The taciturn Technical Engineer is holding up a set of short platforms while we load longer ones on the truck. I've passed by him a couple times looking for other jobs and finally stop near him. "I think I could probably be of better use elsewhere," he says. I roll my eyes and wave him away from the platforms and lean myself up against them, "Sorry I didn't ask sooner," I say, "When a tech chooses to do a useless job like this, it usually means they're thinking." He laughed. I continue to assume I have done something right.
I sometimes worry that I speak with authority rather than from experience. I need to stop assuming that. There is a full stage (42'X6') printed projection backdrop in the show. It took 2 hours to take it down, roll it and transport it. They are very sensitive of this because one year, due to negative temperatures and not allowing the drop to thaw properly before unrolling it (I think it was -40 that year), the print froze and peeled away. They're right to be careful with it, but not 2 hours of rolling and fighting careful.
On the roll up, the Tech Engineer tried to get the road crew to take care of it by asking the four most vocal members of our crew: two supervisors, the vocal and opinionated girl running video, and the Production Manager and asking them to hold the unrolled edge, and then asking his crew of four to roll. When I got there, the Production Manager was helping roll. The Tech had walked away. I saw immediately what he had tried to do to make this work, and how it had backfired. The crew has rolled marley before- the vinyl flooring dancers require. It's a pain in the butt and more difficult to roll. But, there's the Production Manager, insisting that she knows what's correct; never mind she's never rolled the drop before, never seen it rolled, and has never rolled a marley floor either. Work slows to a halt and a road crew member and I, tired of listening to objections, go to fetch The Tech "We need your guidance and expertise." "That fucking drop."
The show is made up of a band, a handbell choir and a 135 member vocal chorus. The opening of the show runs in layers, there's an announcement, the lights and video go, and a procession begins to light a candle and play a Bible as the hand bells perform. There's narration under this, then the choirs enter under the organ music that opens their first piece.
Opening night, the stand lights for the hand bells were unplugged and didn't come on. As this came over headset, and they announced someone was working on it, I saw that the candlelighters had entered. Good. Now we have a moment, not an awkward silence. I see the Bible get placed. "Skip to the cue to light the Bible. Why are the narrators not talking?" My ASM responds, "Should they be?" "Yes." What I didn't know was that my ASM was crawling under the staging at this moment to go help with the lights. She crawled back and we had narration. We still didn't have hand bell lights, but our organist worked out what was going on and came in on her cue and the show went on, one hand bell song short.
So, no one realised everything had gone horribly terribly wrong, they just thought we were having a reverent moment. Go us.
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