe someone had hit a fader or something was wrong with the CD. The board op checks everything out and then reloads the CD. Maybe it's just that track, we don't usually get to it, so he goes back to the beginning of the CD. Still nothing. Then suddenly, a clicking sound followed by an unmistakeable POP.
At this point I think I know what is wrong and call the Sound Designer and Lighting/Sound Professor. The designer can't make it in to swap out what we believe is a blown amp. The professor can't be reached. At this point the Director, Production Manager, and Front of House have all come/radioed in to see what the hold up is. It's five to curtain, why is there still no sound?
We manage to get the Master Electrician, who often does the sound design but he won't make it before intermission. The board op runs slowly through the instructions given over the phone on how to trouble shoot the system. Master Electrician thinks it's overheating, so we put a fan in front of it and hold the house five more minutes.
By this time I've already told the Production Manager backstage and the booth have given their unyielding support if we still want to run sans sound. The actors are waiting in the green room patiently and are prepared to go on without sound. Front of house is in full support of my plan to just use a boom box to play the absolutely necessary sound cues and just cut some of the scene shift music cues.An audience member who happened to be a friend of the company and a sound technician at another venue has looked at the system and can't fix it. Then I realize something, no one has checked deck two to see if it works. I check it with the board op, it works. The audience applauds and I realize the call light is flashing.
I find out from one of the ASMs that the director has been back stage telling the cast we can't run the show without sound and is trying to convince them to change out of costume to go home. They're refusing. I tell the ASM to run back to the green room and tell them the sound will be fine and the show will indeed go on. I tried to ignore the fact that the director was so unwilling to go on despite all the work we'd put into remedying the situation (hell we only started fifteen minutes late!) We have one small glitch in the sound system the remainder of the night, one that the audience doesn't seem to notice.
After the show the Production Manager pulls me aside and tells me he's impressed with how calm I remained through out the entire episode despite the director freaking out. He continues on to commend me on trying to fix the problem before he and front of house had even realized something was wrong and making a decision in a tim efficient manner. Needless to say I'm beaming.
Enter the director. "I can't believe that happened. I didn't think you could handle it. To be honest I'm shocked at your maturity, I didn't think someone so young or new to this would be capable of handling this kind of issue." He leaves me standing there completely reeling inside from how rude he was. No thank you, no I'm so relieved we were able to continue on. This is par for the course for him but I still can't believe he felt it necessary to remind me that he's less than enthused that the Technical Director asked me to Stage Manage this show.
The worst part of it all is he asked me during a production meeting if I've ever had to handle a crisis back stage. To which I relayed an explanation of how we quite literally had a breaker panel burst into an flames and had to evacuate the audience. We were able to get everything under control and the show continued on, just with out house lights. That was when I was still in high school.
I mean come on this is LIVE THEATRE things happen sometimes THE SHOW JUST HAS TO GO ON ANYWAY. I'm just shocked he thought I would have panicked and been unable to get the show started. I mean really?
