Tick Tick BOOM!!!!

So maybe I'll blog theatre stuff here and poker stuff on Pokerstage. That could work, since most of my theatre friends are on myspace anyway. Let's give it a shot, anyway.

Rehearsals this week for Tick Tick Boom in Rock Hill. Sucks! It's in Tillman Auditorium, which is this old-ass run down theatre with no friggin' lights on the Winthrop campus. I'm really only doing this as a favor to Sheila, Jimmy and Maggie, since they didn't really have anybody else that could do it. Not to mention the little bit they can afford to pay me will at least cover most of a nice meal in Vegas next week.

But I have a total of 18 lights to work with, to light an entire musical. Challenging to say the least. Especially when you consider that Sunday, I used 16 lights just for gobos on the orchestra shell for the Philharmonic, and wanted more there, too. But I've got red and blue backlights, and almost enough front light so you can see the action, so it's about as good as I can make it. I don't have a light board that can record cues, so the high school kid that's running lights is going to have to run everything on the fly, which she of course has never done before. Add to that the fact that we're running lights from the side of the stage and I can't see what anything looks like and we're a little challenged. I don't understand how my buddy Chris does it (he's the facility manager there), they do a shitload of shows and they've given him practically nothing to work with.

Sheila (director) understands the constraints of the facility, so she was fairly happy with what we acheived last night. Which is good, because it's about all I can do. We do have a followspot, which will help a bit in some songs. I feel bad for the cast, they're working their asses off in shitty conditions, and they sound good (when all the mics work), too.

So tonight when I get off work I'll trek back down the the Rock and look over the shoulder of my board op while she runs the show tonight. She watched me run it last night to get a sense of what we're trying to do, so we'll see what sticks. Should be interesting to say the least.

Tags: theatre, tick tick boom, Winthrop