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Topics - ericjames

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Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / PEOPLE: Drunk Actor
« on: Jun 20, 2012, 06:26 pm »
First off.. I apologize if this thread already exists somewhere but I just did some searching and didn't quite find anything like this....

This past weekend, I just closed a farce at a professional (non-union) summer stock theatre.  We are a fairly small company, although we do 6 shows (2 are big musicals).  We have 2 stage managers and we alternate shows (ie.. I am SM for shows 1, 3, 5) as well as a stage management intern who functions as ASM for all 6 mainstage shows and SM for the children's show.   

Last week, we come in for a matinee show and a few of the actors ask me for a ride to the theatre.  (For this show, this is fairly common as its a 20min drive and the woman need extra time to get into wigs.)   This particular actress (lets call her 'X') says she didn't sleep well the night before and asks if she can lay down in the backseat on the way up, I say, yes and go from there.  When we arrive at the theatre she is being very boisterous and loud and starts asking very inappropriate questions of the other actors.    I pull her aside and ask whats wrong (she sticks to the lack of sleep story) and then I ask her to calm down and take it easy as she was making people uncomfortable.  Things continue eventually resulting in two other actresses going outside to cry due to the way she was treating them.   I am concerned enough about her that I called my producer/ artistic director and filled him in on everything.   I explained that we were trying to keep her calmed down and were in the process of getting her some coffee.   This all happens before our "fight call" - For this particular show there is a very complicated chase sequence that happens in Act II which leads into a fairly large actor motivated scene change.    So, every night we run this entire section to help get everyone's mind on the show and to build up some energy.   During this run, her line readings and pacing were all over the place.  At one point, while standing still, she almost fell over on her own.  In another place, she completely went up on lines and another actor finally came in to get the scene moving again.   After this run, I released the cast and called her over again and asked how she was doing and talked to her for a bit.   At this point, I have pretty much decided she was actually drunk, although I was unable to smell it on her.  She still maintained she was just tired.   Thankfully, by this point, we had some coffee ready so I sent her back with a cup of coffee.   

When the producer arrived, he pulled her aside and they talked for about 15min.  Afterwards, my producer told me that he was able to smell the booze on her and that she broke down and admitted it to him.  She recently had a lot of personal issues in her life and that was the cause for the drinking.    She is going to be getting help after this contract ends.

Thankfully, she does not enter until about 20min into the first act, so still had about 45 min before she had to go onstage.   During the show, she actually did pretty well.  Her pacing was all over the place and her acting choices were very strange, but thankfully, we did not have any serious problems.   After the show, she went off on her own without talking to anybody.  We had an evening show that night and she was very quiet and reserved, again, not talking.  Thankfully, by this point, she was sober and the show was much less stressful for everyone. 

We only had 3 performances left, so neither myself nor our artistic director said anything else about it.  Over the next few days, X went up and apologized to all of the cast members and myself.     

I have been stage managing professionally for a number of years, but I have never had to deal with a drunk actor during a show.   We do not have understudies, and realistically, there was no way that we were going to cancel a sold out matinee performance of the show.     So, I am curious... has anyone else had similar issues?  What have you done?     Aside from getting her coffee and having her rest, are there other tricks I could have tried?

Edit to subject line-Rebbe

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Tools of the Trade / OCR software
« on: Feb 16, 2011, 07:55 pm »
Mod... please feel free to move this topic to a more appropriate location or merge it if you know of a similiar topic that I missed.

I have been using the OCR software that game with my scanner for years now to scan scripts and make e-scripts.  However, it is an old Epson flatbed scanner, and it is time consuming to go through each page individually.   I am curious what software and/or scanners that other people use for the E-scripts.  I know that if you go to a Kinkos or similar, you can scan pages using the sheet feeders and get a pdf.. but is there a way to then run a pdf into an OCR engine?

I would love any suggestions!
Thanks

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riotous