Wednesday, November 7, 2007

In the booth

I wake up these mornings, still bleary-eyed but seemingly unable to sleep past 8 anymore. I can hear all you parents hooting in derision, but man, that still feels early to me! Today is day 2 of Cue-to-Cue, which theatre people will know is a long, drawn-out torture specifically designed to make actors and grown men wilt and crumble.
But...
Day One (yesterday) went smoothly. In spite of my inexperience, and the inexperience of the 7 actors. In spite of my fears, and in spite of our well-meaning but overly verbose director. Largely due (and I cheerfully admit this) to the patience and expertise of our lighting designer, video projectionist and lighting operator, who gently correct me and guide me without making me feel small or stupid. However, I know that some of this smooth running was due to me, and it makes me proud. I was able to stay in control and polite all evening, never "lost it", knew what I was doing most of the time. This may be one of the hardest jobs I have ever done, but I will come out of it with renewed confidence in myself and new abilities. I may even want to be a stage manager again someday.
Today will be another long, hard day. And then hopefully, things will get easier, although the stress won't be over 'til my contract's up, in 4 more days. I will have around 140 lighting cues to call in this show. Somewhere around 25 video cues. I'll be operating the sound and mixing vocals during a song. Although I'm new to this, I believe this is fairly complex, so I don't think I'm out of order for saying this is haaaard! But this will pass, and I may even come out of it all looking pretty good.
And that's all I want, at the end of the day.

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