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Messages - vsm315

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The Green Room / Re: Favorite Easter Candy
« on: Mar 29, 2010, 11:27 am »
I am a fan of the classic jelly bean. You can't go wrong with the standard Jelly Belly, unless you get a black one.

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Does anyone have The 39 Steps and Taking Steps in electronic form? I start working on them in two weeks.

Thanks.

jrc405 @ gmail.com

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The Green Room / Re: Olympic-sized technical difficulties
« on: Feb 15, 2010, 10:37 am »
I had two malfunctions happen during the same show.

A few years ago I was working at a high school and they were performing Beauty and the Beast for their spring musical. The school had just installed the automated Vortek rigging system and it was a very poor install job. During the first show we can't get the castle door to fly out so Gaston and the other villagers just had to keep bagging and yelling on stage until I could run back stage and trick the system to raise the baton.

Then before the final performance I was doing a check of all the programmed fly cues before warm up and I can't get the village to fly out. Finally after about 15 minutes and several rebootings of the system I get it to fly. So I go to the director and tell him that we won't have a village for this show because if we bring it in the whole show might have to change location to the town square. Lets just say he was less than pleased and within a week we had every driver in the rigging system replaced.

I am always weary of the Vortek system now but I have talked with the guys at the Kennedy Center's Family Theatre and they have never had a problem. Ours must have just been a bad system mixed with a cheap/crappy installation. 

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The Green Room / Re: Musical Misfortune
« on: Feb 09, 2010, 11:52 am »
I just did that tour of Seussical this fall and ALL of the songs never ever leave. I am still singing them almost two months later. But Alone in the Universe is just so beautiful if you have the right singers and Nick is definitely the right Horton.

Hope the tour is going well.

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I have to agree with Matthew on this. I think while there are actors and directors and even other stage managers that can be difficult to deal with we have to look at what we are doing (or not doing) to help or exacerbate the problem. I have recently been in a situation where behavior was a big problem. And I have to say looking back I have probably told people more than I should about work experiences. Hopefully now I will censor myself a little bit more.

I just got done with a tour where I was the ASM and it was just a SM and 12 actors on the road with me for 3 months. We had some behavioral problems that just got worse over the length of the tour. I have to say I spent just about everyday listening to the SM complain about the actors' behavior and listen to him complain to actors about other actors (which I felt was inappropriate). It actually got to the point where I had to have a one hour venting session with the actors (about their issues with the SM) because the SM walked out after 5 minutes of the meeting.

While I had my own issues with some of the actors, I spent time after the tour really evaluating what had happened in order for me to learn for next time. This was ultimately a situation where if the SM had been better at managing and creating structure from the beginning we would have had a great time and the problems wouldn't been as big as they were. Instead he would just call the theatre's office and complain about the actors (he even wrote about it in the performance reports) and threaten to quit. And anytime myself or an actor would try to talk about the problems that were occurring we just got the line that he was the Stage Manager and we had to do what he said.

I have to say though that after everything that happened I wouldn't say that any of the people I was on tour with are people I would work with again because I understand that we were in a unique situation.

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Students and Novice Stage Managers / NEWBIES: Staged Readings
« on: Mar 28, 2008, 03:50 pm »
So I need some advice.

I am stage managing an equity staged reading next month and I have some concerns. First, this is the first equity show I have SM'd. Second, I have never worked a staged reading before. And third, it is a new play. I am not quite sure what I need to do for any of these things.

The people that hired me trust me and think I will do a great job. So maybe I am just stressing out more than I should but any advice would be helpful.

Thanks.

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