Messages

31

Students and Novice Stage Managers / Re: Seeking show suggestions

« on: Jan 17, 2012, 09:27 pm »

Cabaret?  I did it with a cast of fifteen (Sally, the Emcee, Cliff, Schneider, Schultz, Max/Officer, Ernst, Kost, four Kit Kat girls and three Kit Kat boys) on a completely static set, the MD re-orchestrated down to a 4-piece band (piano, bass, drums, reeds who doubled flute, clarinet, alto sax) and it was amazing.  The actor playing Max was actually the piano player, which we did because we could, and because it worked well with the director's vision for the show.  We kept it incredibly minimal, with a hexagonal platform (with steps on four sides, and the band underneath) and six hexagonal stools and a big red sheet which served a lot of purposes, and that was all the set elements, plus hand props.  It was the easiest musical tech week I have ever done!

32

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Beauty and The Beast Transformation Scene

« on: Nov 26, 2011, 02:48 am »

I would also see if you can do CO2 (Dry Ice) It will work like smoke from a smoke machine but will dissipate quickly and should not set any alarms off since it does not have the same hang time in the air as smoke.

Sorry, CO2 does not work like smoke from a smoke machine.  It's heavier than air so it will roll along the ground. not float around in the air.  And as to whether it will set smoke alarms off, well, mostly they tend to be in the roof, so that is probably correct (the gas won't get to the detectors) but there's no guarantee.  And it can cause problems if you have an orchestra in the pit, because it'll roll off the front of the stage and drop into the pit, meaning you run the risk of the musicians a) not being able to see their music, or b) and this is worse, if you have enough CO2 it can cause breathing problems, if they can't get above it to breathe air.

33

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: God of Carnage - helpful hints

« on: Nov 24, 2011, 08:34 pm »

We used a whoopie cushion (of all things!) attached to one of those rubber hoses a bit like the ones you find on bunsen burners in high school chemistry labs.  I seem to remember there being a convenient point where the actress is offstage not too long before the vomiting, and we strapped it (carefully!) to her then, with the cushion, filled with fluid, under her arm, and the top of the tube just in the neck of her costume.  At the appropriate moment, she'd squeeze the cushion against her body with her arm, and it would force the liquid up through the tube.  I think we may have used a hose clip to join the cushion and hose, that way it could be detached to allow easier filling up of the cushion.  Not sure what we used as the vomit - something not too thick!  I wasn't actually working on the show, just floating on the periphery - I'll get hold of the SM and see if she can add any more detail!

34

Stage Management: Other / Re: iPhone Stage Manager

« on: Nov 12, 2011, 09:47 pm »

Is it ironic that as an orchestra manager, the mini game I'm worst at is the one where you collect the orchestra's music?!

35

The Green Room / Re: SM Hobbies

« on: Sep 29, 2011, 12:15 am »

I've recently started playing roller derby.  Great exercise, seriously good fun - plus (provided you abide by the rules!) it's a good way to release any pent-up aggression...

36

Tools of the Trade / Re: Headset/ClearCom trouble

« on: Aug 02, 2011, 06:16 am »

This might sound stupid, but sometimes if there's something "noisy" plugged into the same ring main as the comms master station, that could affect it.  If you can get hold of an isolating transformer, try plugging the master station into the power through that and see if it makes a difference.  Long shot, but I've known it to work...

37

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Onstage as an SM

« on: Jun 18, 2011, 12:56 am »

I've done it a couple of times, always in non-speaking roles mercifully!  I always seem to end up in a maid's outfit, for some reason...although when I did Cabaret we had all the Kit Kat Kids out in the house and foyer pre-show, interacting with the audience, so I was wandering around in costume just keeping an eye on things; the Kit Katters dubbed me "Lulu" (she's normally one of the Kit Katters, but we had a small cast so no-one playing that part) and I had a gorgeous black sparkly beaded frock  - which I got to keep at the end of the run!

38

Tools of the Trade / Re: Multiplay Sound Cue Software

« on: May 29, 2011, 01:15 am »

QLab does look amazing unfortunately it only works on a Mac.  I have been looking into Show Cue System also, it costs a little bit, but it seems worth it.

Totally worth it.  We ran backing tracks off it for a 12-week summer musical and it was flawless - easy to program, powerful, easy to operate and pretty much does everything you need it to.  So long as you're running it off a dedicated computer (which goes for any computer-based playback anyway) with all the extraneous junk taken off it it won't let you down....and on the tiny chance that you do have a problem, e-mailing the author will usually have you a fix in record time.  We ran it off a stripped-down XP machine which had pretty much nothing else on it and was not on the network or the Internet and it worked well for us.

39

Tools of the Trade / Re: Multiplay Sound Cue Software

« on: May 26, 2011, 07:35 am »

I've not used Multiplay myself but I've really only heard positive feedback.  Another great piece of software (although not free, it's very reasonable) is Show Cue System.  I've been using that for years and have always found it to be solid and reliable - plus the author of it is incredibly helpful.


Moderator Note:  Removed link.  -kmc307

40

Stage Management: Other / Re: Opera

« on: May 06, 2011, 05:23 am »

Do you mean the four operas (Rheingold, Valkyrie, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung) which make up the Ring Cycle?

41

The Green Room / Re: How to recover from mistakes

« on: Apr 11, 2011, 08:47 pm »

Now, they dropped lines, messed up blocking, forgot things - that's all ok. But mine wasn't. I think sometimes people forget that we are human too.

This is something which really gets to me.  We had a show last year where the operator made a few errors over a couple of shows, ending in a slight slip-up which resulted in the curtain call lights coming up about three seconds later than they should have.  Despite the fact that the cast had been dropping cue lines left, right and centre during the show (this was the end of the first week of the run), they were all absolutely furious with him and made complaints to the director and the theatre's CEO.  Nothing came of it - the errors were incredibly minor - but no-one ever said to them "are you word perfect? No? Well, then you don't have a right to criticise."

42

The Green Room / Re: Exercises & Warm-Ups That Don't Suck

« on: Mar 06, 2011, 07:41 pm »

My last cast loved a warmup called "Big Booty" which was good for focus and energy.  Everyone stands in a circle, and one person is nominated as "Big Booty".  Everyone else numbers off from them round in a clockwise direction.  Then everyone stamps or claps to get a beat going (you can go as slow or as fast as you like - my guys used to speed up as we got into it) and then calls in rhythm and unison "Big Booty, Big Booty, Big Booty, oh yeah."  Then the person who is Big Booty says, staying in rhythm, "Big Booty, number ##".  The person who has that number has to say "number ## (their number), number ## (another person's number)" and so on and so on.  Anyone who loses the rhythm or just doesn't reply when their number is called becomes the last in the circle (moves to Big Booty's right) and everyone else has to renumber on the fly.  The idea, of course, is to try and make the person who is Big Booty lose their spot.

43

Tools of the Trade / Re: OCR software

« on: Feb 16, 2011, 11:17 pm »

Most photocopiers these days have the ability to scan - ours is networked and you just choose where on the network you want to send the scans, which means you can use the document feeder.  The OCR software I use (Abbyy FineReader) will certainly read a PDF no problems.

44

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Prompt Book Help!

« on: Feb 16, 2011, 06:56 pm »

I've used various different methods to do this in the past - presuming you are talking about the practicalities of cutting and pasting script and score together rather than "which bits of which do I need".  There's the scissors-and-glue method, which is not too difficult but not particularly tidy, but my most successful method is to scan the script then feed it through an OCR engine so you have a fully editable e-copy of the script (or ask here on the e-scripts thread - someone may have it!).  Then I scan the score in as pictures and electronically cut-and-paste them together.  You do end up with a massive Word file (last one I did I had to save as three seperate files as it was taking ten minutes to save when it was one document!) but it's easy to manipulate.  I don't put blocking in that book though, there are too many page turns.  Usually I like to have a rough cut done by the time the show starts running in rehearsals so that you can tweak it over the rehearsal runs (adding or subtracting score is usually what I end up doing) and then print it off for tech week.

45

Tools of the Trade / Re: Making prop red wine

« on: Jan 26, 2011, 07:08 pm »

Almost anything with red dye is going to stain.  Why not go with "white" wine.

Sometimes you can't!  Arsenic and Old Lace, for instance, needs elderberry wine - it's in the script - so that's awfully difficult to change to white wine.