Wednesday 20 May 2009

Technical Trip Ups.


We've been on fourteen hour days since the weekend trying to ensure everything is as tight as it can be for Thursday. There's an impressive cross section of students involved now with every pathway and every year group represented somewhere in the numerous technical, stewarding, pre-show and performance roles within the show. It was great to realise that the support team walking the show through last night numbered over forty.

Still lots of obstacles and each time one problem is solved another pops up... most are barely foreseeable - the building contractors losing the key to a padlock to an essential gate, stage braces not quite taking the weight of the twenty foot butterfly as we leverage it up...CRACK..., hay fever, the wind taking the smoke from the foggers back into the the audience's faces, a change of flight path into Heathrow, a impromptu cricket match arranged - meaning water nymphs and wicket keepers sharing the dressing room in the pavilion, an angry swan ... the list is endless, but of course all part of the fun of working in a site specific way.

Without good humour and a bit of making do this kind of work becomes impossible and although we're behind and running out of time a late night planning session with the technicians in the Barmy Arms gave hope that with renewed focus and energy we'll finish the tech quickly tomorrow and get a delayed dress rehearsal in and grab a little sleep before the audience arrive on Thursday morning.

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