Topics

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Tools of the Trade / Things that went wrong with your technical equipment?

« on: Jul 03, 2008, 11:05 am »

Anyone had to use two sets of headsets to run a show? Or had to use cell phones? What about the computer in charge of the motion lights deciding to crash and having to restart? Or the sound system decides to have a coffee break just as you call standby?

I've dealt with all of these... Luckily for the sound system it was operational by the cue.  Unluckily we momentarily forgot that when the computer comes on the motion lights get reset, they tend to do this whole move-on-their-own thing.  Cell phones we've used as back up for head sets with attitudes(set to vibrate of course).  And after one show where we had to change the battery of one of our new wireless headsets more then once, we opted to run the old reliable comset to my ASM so that we had a reliable source of communication.

Any stories of equipment going wrong during the show? What did you do to fix it/prevent it in the future?  Based on your experiences what is the one thing you insist on having?  I'll now be ensuring I have everyone's cell phone number and that they have it on vibrate Just in case, especially if there's only one headset system in the house.  My communication is Way too precious to loose contact with anyone.

2

Students and Novice Stage Managers / How to deal with problem Actor's/Audience members

« on: Jul 02, 2008, 12:33 pm »

How do you deal with Problem actors or audience members?

My first show I SM'd I ended up with both.  The show was "Servant of Two Masters" and the director was allowing a fair bit of improv to happen within the show.  Mostly the improv was being done by the main character Truffaldino, but occasionally when actors forgot their lines they'd do a bit of improv to get back on cue.
>On a sidenote on SMing... we were hitting a Massive time crunch til opening night, and I had to make the decision that I couldn't get the show completly on book.  I opted instead to make sure that they were as on book as possible, that the lines were said, and I only corrected if they went completely off book or if what they had said didn't get the idea of the line across.<
One of the actors had been fighting to make his character funny, and unfortunatly that's not what his character is, nor does he as an actor have the timing of a comedian.  Opening night he asked if it would be ok if he added a line when he first came onstage.  The director had him doing something similar anyway that wasn't part of the script, so I allowed it on the condition that if it didnt work within the context of the play he wouldn't do it again.  It of course didn't work, I told him it didn't, and he continued to try to do it every night until suppisdly another actor said something to him that threw him off and made him stick on book for the rest of the show.  I had talked to him a couple of times about not doing this added bit, but he never seemed to listen... How do you deal with problem actors that don't listen to Stage Management?

Also Audience members that disrupt the play or other audience members... What do you do with them? I've had audience members familiar with the crew and have yelled at us either about something that wasn't right with how the stage was set up or that they didn't like the song being played as preshow and to change it.  In every case it's been as the audience is coming in and I've yet to see or hear them do the acts themselves, but I informed all my crew that if the person did it again to let me know and I'd remove them from the audience.  Do you think this is appropriate? or Should it be you do it once and you're out?