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Messages - Dart

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1
Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: STAGING: Realistic CPR
« on: Jul 21, 2015, 02:31 pm »
They may still choose to do the breathing since it's more "realistic," but the past two times I got my CPR certification the instructor told us breaths are no longer considered necessary. Whoever the People In Charge are, they have decided that people had too many CPR steps to remember and took too long to get to the part that matters. All they recommend you do now is check if the person is conscious and/or breathing, and start compressions as soon as you can.

2
Sorry, I always forget that part! This is non-AEA. I'll update the title.

3
The Green Room / Re: Patrons behaving badly
« on: Jul 14, 2015, 09:12 pm »
In my last show, the script calls for a painting on the stage that can only be seen from behind - the audience sees it there, but they have to imagine it. It is covered during intermission, but not at pre or post show. Sure enough, audience members would step right onto the stage the second the show was over. If we didn't catch them early enough, they would wander up a hallway in the set toward backstage.

All we could really do was watch them very carefully. I learned to hurry toward the stage as soon as the show was over so I could direct people away from it, because they would always manage to sneak past the ushers.

I've also had people steal rocks off the set, or take small props (syringes, handkerchiefs) that were too close DS.

We all get distracted by tasks, like directing someone to the bathroom or checking up on a sick actor. Is there a good way to make sure something is being watched at all times the audience could interact with it?

4
Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: PROPS: Breaking a vase
« on: Jul 14, 2015, 08:12 pm »
This may be tangentially helpful - for a recent show we had to break a plate onstage each show, so we bought a bunch of plates from a thrift store and did break a bunch of them, but our problem was that the pieces kept shooting into the house and I was really worried somebody would get hit or cut by a random piece. We tried a couple of different things to keep the smashing down and what worked best was 3m rubber/vinyl spray adhesive. It kept the smashing but limited the distance the pieces flew!

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Hey all,

I'm looking for a bilingual SM again. It's a long story, but we were led to believe we had one and we apparently don't. I'm PMing the show so I can't SM it as well.

Rehearsals start August 3rd, show opens September 10th and closes October 4th.

Send me a PM for more details! I'm open to hiring out of town.

6
I told the audience of a thousand or so that we were at five minutes.

And I bet there was still 50+ late seating...
We had a series of mystery groups use the theatre this week between our shows on Sunday afternoon and this Thursday morning. I wasn't called in for any of them, which is rare. This morning everything went as normal, and it wasn't until an actor got off stage at the end of the second scene (and she told my ASM) that anyone told me the god mic was live. And even then, my ASM understood that my comm was going over mains, not everything I was saying, so I stayed off comm while my sound OP and I tried to find the problem but I was very much talking to my surtitle OP through the whole thing. D'oh!

We never use the god mic to begin with and it's usually not even patched into the board so I didn't think to test it, but that's going on my pre-show from now on!

7
Would just a gentle reminder of a flashlight from off stage strike enough of a "ah I have to do something new" in him.

Oh, that's a really good idea! I need to look at it when I'm back tomorrow, but there may be somewhere (maybe the upstage side of masking) my ASM can hit with a light that he can see but the audience can't. I'll report back!

8
Well, the good news is that tech this weekend was the nicest tech I've ever worked! Everyone walked out of both days really chipper, and we even got two full runs and a photo call in. Efficiency! I'm not as worried about his lines because though he did get really lost several times, the rest of the cast were able to carry the scenes through. Hopefully that will improve.

My immediate concern after the weekend is that he still doesn't remember the scenes he begins. He's in bed on stage for most of the show, and there are a couple of scenes when he has to sneak out of bed and offstage to make an entrance elsewhere, and another couple of scenes that be begins by getting up from the bed and crossing further onstage. I have an ASM but, she can't talk to him through the set or make any sort of physical or visual contact without being seen by the audience. We have light and sound cues with his scenes, but that's not helping either. Can anyone think of a way to give him slightly complex cues (go offstage and change, party scene, yelling scene...) in a setup like this? I'm giving serious thought to writing the scene breakdown on the bed post or somewhere else on the set, but am open to suggestions. =(

9
Hi all,

I have this one problem actor in my hands. This is my third show working with him, and the whole production team was aware of the various problems he has before hiring him for this latest show. I'm really not sure if the problem is his "style" or a growing memory problem, but what it comes down to is that he never does the same blocking twice (he never seems to know what scene is coming next, and has left actors hanging in previous shows) and he improvises his way through the text. He seems to think he's a better writer than the playwright, so he'll deliver the same lines the same wrong way every single time and ignore my line notes, even when given verbally and even when the director or a fellow actor repeats the note to him. He also mumbles a lot and will keep adding lines ("I'm sorry, forgive me" becomes "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, please forgive me, I won't do it again, I'm sorry").

My questions are:
1) Is there anything I can do to make him, or actors like him, get his lines right? The whole production team knows he isn't getting them, and the director himself has said that he'll be happy if the actor can paraphrase his way through the show. But I don't know what I, as the SM, can do past writing the same notes every day and talking to him about learning the text.
2) How do I defuse some of the tension at work? The rest of the cast and the director are getting incredibly frustrated and rehearsals are getting really heated because he gets furious when a different actor messes up a line, but he won't take accountability for skipping a whole scene or jumping back to the beginning of a scene when it should be ending. The director has sent him home twice to learn his lines, but there's been no improvement. And we're 2 rehearsals away from tech!
3) Of course it won't help in this situation, but has anyone come up with a good way to note added sentences when giving line notes? I've been writing the accurate part and drawing an arrow with "added line" where the rambling begins, but I'm not sure if there's a better way to do this.

10
Oops, thank you! Non-union. Edited the title.

11
Tools of the Trade / Re: Ergonomics and the Tech Table
« on: Jan 19, 2015, 04:27 pm »
I keep sitting and standing, and never being really comfortable either way. I think it's because my booth looks down to the stage and the counter with my light board is low enough that it's most comfortable to sit, but my body obviously wants to call standing. So I spend all show changing position. My surtitle operators have made fun of me in the past!

12
GALA Hispanic Theatre is looking for a stage manager for a remount of a bilingual (Spanish/English) children's play. SM doesn't need to be  fluent in Spanish, but will need to be able to follow along, take cues off of the text, and give line notes. Rehearsals will all be in the mornings, and performances are Mon-Fri in the morning and Sat in the early afternoon.

First rehearsal - February 16th
Opening - March 9th
Closing - March 21st

PM me on here for more details!

13
Tools of the Trade / Re: Ergonomics and the Tech Table
« on: Jan 19, 2015, 12:59 am »
I would love to have a standing desk on casters that would accommodate my laptop and my script, then be able to transfer it to the theater for tech...

And Christmas is next month, maybe the scene shop guys will get my wishlist!

This one has the sweet "pssssshhhh" lift:

http://www.amazon.com/Flash-Furniture-Height-Adjustable-Computer/dp/B004G91RK8/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1411350462&sr=8-5&keywords=rolling+laptop+stand

But you could fit so many more books and paperwork on this one:

http://www.amazon.com/TECHNI-MOBILI-Cadmus-Mobile-Graphite/dp/B003M96GY0/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1411350462&sr=8-8&keywords=rolling+laptop+stand
Since there isn't a lot of transparency about when sales start or end (or whether something is perpetually "on sale") I'm always a little suspicious, but both of those links are currently really marked down. If you were eyeing those standing desks, this may be your chance!

14
Tools of the Trade / Re: PROPS: overflowing champagne
« on: Jan 19, 2015, 12:39 am »
This past September, we needed bottles of champagne that popped open onstage, 2 per show. And they had to be non-alcoholic because the actors drank both bottles.

I found these bottles of Sparkling Chardonnay Grape Juice at Trader Joe's. They're really cheap, non-alcoholic, and have plenty of bubbles. I'm not sure how much they'd overflow, but there's no harm in getting a couple of bottles as a test, shaking them, and opening them. Our local TJ's only had about 15 in stock, but they were really accommodating and took a large order from us that they got on their next truck delivery day that week.

I'll swear by these because they're cheap, taste good, and look like the real thing. They have a real champagne cork so they pop, too.

15
The Green Room / I'm back!
« on: Jan 18, 2015, 03:22 pm »
I've had a really busy and challenging couple of months at work. My PM left in November, we still don't have a new one, and a lot of the PM and admin work has been dropped on my shoulders. It's been "interesting." I'm also not SMing anything until March, so I'm suffering from a bit of withdrawal.

But I'm back on SMNetwork now! Hi again, everyone!

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