Author Topic: Silly things done when we're not at our best  (Read 24991 times)

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KMC

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Re: Silly things done when we're not at our best
« Reply #15 on: Mar 27, 2014, 03:41 pm »
I told the audience of a thousand or so that we were at five minutes.

And I bet there was still 50+ late seating...
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NomieRae

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Re: Silly things done when we're not at our best
« Reply #16 on: Jan 31, 2015, 11:13 pm »
A theater I worked at for three shows last season has god mic and page mic set up at SM station in the booth. Luckily I never announced anything over the god mic that I didn't need to....

But the button on the page mic faced away from me and there were two instances where I didn't click it back off. One was me talking about my plans for day off (innocuous) but then ASM asked me via headset if I was still talking to the actors, cause they couldn't really tell...

Second time? Alone in the booth and belched. Loud. Holy embarassing batman. Luckily the cast thought it was hilarious.
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Lizzie

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Re: Silly things done when we're not at our best
« Reply #17 on: Feb 01, 2015, 07:39 am »
Talking of page mic embarassment, on the panto I did this Christmas, the CSM took great delight in trying to make me giggle when I was calling Beginners. Disclaimer : we were at least 25 shows into a 40+ show run, the cast knew their calls, it was by no means every performance, and I always managed to do the full call. It just sometimes took 2 or 3 attempts  :) Luckily cast and crew all thought it was hilarious.

workinhard853

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Re: Silly things done when we're not at our best
« Reply #18 on: Apr 19, 2015, 09:02 pm »
I have a mild form of dyslexia, usually only with numbers or large words, that really acts up when I'm tired. My crew and I have worked together for at least 4 shows now and they've come to realize I'm getting tired when I call Lights 74 instead of 47 or when I am reading them a note from our director and I say we need to move the 'Pippomotomus' entrance to the second wing instead of the Hippopotamus.

KayEli

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Re: Silly things done when we're not at our best
« Reply #19 on: Apr 20, 2015, 09:35 pm »
I recently closed my first mainstage show of my college career. On opening night I was very excited and nervous. When I am excited about something I become about 5 times louder than I normally am. I thought I called a great show until my director pulled me aside and told me that she could hear me from the second row.

ambrosialx

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Re: Silly things done when we're not at our best
« Reply #20 on: Apr 21, 2015, 10:38 am »
So my rehearsal studio is a pretty informal place, we like to joke a bit and as anyone who SMs for ballet knows sometimes you just make up names for movements or lifts so that you can easily identify them in blocking notes. Well my director loves them and thinks their funny so spurred on by the idea that wow people think I'm funny I should open my mouth more when a new young dancer wasn't getting the concept of Phantom of the Opera (really who doesn't know the story of phantom?) so I blurt out "basically it's like Friend-zoned the opera" To which 90% of the room cocked their heads in confusion while the one other native english speaker tried desperately to hold back laughter.
  I should have left it there but instead I proceeded to try to explain the concept of friendzone-ing and how it applies to Phantom of the Opera to a room containing ESL dancers and my Ukrainian Artistic Director.

That happened and my American dancer will NEVER let me live it down.
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LizzG

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Re: Silly things done when we're not at our best
« Reply #21 on: Apr 22, 2015, 01:53 am »
I accidentally sent out the show report to the actors' email group, instead of their call report. I didn't notice this until the next day before the show when one of the Actors that had added some pauses into his dialogue mentioned to me he would try to "not get lost" in the scene as I had stated in the report.

Doh!


I've done this a lot . . . but it's a good reminder to make sure what you put in a performance report or rehearsal report doesn't say anything you wouldn't or haven't set to the actor's face . . . since when we send out things to emails - who knows where it will end up . . .

This always seems to happen on a day when there's a lot of performance notes too!  I've certainly done this a few times.

SMMeade

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Re: Silly things done when we're not at our best
« Reply #22 on: Apr 24, 2015, 08:45 pm »
I recently closed my first mainstage show of my college career. On opening night I was very excited and nervous. When I am excited about something I become about 5 times louder than I normally am. I thought I called a great show until my director pulled me aside and told me that she could hear me from the second row.

I did a show where I was calling on-stage (long story) and my greatest fear, even though I was near the back was that the audience would be able to hear me throughout.

Dart

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Re: Silly things done when we're not at our best
« Reply #23 on: May 01, 2015, 12:00 am »
I told the audience of a thousand or so that we were at five minutes.

And I bet there was still 50+ late seating...
We had a series of mystery groups use the theatre this week between our shows on Sunday afternoon and this Thursday morning. I wasn't called in for any of them, which is rare. This morning everything went as normal, and it wasn't until an actor got off stage at the end of the second scene (and she told my ASM) that anyone told me the god mic was live. And even then, my ASM understood that my comm was going over mains, not everything I was saying, so I stayed off comm while my sound OP and I tried to find the problem but I was very much talking to my surtitle OP through the whole thing. D'oh!

We never use the god mic to begin with and it's usually not even patched into the board so I didn't think to test it, but that's going on my pre-show from now on!

MitchieSM

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Re: Silly things done when we're not at our best
« Reply #24 on: May 01, 2015, 08:19 pm »
I told the audience of a thousand or so that we were at five minutes.

We had a series of mystery groups use the theatre this week between our shows on Sunday afternoon and this Thursday morning. I wasn't called in for any of them, which is rare. This morning everything went as normal, and it wasn't until an actor got off stage at the end of the second scene (and she told my ASM) that anyone told me the god mic was live. And even then, my ASM understood that my comm was going over mains, not everything I was saying, so I stayed off comm while my sound OP and I tried to find the problem but I was very much talking to my surtitle OP through the whole thing. D'oh!

We never use the god mic to begin with and it's usually not even patched into the board so I didn't think to test it, but that's going on my pre-show from now on!

Last week, while calling a one-man show (Buyer & Cellar), every com channel started broadcasting into the house, beginning when I called 10 Mins to End of Show and 2 standbys. I couldn't tell, because I get stage feed piped into my booth, and I hear myself in my headset anyways... My sound op came on and told me "you're live" before he heard himself and immediately went silent. My ASM turned her wireless pack on, heard the sound go live, and immediately stopped. My actor stopped too.

I thought he had dropped a line, so I was silent in the booth, crossing my fingers that he could pick it back up. He did, and we continued on. I started talking again to give the cues, and he paused. After what seemed like 5 years over the course of 10 seconds, he looked up at the booth and said, in his Barbra Streisand character, "Michelle, Honey? I think you're on the wrong channel. But it's ok. I forgive you." Total mortification followed when the audience applauded. To get through the rest of the show, I had my ASM call me so that she could relay projection cues to the operator backstage, while I talked to the LBO sitting next to me, and used the cue light only for the sound board op.

Turns out there is a "link all" button on the front of our com box, which got hit accidentally. Normally, it allows all the channels to talk to one another. But when you run your God Mic into the com, it allows for everything to be broadcast.

Guess who's always making sure that button is never depressed again?! This girl!!

jmenass

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Re: Silly things done when we're not at our best
« Reply #25 on: May 04, 2015, 09:21 pm »
My first summer at summer stock as a SM intern, I was given a semi-staged reading to stage manage with a pretty decent named TV actor from the area and for a 19 year old it was the most amazing thing ever.  The reading had a few sound cues so an older friend from my college who was the A2 was running the board and I ahd a whopping 10 cues to call.  During the first of two shows I go to call a cue and forget the word "go". Not sure how, but it totally left my vocabulary so I'm sitting next to her going "Sound.... now.Do IT.GO" She just stared at me and pressed the go button and then laughed hysterically at me for the next few minutes and told everyone as soon as the show was over.

Samazon

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Re: Silly things done when we're not at our best
« Reply #26 on: May 19, 2015, 12:28 am »
I accidentally sent out the show report to the actors' email group, instead of their call report. I didn't notice this until the next day before the show when one of the Actors that had added some pauses into his dialogue mentioned to me he would try to "not get lost" in the scene as I had stated in the report.

Doh!


I've done this a lot . . . but it's a good reminder to make sure what you put in a performance report or rehearsal report doesn't say anything you wouldn't or haven't set to the actor's face . . . since when we send out things to emails - who knows where it will end up . . .

Believe it or not, I've had a supervisor think that I included the actors on the distribution of the show notes, perhaps as a way to communicate notes (I normally just give notes in person). The scary thing is that they wanted me to include that a particular actor broke a backstage rule in there so that the actor would be shamed in a way that the entire company could see. That is definitely not what happened.
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kdshort1

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Re: Silly things done when we're not at our best
« Reply #27 on: Jul 07, 2015, 07:46 pm »
My claim to fame in my university during my first couple of shows was sending the rehearsal report without attaching the rehearsal report to the e-mail.  Largely why I copy and paste into the body of the e-mail now.


TarytheA

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Re: Silly things done when we're not at our best
« Reply #28 on: Sep 14, 2018, 09:11 am »
Oh I've done several things over the years! A couple that come to mind:

I took over the run of a show at a large theatre and wanted to do everything correctly and make a good impression, of course. I got the list of everyone who needed to be copied on the weekly schedule, and made a draft of the email ahead of time so I could send it out quickly when the time came. I put everyone's email addresses into the bcc line, just to be on the safe side of courteous. When the day came, I was sick with a sore throat and awake at 4am - thinking that was a great time to get some work done since I was awake anyway, I finished the email and got ready to send it. I copied and then pasted everyone's email addresses INTO THE SUBJECT LINE and hit send. Since I had ACTUALLY put them in the bcc line previously, which I forgot I had done, it actually sent. I was wholly mortified. Not only were all the email addresses NOT kept private (which I wasn't sure was necessary but doing to be safe), I looked completely idiotic. Luckily the few who did respond to my apology were gracious about it and if anyone truly thought I was dumb, they didn't say anything. :) Never, ever send emails at 4am. :o

Recently, I SM'd a dance showcase. One of the cues was supposed to anticipate when the dancers threw open some curtains, but since I couldn't see them, we settled on a cue word in the sound clip "that's a conversation that NObody wants to have." The cue was "have" because they were going to throw open the curtains immediately after. One performance they threw open the curtain a few words early. I asked the choreographer about it afterward, and he told me that they had changed their cue word. My new cue was "NObody." (Don't you love when choreography changes but nobody thinks to tell the SM?) And it was a cue that, in tech, the director of the showcase had made a big deal about. So the next night I listened very carefully for the word "NObody" but I was so tense and focused on my cue word that I said, "Lights 74..." and then awkwardly yelled, "NO!" instead of GO. The cue was perfect to the audience because the board op took it but she laughed and laughed at me.  ;D
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loebtmc

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Re: Silly things done when we're not at our best
« Reply #29 on: Sep 15, 2018, 12:38 am »
(I always enjoy when my cue times w the word "go in the script..." tho it always takes a moment for board ops to hear me as opposed to the actor)

 

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