Author Topic: What part of "don't touch that" do you not understand?  (Read 3998 times)

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PSMKay

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(submitted
by KC)


I thought that the last one I sent in was bad, but I'm almost certain that this one takes the cake for my bad experiences.  I was stage managing a show for the theater that I currently work for, a theater that employs only myself and the Managing Artistic Director, everyone else is here on a volunteer basis.  Well, our sound op, a volunteer with a small IQ and short attention span, is
teetering on the edge of her stool in the booth, something that should also be mentioned is that the sound board is located in a closed booth...huge mistake as everyone knows, but no one listens to me, the same booth where the light board is located and where I am also perched on top of a stool running lights and calling cues. 


 Well, as she is teetering on her stool, she is pulling on the wires of the intercom system, something that has been a problem before, she has a tendency to pull them out of the wall knocking out the whole system and often damaging the adapters and connections.  So, I calmly remind her multiple times to be
careful.  She almost falls and yanks something out because the monitor system, our only source of knowing what's going on, dies and apparently the entire sound system did the same.  On top of that, it is in the middle of sound QA, so the audience is also well aware of the fact that something is wrong.  I have a whole series of Qs coming up that are solely based on my ability to hear the actors.  So, I have to fix this situation quickly. 


 Well, the sound op is yelping because she knows she messed up something.  Now, I can sort of hear if she would just shut up, but she is so loud that members of the audience are beginning to turn around and look at the booth.  I threw off my headset, covered her mouth and told her if she didn't get quiet soon I would throw her out of the booth and run the show myself.  She's panicking and I've missed a light Q so, I setup to get to the next correct Q and begin to look for the cause of the problem while calling cues from her headset and occasionally reaching over to hit a light
Q, by this point I had opened up the booth windows and stuck the sound op in the lobby.  After a great deal of searching through a bundle of wires and a series of outlets see that the main power cord, which
kind of went off behind a large object, didn't appear to be plugged in anywhere.  I followed the cord through the booth, not missing a single Q but sound for obvious reasons, and I found that the thing had been ripped out of the wall and damaged the extension cord, so I sent the op to the mechanical room for another cord and has us back online before we missed a 5th sound Q.  After the show, I told the MA Director that I willl never work with that volunteer in the booth again.  This was the third time she had pulled something out.