Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - cschott

Pages: 1 [2]
16
The Green Room / Re: BTDT help and discussion
« on: Oct 13, 2010, 03:44 pm »
I have a request for BTDT.  When viewing my own BTDT list, the shows and venues show up in the order I entered them.  Which is completely random (not alpha, not in any sort of order or categorization).  Any chance they can be sorted alphabetically?

Also, when I entered L'elisir d'amore, I found that there are two listed there - one has Donizetti's name misspelled.

Thanks!

17
The Hardline / Re: Equity and Checks
« on: Oct 13, 2010, 03:30 pm »
Wait - when you say "get your packet" do you mean you still get a hard copy of the contract and packet materials?  I haven't worked an AEA contract in about 10 years (been working in opera on AGMA contracts), and recently I've been under the assumption (with some basis, but I can't remember what the basis is) that the hardcopy packets don't go out anymore.  When I just called the AEA office a few weeks ago to try to get a hardcopy of the LORT contract, they told me that they don't print hard copies anymore and that you have to get them online.  Were they just telling me that because they don't want to send agreement books to people who don't have jobs on those contracts?  Grr.  They could have told me the truth - I would have understood.

18
Carmen x3
Aida x2
Nutcracker x2 different productions, 1 for 2 years, the other for 6 years
The Music Man x3 (including once in high school) - talk about music theatre purgatory
Christmas Carol x3 but 2 different adaptations
The Threepenny Opera x2 - never SM - once in college acting as Mrs. Peachum, once in grad school as TD

Not as many duplicates as I thought when I started the list.... 

19
The Green Room / Re: Favorite brown bag lunch?
« on: Oct 11, 2010, 10:21 pm »
If you're talking sandwiches, I've been trying to "fancy up" my standard turkey and cheese.  So I went for whole wheat tortilla, spread with a bit of cream cheese, some chives or green onions, a slice or two of turkey, and some sliced avocado.  Roll up (if it all fits) and enjoy!  Sometimes I also add dried cranberries.  Yum.

Salads are good too if you add lots of yummy stuff to the lettuce.  Cut up sausage, chicken, or some cooked ground turkey, chickpeas, wild rice, various nuts and/or seeds, feta or goat cheese crumbles, dried fruit or a cut up canned pear...  All of those make great ingredients for salad.

If you have access to a microwave, of course your choices become much more broad, and mostly in the leftover area.  I love leftovers!  Last year I was really smart and, before each long stint of work, I took a day or two to make a variety of casseroles and other meals (ziti, tuna noodle, chicken tetrazzini, meatloaf, bean soup, chili) and then freeze them.  It was great to have them available to just shove in the oven (if I remembered to thaw them) when I got home from work.  And then of course I had the leftovers for lunches for a while.

20
Stage Management: Other / Re: Circus
« on: Oct 11, 2010, 09:50 pm »
I spent 6 months as Asst Operations Manager and 1 year as Operations Manager of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey's Blue Unit (there are two touring units, the red and the blue).  There isn't exactly a Stage Manager, even though there's someone with that title.  Job descriptions and job titles seem to be stuck in a sort of historical time period on the circus - the SM is the person who's really acting as the TD.  The Ring Master used to really be doing the job that we would now call SM.  That has changed as Ringling Bros has tried to move more toward a "show" atmosphere (like Cirque) rather than a "circus" atmosphere.  In fact, when I was working there, we were told not to call it the circus.  I'd call to advance a venue and introduce myself as "Operations Manager for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey".

Anyway, the person who really acted most as the SM while I was there was titled the Production Manager.  He sat in the house and watched the show at each performance (that's 3 on Saturday, thank you), was on headset with the light board operator, the curtain puller (the guy who opened the main portal curtain for the performers), the Associate Production Manager, and at least one other person, though I can't remember who that was.  He didn't really call cues so much - he'd let Tom (curtain puller) know that it was time and the word got passed on from there.  The Associate PM would relay any issues to the PM, but it was really more about recording the timings and just watching and giving notes on the performances.  I took over for him a few times when he was on vacation (easier to have the Ops Mgr sit in the house than move the APM up and have to train someone for the APMs role on the floor) and it was very easy.  However, I did have a communication device challenge.  As Ops Mgr I needed to be very reachable by lots of people.  So I would have my show radio with an earpiece in one ear, my cell phone earpiece in the other, the headset over top of one of these, and then the building radio sitting on my lap with the volume at full so that maybe I'd hear it if anyone called for me.  Or I'd leave the house radio with the General Manager if I felt that was the right way to go.

So, that's circus story #1.  They can go on for hours if I'm just talking.  Typing, probably not so much, but ask me the questions you have and I'll do my best to tell the stories that answer them :)

Oh, and elephants do not stink.  They have a nice earthy sweet smell.  It's actually comforting to smell elephant once you've worked on the circus for a while.  And they are incredibly smart too.  The animals that stink are the tigers.  It's about the fact that they eat meat.  Oh, and I learned how to tell which animals had just been walking around by the poop that was on the ground.  I could tell the difference between horse poop, elephant poop, alpaca poop, goat poop, camel poop, and .... actually I think that was all of our animals (other than the tigers, who were caged so I didn't see their poop on the ground).  And finally, I'm really allergic to tigers.  Anybody else out there know your allergy status around tigers????

21
Stage Management: Other / Re: Opera tips
« on: Oct 11, 2010, 09:33 pm »
Just FYI, Ricola no longer provides those lozenges for free.  They're still quite discounted, but not free.  You pay $75 for 8 tins of about 250 each.  Not too shabby, but it makes the whole thing more difficult - you can't just take on getting them yourself, you have to get someone to handle paying for them.

22
The Green Room / Re: Exercise!
« on: Oct 11, 2010, 04:14 pm »
Happily for me, I'm currently teaching and I have a break between the end of my class on Mondays and Wednesdays and a few meetings that I have to attend on those days.  So I go run on the track or go to the fitness center on campus.  Thank god for it - I feel better, even if I'm not actually losing weight (which I haven't checked, so who knows!)

23
The Green Room / Re: Convolution Creep
« on: Oct 11, 2010, 04:05 pm »
In one theatre I've worked for, the US crossover to SL is either via outside (open the stage door SR, which is loud, walk around the front of the theatre (in costume, of course) to the SL stage door, which opens very directly onto the backstage space SL, is loud, and was often blocked by scenery) or through the men's dressing room.  Needless to say, the men got used to a constant stream of everyone through their space.  And the women got used to walking through a room of half-naked men.  If a director was willing to have the cast exit through the house HL, the crossover could be accomplished indoors by going through the lobby (in costume, of course) into the box office, up the stairs to the office/booth area, through the hallway filled with children's theatre costumes (which was a bit scary in the dark - oversized stuffed dog heads sticking out and such), then down a narrow spiral staircase to SL. 

24
Well since I have two children, I think the correct answer for me is "change a diaper", but I assume you mean while stage managing :)

For one version of A Christmas Carol that I did the director wanted Marley to move a chair by magic, which we did oh-so-low-tech by simply tying a piece of fishing line to one leg and stationing me in the wings with some heavy gloves on.  At the cue, I just pulled on the fishing line with all my might.  The tricky part was setting the scene.  It was a very fast change (out of the counting house and into Scrooge's room) with a lot of pieces moving on a very small stage.  It was in the dark and the fishing line chair had to be set and I had to start moving off SR before the bed came DS because it had to roll over the fishing line without trapping it under the wheels (fishing line had to be pretty well flat to the floor when the bed got there).  Also, the rest of the crew had to avoid getting caught in and tripped by the fishing line.  This one didn't even have to be pitch black to be a hard one!

25
The Green Room / Re: "15 minute call" (video)
« on: Sep 29, 2010, 04:01 pm »
It even made my husband (a lighting guy) laugh, which is saying something.   :)

26
The Green Room / Re: BEST ADVICE YOU CAN GIVE
« on: Sep 28, 2010, 09:30 pm »
The one I've been repeating to myself over the past several years of SMing at an opera company which has a total of 3 onstage rehearsals before opening (one 4-hour tech, one 3- to 3.5-hour orchestra rehearsal, one 3-hour final dress):

"The show will open on Saturday."

And at the end of the opening night show, it's usually "Well, that was a great final dress for me."

Not really advice, but as others have said, it's not really life-or-death at most points, so time will march on and we'll make the mistakes we make.

27
The Hardline / Several LORT contract questions
« on: Sep 28, 2010, 08:39 pm »
I'm teaching a class (for the first time - hopefully this will keep up for several years so I can take advantage of answers I get here) on the AEA-LORT contract and a variety of questions have come up that I haven't quite been able to figure out myself.  So far they're not really anything that a SM would have to know to run a show, but they are interesting questions and I'd love to know if any of you have the answers to them.  So here they are (so far - I'm sure there will be more as the semester continues!):

1. Where did the "A" category come from and go to?  Why can't a theatre move into or out of that category?  (My guess has been that the "A" theatres at some point needed to be limited in number, since they are Tony-eligible)
2. In rule #11 "Broadway District", I'm assuming that the thing that will be governed by Production Contract is the show that is originated in or moved to a house in the Broadway district, not that the entire LORT theatre producing that show must switch over to the production contract (thereby leaving the LORT contract).  Right?
3. A question that I once called the business rep about but didn't really wait for a very thorough answer:  If I'm being paid over scale, I've been told that I can't bill overtime until my OT for the week exceeds the difference between contract minimum and my over scale rate (i.e. if I'm being paid $1200 a week and minimum is $1000 a week, I'd have to go into more than $200 (or more than 7 hours) worth of OT before I'm actually paid extra for it).  The business rep told me that that is true.  In the AGMA contract I've been working recently this is basically spelled out (though restricts what extra payments fit into this rule) but I haven't read it in the LORT contract anywhere.  Is this some sort of standardized thing in AEA or all entertainment or all employment in the US?  At the time that I asked the biz rep about this, I was working on the RMTA contract.
4. Finally, not a rule question, but when did SMs become part of AEA?  Have they been since the beginning?  It sure is hard to find information on the history of the job of stage manager!

Thanks in advance for any insights!

Pages: 1 [2]
riotous