Messages

1291

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / warnings verses stanbys . . another poll

« on: Mar 27, 2005, 03:05 pm »

on the one hand, you can call "warn sound B, warn main, SB lights 3-7" but then you have to call the description in front of each GO which is great as long as everyone understands where they fall - because on the other hand I once had a sound guy not paying attention and he went on the lights GO

recently I had a back-to-back L+S then a breath later an onstage Doorbell Q and called it as "SB L&S followed by Doorbell, Go, Go" but of course, we discussed this all ahead of time.  When I had a new guy on the deck, I altered it as "SB L&S followed by doorbell, L&S go, go" and that also worked.

1292

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / warnings verses stanbys . . another poll

« on: Mar 24, 2005, 02:11 pm »

When I started out the norm was "warning/standby/go" but the common wisdom now is "standy/go". Warnings are only useful where there is manual set-up (ties to a time when the board op had to manually lay in the next cue before the standby, where they put hands on the board itself). So I vote w Vernon - where there is a frame change (if I am calling spots, something not always done) or Sound has a massive set-up after a long wait between cues, I will call a warning. I also have had board ops that went to sleep between distant cues, and used warnings to wake them up.

1293

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Paper Tech

« on: Mar 01, 2005, 01:01 pm »

I have paper tech'd at all kinds of union houses - LORT, HAT, SPT, TYA, URTA, etc - and I never came from nor dealt w folks out of university (well, except my one URTA experience) - no it isn't universal, but it had been more than 50% of the time for me - and I do a lot in the smaller houses out in the regions - tho I will say that Sacramento Theater Co didn't do one....

cuz it saves them time and money if the director and designers know what they each expect before we get to dry tech.  (And yes, it's one more non OT piece of the day the SM includes in our oh-so-huge bump - but it makes dry and wet techs so much easier.)

1294

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Runsheets

« on: Feb 27, 2005, 12:38 pm »

And in some spaces I have been able to hand out an initial run sheet w lots of blank space and say "hey, make me a copy of what the last version of this is for the archives"

Most of the time my ASM and crew get used to their own crib notes and prefer them - I track changes for myself, on my own, as well, but new sparkiling clean copies can usually wait til after opening (if at all), unless there is something so huge and different we can no longer read - or there's no more room for - our handwritten scribbles.

1295

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Leaving the booth??!!?! (part 1)

« on: Feb 22, 2005, 05:33 pm »

In an ideal world maybe, but it can't be a cardinal sin because reality means there are times when leaving the booth is the only option to get things done - I won't do it if I am running a show alone, but in an emergency have deputized board ops to keep an eye on the stage while I handled some life-and-death issue. It helps when you can plan - for example, the birthday party scene in Streetcar is LONG-ass and oh so quiet - and even if they skip a page it's 15 minutes - which is plenty of time to do something simple like pee (in a tiny theater where using the single loo during intermission is impossible) or solve a costume/set/prop /actor crisis. Mind you, this is only for smaller houses or where the booth is relatively accessible to backstage. When the booth is miles away or backstage is one of those "over the river and thru the woods" kinds, I pray to have assts who keeps their headsets on (and wireless sets backstage, for that matter).

1296

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Paper Tech

« on: Feb 19, 2005, 12:21 am »

Me too - my experience is that a paper tech is just the director and me + the LD and when possible the SD - dry tech is all the maneuvering, setting light and sound cues and levels, running set shifts etc but without the actors (and I always ask my onstage bodies to wear colors in the costume palate for the LD's sake) and then finally there is the wet tech, which is with actors. That's the language I learned, but sometimes folks look at me funny when I say dry tech/wet tech, and I have had two places where they call their first tech day (which includes all the pieces including actors) the dry tech.

1297

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Paper Tech

« on: Feb 15, 2005, 02:32 pm »

I am a huge fan of paper techs. I usually make an initial run myself, asking myself where I think cues belong, since sometimes the other dept heads have overlooked things or forgotten to add in items from rehearsal notes. Keeping in mind that nothing is locked in stone, I use my beloved post-it flags and color code lights, sound, FX (which include manual sound cues like doorbells and phones, that I usually end up doing), rail cues when they exist, gags, etc - and then I listen as we meet and when we get to places I have notes they don't, I ask.

And the huge chunk of time saved in tech is enormous in so many ways - between the paper and the dry tech, my LD can do light-overs, my sound guy can start plotting levels and so forth - so when we get to 10-out-of-12s we have eliminated a whole mess 'o unnecessary time -

1298

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / New Director

« on: Feb 03, 2005, 12:37 pm »

Getting a director out of the booth - now there's a trick!

I have had directors who have notes up to and including closing show, going backstage and telling the actors things before I could get back there (booth being way far from the backstage). I have had directors who go into the dressing rooms all the way to the 5 call and after a show had to forcibly remove one so the girls could get out of costume and change into their regular clothes. It's a touchy situation - on one show, the cast loved the director and loved having him there, in the mix, down to the wire and afterward, so getting him to leave the actors alone was delicate and difficult, and not always successful. On another, the director was a hyphenate - as in, writer-producer-actor-director and I had to find tasks to keep him away from the actors at intermission and post show while they changed.  

One theater brought the director back in to work w the u/s and replacements because they didn't understand that this was part of a SM's gig (incidentally, a part I love) - and had never had an SM who knew that or was capable. Fortunately, the director knew the drill and that I could do this, and he was gracious abt my presence and skills - we worked it out that I gave our replacement the blocking (she didn't know how to do her own....!!!) and he did 2 rehearsals with her, and I did the rest so there would be no question that when I gave her notes after shows,  they were valid.

Let's just say it can be a creative challenge....

1299

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Birthday cakes

« on: Jan 24, 2005, 12:40 pm »

With larger casts, we were always able to get a birthday fund for cakes and cards (which, I might add, are much cheaper and can easily be passed around backstage). In smaller casts, the company always paid for it, and whether we got a cake for the month or individual ones depended on the # of bdays and the length of the run. Of course, I always got birthdays in my emergency info sheet, so I had the master calendar by the first week of reh and could let the office know so they could decide if they wanted to handle it - always gave them first refusal cuz hey, if they want to pay for it, I am happy to let them!

1300

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / how do you get their attention?

« on: Jan 14, 2005, 12:23 pm »

oh yeah of course - I always announce it as a 5 or a 10 and say "it is now x  x o'clock and we are back at y" - but there are rarely clocks around in so many theaters, and I don't  trust anyone's watch but my own.

But it's easy for actors and director to get distracted and eat that whole time gabbing or eating or whatever - and they lose track of time so easily -

1301

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / how do you get their attention?

« on: Jan 12, 2005, 11:03 pm »

Knock wood, I've never had trouble w that - depending on how big the cast and theater (and how much I am trying to catch up on during the break) either I or my assistant walk around to announce that we are at 1 or 2 minutes and then (1 or  2 minutes later) that we're back. As in "and we're back". This gives folks that moment to close things up and/or hit the loo, and for me to gather the director or choreo or whomever and get them back inside the theater, and then everyone is back, quiet and ready in time to start. Maybe it's just luck, but I've done this for years now and, well, so far, it has worked nicely.

1302

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Blocking notation help, anyone?

« on: Jan 08, 2005, 01:05 am »

That sounds very cool - do you have info on it, such as manufacturer and product code (Avery # xxx or whatever)? SMs alone could keep that product on the shelves (kinda like, all the SMs I know have the same stopwatch, cuz it doesn't beep or make any other noise when in use...)

1303

SMNetwork Archives / on the other end of the headset spectrum

« on: Dec 30, 2004, 05:38 pm »

when using walkie talkies always use subcodes to avoid picking up random transmissions

ok - HOW -

1304

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Shakespeare and scripts

« on: Dec 25, 2004, 06:27 pm »

Many, but not all, great plays are posted in their entirety, and all you have to do is google them.

1305

SMNetwork Archives / Calendar programs on PC's

« on: Dec 18, 2004, 04:16 pm »

I just build calendars in excel or word (depending on the computer savvy of my department heads) - and then adjust as we go - takes a few minutes to set up but once done, you can edit at will.