Following on from a debate on the Theatre Sound Mailing List on unions after a recent Fox News broadcast, I’m posting an article written by Professor Gregor Gall, Professor of Industrial Relations at the University of Hertfordshire, on behalf of the Centre for Research in Employment Studies.

This was in turn sent to me by one Peter Clennell of the British Musuem (at least at the time of sending).

It makes for interesting reading.

Cracking the Perennial Nut: understanding members’ views of their unions

Introduction

‘What’s the union doing about this?’, ‘I pay my subs and getting very little back in return’ and ‘What’s the union ever done for us?’ are examples of common responses of union members to the issues and challenges they come across in their workplaces and working lives. At root here, ‘the union’ is seen as a body external to themselves and an organisation which they believe should work for them on their behalf without much in the way of work and involvement from themselves. The union is seen more like a bought service that is contracted in when there is an emergency of some sort – a bit like phoning a plumber to come round and fix a leak. Even despite the rise of ‘union organising’ which stands in conceptual terms at least in distinction to the latter approach which is known as ‘servicing’, the problem of such membership expectation and inactivity is a seldom discussed one. This problem for unions is arguably more fundamental than any others that unions currently face. It is about the combined issues of membership participation, democracy, effectiveness and responsibility. While it is not an absolute truth, there is much truth in the view that membership participation is likely to make unions more democratic and more effective in a kind of mutually reinforcing, upward spiral. The purpose of this research paper is to examine the roots and contours of this problem of membership expectation and involvement.

Historical and Contemporary Contexts

Historically, many of the first unions in Britain practiced direct democracy rather than representative democracy, whereby all members of the union would meet together in a mass meeting to decide upon policy and courses of action. This was possible as membership numbers were relatively small and located in one place because the union was, for example, the wool workers union of Chorley or the wool workers union of Leyland. However, as unions grew and expanded, particularly as regional and national unions were formed, this method of operation became impractical. Indeed as the employment relationship became more subject to more juridification and as the personnel function of employers became more developed, it seems plausible to suggest that workers would no longer be able to command the breadth and depth of knowledge to operate without a division of labour within unions. The structures and processes of representative democracy and sometime later employed unions officers (often referred to in neutral or pejorative terms as the ‘bureaucracy’ depending on different perspectives) were deployed. Historically, it was at this point that a physical separation of unions as institutions from their members as workers began. Whether ways of operating – such as through representative processes and structures with delegates and elections – could square the circle of the unions’ members controlling those employed by the union and what was done in their names became central issues here. That said, the issue of members treating their membership as a bought in service speaks to an altogether different problem – one which suggests that after unions crossed this Rubicon, they are either a reflection of their members’ passivity or that unions have not been successful in communicating the core message of participation to their members.

Setting out the Issues

There are a number of possible explanations for membership passivity and inactivity:

• A ‘servicing’ approach is promoted by the union and members are recruited on that passive basis
• The overall culture of citizen participation in the organs of civil (non-state) society has been eroded and is now at such a low point
• Membership passivity and activity ebb and flow as waves and tides depending on historical circumstances so the current levels of membership inactivity are not set in stone and not unexpected either
• Members are dissuaded from becoming active in their unions as unions are not welcoming or attractive for potential activists in terms of their culture and structure
• The ‘organising’ approach is insufficient in quantitative and qualitative terms to make any difference to the challenge of achieving more membership activity
• The centrality of work and work identity to workers has declined so that this has a knock-on effect on unions whereby unions are not seen as important players in people’s lives
• The weakness of unions does not make for an attractive recruiting sergeant (and with low worker consciousness, workers are unable to make the leap of logic that if they were more involved in their unions then these unions might become stronger)

This will now be taken each in turn and examined.

Servicing Culture

The premise of the servicing culture, or business unionism as it is sometimes called, is that a (business) service is bought by members and thus delivered by the union as part of a contractual arrangement. In historical terms, some have argued that when there was economic growth, favourable state policy and less employer hostility like in the post-Second World War period until the 1970s, this was a form of unionism that was quite effective in delivering material advances with little membership involvement. In this period, and notwithstanding some exceptions, it seems that both unions and members were willing to acquiesce in a relationship which was far from perfect but was less demanding, and allowed both members and union officials to get on doing what they wanted to do without too much hassle from each other. There are two problems with the servicing approach; one is that it ill prepared the unions for the onset of hostilities from government and employers, and the other is that it is of little use in developing strong unions when government and employers are hostile. Union strength in these times does need membership participation but the disincentives to doing so are higher (in term of an effort-outcome calculation) and there are thus many members who for these reasons and others (ideological, instrumental) are quite happy to be serviced and leave their relationship with their union at that.

Citizenship

Under post-war social democracy and/or periods of acute social crisis conducive to the emergence of new social movements, levels of participation by citizens in the political process (voting, canvassing, campaigning, membership of political parties) as well as their own organisations (unions, community groups, pressure groups and the like) were far higher than they are today. This was despite many of these organisations still being quite hierarchical, dominated by leadership elites and unresponsive to grassroots membership pressure. Since the 1980s, there has been a managerialisation of all types of politics (official and unofficial) so that citizenship participation is now much reduced. This is a result of the increasing penetration of neo-liberalism throughout all parts of society for an important component of the politics of neo-liberalism is that those that are regarded as being ‘entitled’ or ‘suitable’ to hold any posts of influence in society must be those that are qualified and experienced, and this means qualified and experienced in terms of being compatible with – or certainly not very challenging of – neo-liberalism and its claim that business knows best.

Waves of Participation

Historically speaking, membership participation in unions has ebbed and flowed according levels of overall struggle and the impact of the outcomes of those struggles on the morale and confidence of members (i.e., whether defeats or victories broadly speaking). For example and generally speaking, victories tend to encourage further and greater participation because of a positive demonstration effect while defeats the opposite because of failure and retribution from the victor. In this regard, there is nothing particularly unremarkable about the present period of industrial relations in Britain which is one of defeat and retreat in this regard. However, it is the length of this period, lasting as it has from the late 1970s and the continuing rise of neo-liberalism throughout it which mark this period out as unusual and worrying.

Union Environments

Unions are sometimes, with an element of truth, characterised as male, pale, stale and increasingly frail. They are not then particularly representative of their memberships as a whole despite much genuine effort on the part of unions to make themselves so. There is a sense of Catch-22 here for without the participation of these members, especially those underrepresented groups/types, within the union the situation will not change and without more from these groups/types involved, more of their co-members will not become more active and involved. Affirmative action and positive discrimination have not broken through this ceiling. But setting aside this issue of the representation of minorities, most of the obvious majority constituencies of individual unions (which themselves vary) are women and men (regardless of other attributes) and here neither is active in their unions in very high proportionate terms. Within this, it is probably the case that women are less active in proportionate terms for there are quite a few unions where the majority of members are women but men predominate in terms of activists and leaders. Some of the reasons commonly cited for the under-representation of women in term of the environment being unwelcoming concern macho-cultures, the incursion of family responsibilities and the like. It is unlikely that the issues of unrepresentative and unwelcoming environments are the crux to explaining paucity of participation. Sure, they do not help but they are arguably secondary to other explanations offered here for there have been occasions when these barriers have not constituted the obstacles they seem to be. So, it seems reasonable to conclude that they are rather more likely to be symptomatic than casual of other factors.

Union Organising

This issue has been covered extensively in previous research reports. Suffice it to say, whether for reasons of quality of union organising and/or quantity of resources dedicated to it, union organising does not seem capable of delivering upon its promise of self-organised workplaces and empowered members, i.e., far more active members of unions and in all their diversities. This would seem to be because in the current circumstances, the objective of union organising here is far too ambitious, in addition to which it can be questioned whether the top of a union can regenerate the bottom of a union in this way.

Centrality of Work

The balance between work, consumerism and leisure in people’s lives in society has changed over the last few decades. Work is no less central to people’s lives in terms of the time it occupies but for many at the lower end of the labour market, it does not provide the same form of identity and affiliation that it used to. Part of this is attributable to the declining control that working people have over their working lives when at work, and the rise in job insecurity so that working in one job or form for a long time is less and less common. Part And, just because there is not more time for leisure does not mean that the desire for leisure, particularly that associated with consumerism, is not now more feted than ever before. The consequence of this is that in preferred meaningful terms work is less central to workers now that for a long time as a badge of identity. In a sense, the attempt to escape from work through various ways is probably now greater than for a long time before – and the route to escape from work is not necessarily work itself in terms of working hard or long hours to pay for things that make work bearable like holidays etc. None of this suggests that workers are more likely to engage in participation in their unions because work is no longer of the same importance or the same means to an ends.

Union Weakness

Union weakness does not make for the most attractive recruiting sergeant for active union members, and with low worker consciousness, the vast majority of union members are unwilling or unable to make the leap of logic that if they were more involved in their unions then these unions might become stronger. It is clear to many on a cost-benefit analysis that becoming active in a union is a risky business – not necessarily because of possible victimisation but more so in terms of the high risk that the personal effort, time and emotion put in is unlikely to yield a good return. Here, good return is not about personal gain but rather collective gain. Therefore, many conclude that doing so is not worth it at the moment or for the time being.

Solutions to Problems

There is no single set of magic solutions to these problems which manifest themselves as members saying ‘What’s the union doing about this?’, ‘I pay my subs and getting very little back in return’ and ‘What’s the union ever done for us?’. Even the old adage that people’s consciousness changes through (collective) struggle does not help us understand why and when they might struggle in the first place and how this helps change their consciousness. Yet there are some things that unions and existing activists can do to begin lessening the problems they face here. One is to constantly and consistently explain to new and existing members that joining a union is akin to joining a club, and clubs only function, and function effectively, on the basis of membership participation. Membership fees entitle and oblige participation. Membership confers both rights and responsibilities. The point here is to actively shape member expectations of what they put in and what they get out (and the link between the two) by not allowing these expectations to seem too one-sided, i.e., the union – as an external body – can get you this or that etc. What is really being discussed here is the brand of the union and how this is being sold. This task of achieving membership participation is one that has much better chances of succeeding if there are also actual demonstrations in practice that collective action is evidently productive. However, expectations of unions and their activists also need to be tempered so that these are not dashed for it will never be the case that all or even a majority of members are highly active other than in the most exceptional circumstances. Another is to be careful in the use of the term ‘the union’. It is common for even those supporting and working towards greater membership participation in unions to use a language of ‘the union’ as in ‘the union makes us strong’. Here, the union can still seem like an external, third party. Consequently, the use of language needs to be titled more towards ‘we the members, we ourselves are the union’ and ‘the union is us’. Although changing the language does not change the social reality, it may act as a spur to workers and members identifying and understanding the need and their obligation to do so.

My attention was brought to the following article – and it’s one I want to share. It’s a short read but one that will resonance with those above a certain age – and those below that age may get an inkling of what some of the more esoteric sounds are they hear.

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/the-fading-sounds-of-analog-technology/

Regular viewers will have noted the irregular posting schedules over the last nine months or so.

That pretty much equates to the age of the lil terror – she may be lovely but it is full-time looking after her and you don’t get to go home after 40 hours

It’s not all attributual to her though. My own working shift from Head of Sound to Technical Coordination means that I spend far longer on Excel sheets and email, see the family more often and actually don’t have lots of contact with shows once they actually arrive here. I tend to know the tech riders and schedules inside out and how they logistically fit but just don’t engage in the practical side of things or run shows all that much any more.

This isn’t a complaint – it’s just a change of pace and focus but it does mean that I have less to feature in these posts. Very few are going to be all that interested in updates on spreadsheet formula (though if you do require training, I do recommend Happy Computers in Whitechapel. All lovely people, have a selection of hot and cold beverages and biscuits, and teach well)

I’m also more involved with some of the wider sector issues – I’m linked in with the working group looking at the National Occupational Standard for technical theatre (which will be the basis for all tuture vocational qualifications); I’m on the BECTU committee for independent theatres and arts centres and will be be attending the Annual Conference as the branch delegate and I’m starting to use the carbon calculator from Julie’s Bicycles Industry Green tools to work out our carbon footprint.

All very laudable but not as easy to write about – or at least write entertainingly about.
For now …

Since the move, it’s been relatively quiet workwise.
Since the American dance company, we seem to have had a season of return visits of a range of shows, most of which I’ve either covered before or else have talked about something that technically would be very similar.

I’d like to say that the lull in technical demands has meant that we’ve been able to hit the new home with the scale that we renovated the old flat but at that point, we didn’t have the lil monster literally underfoot. She is now sleeping a straight ten hours at night (WOO-HOO!) but is getting more active in the daytime and we’ve more steps to deal with now.

As we draw towards the end of November, I’ve just spent this weekend at work rigging surround speakers. Normally if we are putting surrounds in, we’d be looking at 2-4 speakers a level. For the Christmas show this year (a retelling of a panto classic now set in Blitz era London) though, we are installing a fairly huge speaker setup.

Just on the stalls level we have installed 26 speakers (E3 and E0) just for surround and throughout the auditorium total we have around 60 speakers rigged off derig arms, acroprops, scaff and I think shoestring in one instance

The main system will then be a Q-series array – which we know and like here but does run into the problem of audio shadow under the balconies so I suspect that we’ll be seeing some E12/C690 or similar when the array proper goes in, along with B2/Q-subs on each level and delay lines

It’s lucky in our schedule to have two days to do this rather than trying to cram it in around setting up the show proper and good that the producers have agreed to pay the extra staff/hire costs for the install.

It’s going to mean that when we start the get-in, a lot of the infrastructure will be in and that more time will be available to tune the system and rehearse the sound – which benefits the show and makes it a more pleasurable experience for the audience.

Certainly not always a viable option but nice to experience nevertheless

Straight after the footwear asssault was a piece of American dance heritage – a company with a strong African-American founding who portrayed several works that ranged from the classic Americana to contemporary dance via the modern (the problem with assigning labels like modern, classic and contemporary is that at some point the meaning is going to be lost …)

As we seem to find with the US companies when they come over, it was heavily crewed and there was a very distinct ‘this is my job and that is your job’ attitude amongst the entire company. This isn’t a personal attack on any of them but while I do support the need for specialists, that doesn’t mean that I don’t think they should muck in if they can help. The skill level was high amongst the crew but there were several times where the house crew really noticed that a department would be waiting on another to finish their tasks before they commenced.

[Shop Talk]
Technically, there isn’t a huge amount to say on this show – lighting was appropriate to the demands of the individual pieces – bright and breezy for the Americana and full of shadows, saturated hues and sharp angles for the modern pieces. Lighting was controlled from an Eos in the wings and the rig was toured generics. Sound toured their own front end desk which tied into the house EAW system.
Set was black box with or without a cyc for all pieces with the companies own sprung floor and marley.
[/shop talk]

The dancing was of a high standard, the pieces were well received and the whole environment was fairly stress free, which was a good respite from the previous show …

heels as far as the eye can see – not all of them high and some of them not what you’d normally consider for heels.

But then this show isn’t what we’d normally consider.

We’ve been undergoing a slow transition from solely a receiving house to incorporating an touring and production aspect over the last few years.

And yet suddenly this summer, we’ve upped the ante and produced a musical revue, something of a departure from our stock in trade dance.

Of course, there is dance in there but there is also a band, and some singers. And an awful lot of wearable props …

This revue is the latest work from the gentleman who brought you the opera version of Jerry Springer, premiering at our main venue, then returning for a longer run early next year at our second venue with a tour to follow (at least that’s the current plan).

As I currently observe the build of this show, I’m feeling a little unconvinced. Let me get shop talk out of the way and I’ll explain further …

[shop talk]
The first thing you note about the set is the sheer volume of it. Hard to tell if the giant high heeled shoe, the towering legs or the circular band stand is the most dominating piece.

There are six legs, three each side, each with a different design and each made out of steel frames with ply frontage standing around 10m tall and garishly painted. Oh yes, and one lucky soul is currently sticking LED stripes to the onstage edges (with the irregular shapes, it’s nearer to a 14m run of strip, which I believe is about the limit that the drivers can manage … that could be fun)

upstage left is a circular bandstand, multi-leveled and linked to the stage by a sweeping, mirrored staircase (the kind of thing Fred Astaire would have been drawn to like a magnet) with a cyc mirroring the curve.
The bandstand has metal chain curtains underneath hiding an upstage entrance and store for one of the three beds used in one of the pieces.
The band themselves are a storey up on their multi-level platform and they’ve managed to squeeze a reasonably sized wing band into a fairly small footprint, drum kit, keys and sampler station included.

Other set items include a picture frame 4m on each side with wheels that the cast rotate live, a shoe shelf truck that hides puppeteers, two fairly delicate ‘expensive shoes in perspex boxes’ structures on narrow dollies, and the Imelda lecturn (yes for that Imelda and her speech on shoes).
Two more shelving units will fly in and have drop shelves triggered by electromagnets. For some reason, maintenance of these is to fall on the lighting department, possibly due to the LED strips used as decoration.

Lighting wise there is a fair number of VL and Martin moving heads spaced overhead (3500, 3500Q, 700 Profile and Wash, etc) and Source 4′s of various len sizes – nothing that wouldn’t be considered non-standard in contemporary terms. Control, I believe, will be ETC Eos.

Sound is also full of standard items from what I can tell (I’m starting this show in the fly tower for once) – the band is largely close miked with flavours of wired DPA and a Audix drum kit set. There is a fairly comprehensive Q-lab set-up (three laptops on and around stage with another out front), which links to the multiple projectors and also provides backing tracks, click and sound effects via the PM5D out front. Haven’t seen the speakers yet but if they don’t have Meyer I’ll be surprised, probably with XTA processing.
Four singers have DPA headset mics and Sennheiser body packs, there is an offstage vocal booth (or will be when the bandstand is finished) and not much more micing needed

The main video playback is from Hippotiser and I’ve yet to determine how many projectors we’ll end up with.

[/shop talk]

It’s mainly the set as to why I’m a little dubious. Those tall legs, that curved bandstand and that long sweep of cyc with scaffold trapezes for cyc warmers do not suggest themselves for a touring show. Not the metal construct, though that weight is (a little) overkill but the dimensions don’t really lend themselves for a neat truck pack or an easy install. We had two persons operating our automated flying system with another in the grid setting up point hoists and none of us had any respite over the first few hours. In a counterweight house, the number of bars we were moving would equal a larger crew and a longer fit-up time to allow for bar weighting – both things that also don’t make for a happy (or solvent) tour

[e2a]
Still haven’t had chance to confirm some of the video/sound set-up (which really shows how my current job responsibilities have switched] but I have now seen the show. It actually works very well and is a good revue but I think that the marketing [and our previous works] are going to mean that what the critics and audiences expect is not what we are going to provide.
I’m also a little worried that the four singers are not clear enough above the band – it is very tricky to make our their vocals – as if they are being used as another instrument in a band mix and nothing being done to make sure that the vocals, in a revue remember, are clear. That may be where I’ve heard it from but we are a little too close to the opening for comfort.

Audience attendence will tell – it is a decent enough show, though a little more glossy than the subject matter, what little there is, would suggest. It would work quite nicely as hen night material but it’s just a matter of whether our dancecentric critics realise that this isn’t a dance show but a revue show.

They didn’t …

The year was starting to go by and with the little monster now firmly ensconsed in our hearts as she demonstrates the power of a smile, our thoughts begin to turn to how on Earth we’ll ever get a holiday again.

“That’s easy,” says Mr Ben whom was getting distracted by us inner monologing out loud “Parents have a place on the north Norfolk coast which we were going up to for a week and you are welcome to join us.”

I should been wary at this point, particularly when Mr Ben made a passing comment about bringing steel toe cap boots up but at that stage, the more pressing concern was transporting a 3 month child in a small hatchback.

We already knew from the Bournemouth visit that two days of baby kit filled the car, just about leaving room for people – now we had to manage the same for a week …

It was about this time that Halfords came out with a timely advert for roofbars and boxes.
“If only there were roof bars for our little car” we thought. Then turned to the internets. And there are.

So the day before the journey to Norfolk found me actually cleaning the car for once then attempting to fit a Mont Blanc roofbar/box set to the Yaris that we call transport. It was a little disconcerting to look at the recommended distance between the bars then look at the actual size of the car and notice some discrepencies. Then go ‘sod it’ and just attach them at distances that nearly agreed with the instructions but that, more importantly, kept the bars roughly level on a roof that curves a surprising amount.

Amazing how much height the roof box adds to the car – we certainly won’t be visiting a multi-storey carpark anytime soon.
And it is a little tricky to do a Tetris pack when you have to balance on the seat wells to reach the far side of the roof box. For future reference, a box that opens on two sides is probably worth the investment.

Be that as it may, we were able to fit all the modern acroutrements of a child without having the strap the pram unit into the passenger seat and started the car to set off. Or rather, didn’t start the car as the battery picked the moment of travel to give up the ghost – and how, with about 10% of the required charge remaining.

By some stroke of luck, we had forked out a little more for homestart from the AA so a baby feed and nappy change later, a man turned up in a yellow van and told us the battery was dead.

That we knew.

But he did have a charged replacement battery so a quick bit of work later (and a quick baby kip) we set off at about the time we had been expecting to be deep into the wilds of Norfolk

So much more fun to drive a small car with a big, laden roofbox – particularly when the rain began to fall north of Epping.
It was reasonably torrential as we went past the RAF base at Lakenhall then began to ease off and threatened sun as we passed through Swaffham.

Mr Ben’s parents live in a little cottage in a little village on the road a little past the wonderfully named Little Snoring and while I’d love to go through one of my (used to be) usual day by day step by step account of the week, I must confess that I’m writing this a fair number of months after the facts.

I do remember that the main reason we had been invited was so that I could assist Mr Ben in removing a tree truck from the end of the garden – this turned into a morning ritual where the lil monster would be looked after in turn by wife number one, Mrs Mr Ben and Ben Mum while Mr Ben and myself would put on steelies, grab mattock and pick and have at the ground for an hour or so. Or the tree roots. Or the nearby carrots when the veg garden got in the way. Or the biscuits for mid morning tea.

Then we would head on out to go and be tourists in the local beauty spots. Wells-by-the-Sea turned out to be no where near the sea – you could use binoculars to catch a glimpse of waves over the rolling sand (lil monsters buggy really is no good on sand it also transpires). Holt was delightfully quaint, with a great cake shop and exhibitions by both Chris Packham and Rolf Harris in different galleries while we were there.
And it really did turn into a cultural trip as we made the huge journey to the bright lights of Norwich, that thriving metropolis, principally so we could show the lil monster what could be the potentially last tour by Bridget Riley, who’s early op art black and whites made the early nappy changes so much more bearable (wonderful hynoptic effect on babies …), and especially as it included works from her own private collection, all housed at that point in Norwich Castle.

We also continued our power related theme from last years jaunt to North Wales by visiting the one wind turbine in the UK accessible to the public. At least, myself and Mr Ben did. Our wives introduced lil monster to the twin delights of Waitrose and trollies with baby seats. We got to wave at them from up high, looking over the wilds of Swaffham. Actually, not so wilds – cultivated land as far as can be seen, excepting the wind farm off to the side. Visibility wasn’t good enough to see to Lincoln though.

We did also find the worse baby changing in Norfolk – just before you reach Holt, there’s a lovely looking inn just before a sharp right-hand bend. The food was pricey and reasonably nice but the baby change was in one of the ladies cubicles and folded out OVER the toilet – enough so that you could see the toilet to dispose and anything that needed disposing of and long enough that wife number one would have struggled to have reach babys head. And no sanitary bins, of course.
I haven’t seen many ladies toilets to compare it too – it seemed nice enough for a toilet – but the presumption that it would always be the mother changing is a little old-fashioned [personal note] (sadly) [/personal note]

But Byfords in Holt shows how to do baby changing, and, more importantly, how to do cake! Most other establishments seem to have worked out that baby changing should be in unisex section and that they should really be somewhere to dispose of nappies (or nappy liners in our case as we aren’t Pampers parents) and that quick access to running water from a tap is appreciated …

A note of thank-you as well to Mr Ben Mum and Mr Ben Dad for letting us take the spare room for a week, and the old Moses basket (little small for me but lil monster agreed to sleep in it), and letting us run the nappies through the washing machine, and the homemade food.

I suspect they may say thanks though for removing the tree trunk. I think is was day four we finally manged to remove it with judicious use of aircraft steel wire, a ratcheting lever, a Land Rover, four sleepers, one mattock, one pick, one ax, two trees, one crushed bush, some dew, a daily cup of tea and a lot of elbow grease.

Myself and Mr Ben, with the trunk filling his Land Rover, then took it to the local waste site. We pulled up to the green waste bin, got out and looked up. All the bins here were two storey high containers with metal stairs to climb up. Accessibility was a big man with a beard who ambled over to see what we had with the intent of throwing it in for us if we were incapable. We said out that we had brought a large load and that we were wondering if he had a forklift. “Let’s have a look at it”, he said with the undertone of ‘I can lift a pretty good amount’. We opened the boot door (carefully) and he looked in. Pause. Then he turned and said “Pete!”
Another man, equally as big, but with less facial hair ambled over to see what was going on. With ‘Pete’, the four of us were able to drag the trunk up the metal stairs and over the barrier into the correct waste container.
Figure that had to be worth a reasonably good story for them that night in the local – “Some bugger brought a tree in today!”

Also, finally, got you see my first confirmed shooting star(s) as the Perseid cluster passed by. The night sky was already impressive – it has been many years since I’ve been able to make out the shape of the Milky Way in the stars and while the Perseids were a disappointing display to some, there was something almost magical about standing outside watching the cosmos pass by.

Though I think Mr Ben may have been more moved by getting to drive the Land Rover through a ford that he’d had his eye own since his parents moved up that way. Not with the tree turnk in, though – that would have been silly. The ford was in a different direction to the waste site …

And after a lovely week, the heavens opened as we loaded several flatpack cupboards onto the Land Rover for the journey back to Mr and Mrs Ben’s still newish house and filled the roofbox on our car, only relenting well past Lakenham as we pulled in for coffee somewhere around the join of the M11 and the M25.

We’d already said thanks for the hospitality but sent up a box or two of Sainsbury’s Fruit and Fibre by way of thanks to our hosts, and warned Mr and Mrs Ben that we’d likely be moving in a few weeks.

As you’ll read in a post to come, we didn’t warn them enough …

It’s the return of my favourite Israeli choreographer – not a choreographers cut this time but a new piece (on our stage) that has something of the rock gig about it.
Actually a lot of the rock gig about it.

[shop talk]
Meyer MSL4 stacked to each side of stage on top of 700HP subs with UPM front fills and our Max 12 on sidefill detail all driven by a PM5D
Sound came from MAC playback (qlab I think) and live sound came from five electric guitarists and five drummers. At no point were they told to be subtle.
The guitars were all DI’ed while the drums were miked mostly with Beta 98, with a C418 on a pandero and a 4060 on a frame drum. All the musicians were on wired in-ears.

Lighting was all generics and was mostly 6-PAR bars and Source 4 spots, controlled by a Congo, with a constant haze.
Set was a two level platform for musicians (guitars over drums) upstage in a black box and costume the normal sweats.

Nothing to detract from the dancing

[/shop talk]

This show was blooming loud – we measured it at 107dB(A) with transients above that – and quite honestly the music seemed to be the thing here. I don’t recall any of the dancing standing out and some of it seemed to be rehashed from previous works.

A little harsh maybe, as I never did get to see the whole thing from out front but it didn’t seem to have the impact of previous works (okay, the aural impact possibly)

Made a mistake in my last post – I mentioned flamenco and it was like summoning the genie from the bottle …

Flamenco shows for me always seem to start with a month long (or more!)battle to pin down the sound requirements followed by a day of hefting floor.

This one was no different – though it was revisions that took the time. A return of the flamenco show from last September (this post here), this time around we were looking to trim the costs somewhat.

[shop talk]
Our Legend was now in the FOH position with a M7CL in the monitor position – all in-house outboard in use with a couple of extra compressors supplementing. XTA active splits between the desks, the usual suspects for mics, our house PA, Sennheiser IEM’s back in use for the musicians onstage but for radio mic detail this time, we decided to forego our usual 5000 series and instead tried out Zaxcom’s offering.

These proved to be a challenge to work with – though this was partly due to a lack of experience – we did also find that the Zaxcom receivers do not like to be near IEM transmitters; that the CR123 batteries mean that there are quite a few mics that don’t work properly with them (one wonders why the hire company didn’t pick up on this as the Zaxcom were their idea) and that it’s worth remembering that not everyone is necessarily hot on the idea of proper gain structure.

The hire company were very helpful in sending out spares – including an engineer to check things over onsite and it was all up and running well for the show. The Zaxcom are quite small, seem robust and have the nifty feature of being able to record the signal from the pack directly to an SD card – however, I doubt that they will become a regular choice …

For the rest (lights, set, costume) business as usual. The show is still the same as it was – just an attempt to trim the cost a little …

[/shop talk]

And, as I mentioned at the top of the post, flamenco for the last few years has seen me travel down to our stores in deepest Kent to pick up our wooden floor – two pallets each of 1500kg of fun or so. For those who don’t use trucks on a regular basis, tail lifts have a maximum rating of 1500kg and drivers are understandably reluctant to go to close to that limit. The floor is also based on 8′ by 4′ boards – and most trucks smaller than 45′ are around 7’12″ wide.
Actually, loading them into the truck isn’t too bad – we can normally wangle the use of a forklift truck at the store.
It’s when we come to unload them that we have to start breaking down the pallets so that the weight (and the sheer mass) of them gets to a point where they can be safely put on the tail lift. And as we always have to deliver early, it then means reassembling the pallets for onsite storage for a couple of days before we can actually get around to laying them down.
Then we have to reverse the process on the get-out, except that now when we get back to stores, the fork lift is almost not needed as we’ve had to break them down to load them back on the truck – particularly gruelling in weather extremes – hot weather turns the truck into a greenhouse and the anti slip coating on the bottom of each of the floor sections sticks to the one below in the pallet stack, while rainy weather makes it harder to work and the water gets absorbed by the anti slip coating on the bottom of each floor section – so they stick.

And yet this is all in a days work.

The bigger issue I have with flamenco remains as it ever does – the insistence of most of the practitioners to add layer upon layer off technical additions to an artform that really doesn’t need it. The two best performances I’ve seen of flamenco over the last six years were the show that had to cut their technical requirements as they were part of a larger festival, and the solo dancer who had a CD and a mere minute of show time.

This is nothing against this particular show – well received by critics and audience alike – but it does get increasingly more ironic that there is also a growing trend to return to the roots of the flamenco artform.

Maybe someone will link the two things together … or I’ll be proved wrong … maybe

June marked the point when I started going back to working on shows – though this was more to do with the vagarities of the schedule than an easing of the administrative workload.

We started the month with one of Japan’s finest Kabuki shows that all but one review loved (that one review seemed upset that no prostitutes were involved – I kid you not). And while a few of the reviews mentioned the star being able to leap up buildings, I doubt any of them were aware that we’d be looking at this show since early 2009 where the original intent was to fly the star from the stage to the back of the second circle.

That would have been mightily impressive – not least as parts of the auditorium would be likely to get in the way.
The number of seat kills needed (and the time to rebuild the second circle to take the flying system) meant that all aerial examples were left onstage – and I suspect worked all the better for it as the audience certainly didn’t expect their man to exit stage right 5 metres above the floor.

Set was, as usual, implacably painted – we had a grand example of these when it was decided that the mountain on the act 1 backdrop was too low down and the entire Japanese crew stayed on to repaint the entire cloth – took about an hour and you’d never know to look at it.

Lighting was full on – as in all at full, which I’m sure the various camera crews recording the shows loved – I’m sure they loved the entirely acoustic instrumentation. Flamenco take note – we could still hear everything …

The whole stage was blessed by a Shinto priest in a lovely ceremony with the entire cast and crew and the habitual swopping of presents occurred.
Our largest gift was the entire hanamichi run – admittedly we had paid for – left for us to deal with at the end. So we now have a custom made run for our theatre …

All in all a far different beast to the Belgium contemporary company who followed it in with their black box set, underwear costumes, sombre lighting and avant-garde sound track. Didn’t see too much of that one as I did the pre-rig day before they arrived and the overnight turnaround from the Belgish to the kids show spectacular that was the next piece in.

Both those days had me in charge of the powered flying system we have here – Nomad controllers running a version of Chameleon from Stagetech – our controllers used to be the publicity shot for this company …

I particularly remember the overnighter as it resulted in a 19 hour working day … and my little monster allowed me a whole couple of hours sleep before randomly bawling for a minute – just long enough for me to pull myself from what was a very comfortable bed to see what was going on. Oh, she missed me. Sweet, but very mis-timed, small child.

The children’s show was followed by another version of Mozart’s Zaide – this one I missed most of due to the prep work for the month of July shows. It was a fairly good mock prison yard set – though the paint splattering onto our dance floor wasn’t quite as good.

However, the one thing that sticks out was the finding out of the special effects.
“Hey”, says one of my colleagues, “they want someone to smoke onstage”
“And they thought the day before the show was the best time to tell us?”
Shrugs
“Okay, get them to send me their risk assessments through. It’s probably fine, though”.

And when a couple of MB of documents dropped into my email inbox a minute or so later, the smoking was. The mention of smoke grenades and a blank firing Glock 17, however, was something that was a little more interesting …

For thsoe wondering when the curse in the post title would appear – about then, in a very Anglo-Saxon form.

Cue a very rapid arranging of council inspection for the morning of the show.

One does wonder why so many people don’t engage in the habit of disseminating information – for that lack a notice the council would have been well within their remit to ban the use of all special effects.

Ah well

Then that week fades into the next flamenco show – darn I mentioned them earlier and they’ve turned up already … more to follow on that after it’s been and gone …