Author Topic: Practical Rant  (Read 2883 times)

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Scott (formerly Digga)

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Practical Rant
« on: Mar 30, 2012, 08:48 pm »
I love when a practical is such a big part of the lighting and works without a problem through a week of previews and all through triple check and preshow of Press Opening only to die after that due to a cabling issue.  And of course it's on stage and there are no intermissions so there's no way to fix it.

Amie

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Re: Practical Rant
« Reply #1 on: Mar 31, 2012, 11:19 am »
Is this like the Murphy's Law of Theater? Go figure...

So aggravating.  And slightly terrifying to me... the show I am currently in rehearsals for has no less than 6 practicals on the stage that are critical to each "location." 


Yikes.
~ Amie ~

“This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once: scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.”

Scott (formerly Digga)

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Re: Practical Rant
« Reply #2 on: Mar 31, 2012, 12:54 pm »
What was worse was that the problem turned out to be that the lamp itself had just slowly started unscrewing from the base over the course of a week of movement and no one thought to check to make sure it was secure.  Obviously we will now. 

The good was that our LD and I had discussed the possibility of the lamp going out in the middle of a show for whatever reason and he had built to Submasters into the board so that once we realized it wasn't going to work, I had the board op ready with the Subs for the 2 cues where it was essential. 

Amie

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Re: Practical Rant
« Reply #3 on: Mar 31, 2012, 02:10 pm »
Lesson learned and great forethought!
~ Amie ~

“This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once: scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.”

maximillionx

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Re: Practical Rant
« Reply #4 on: Mar 31, 2012, 06:19 pm »
the show I am currently in rehearsals for has no less than 6 practicals on the stage that are critical to each "location." 


Yikes.

Ditto! I loved having to drill that there was no wiggle room for missed cues with those practicals. /sarcasm

We did a show last year that had a practical blow mid-scene. So, because of the nature of our theatre setup at the time, I hit the cue for the scene change, ran down, changed the lamp, ran off, and hit the cue to start the next scene. Really gets the heart pumping!

DeeCap

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Re: Practical Rant
« Reply #5 on: Apr 03, 2012, 12:48 pm »
It could have been worse; the practical could have burst into flames.

Happened to me on the final show. No one was hurt, but the theatre smelled like burnt hair for the rest of the performance.