Indistinct shapes under the duvet

Day one at the Breakin’ Convention house:

One chief, two lighting technicians, three electrics casuals, one sound technician, two sound casuals, one flies, one stage and one work experience assemble bright and breezy on a Wednesday morning to convert a bare theatre into a home for this years collection of hip-hop theatre.

I use the terms ‘bright and breezy’ and ‘morning’ together loosely.

Most people choose to relax over bank holiday weekends – it’s a pity they all choose to relax by coming to see a show. Then again, it pays the next mortgage bill so I shan’t complain (too much).

Setting up the sound was fairly easy – the majority was in from shows previous.

[Shop Talk]

We only had to add a couple of Shure Beta 58 UHF for beatboxers/rappers. We know from previous years that our Sony’s don’t react well to a beatboxer’s style.

5 PCC160s were added downstage as we knew there was going to be some foot work …

We also added a computer at the sound desk to allow for archiving and burning CD back-ups. It also linked to our MediaMatrix for remote control purposes and was also running SCS on a live test – not on the actual shows but programming as if it were.

[/Shop talk]

The staging was also pretty simple – a bit of re-hanging of black soft goods

Lighting was a little more complicated. It wasn’t our entire stock in use but not far from it.

First two more lighting techs joined in the fun at lunchtime – employed, it seemed, purely to patch in all the cable runs and fit the Howie battens to the front of the stage.

Then the stage guys found themselves incorporated into the lighting crew, then the sound crew found themselves getting pulled towards the bright side event horizon – everything had to be rigged and all the non specials focussed by bedtime wednesday.

We tried rigging ancillaries to deflect the pull – comms first, then rigging the projectors and vision mixing position. Hope was running out first and all we could do was put in the cue lights and trust that the clock would run out before the error of getting sound crew to focus …

And it did!

Day two at the BC house:

Fresh blood joined in the slog today – another lighting tech to replace one who was having more fun with a cuban salsa band, the DSM ensconced himself at the prompt desk (seemingly for the entire weekend), the production manager switched to stage manager duty, and the sound operator arrived. This marks something of a change for me – normally I take residence at the mixer for the entire weekend. This time, someone else had that pleasure.

They didn’t have the comfiest chair (that had been claimed by one of the companies onstage for a Dr Claw moment – I’m going to assume that you, o gentle reader, know who Dr Claw is -) but it was a comfy chair and fairly free rein of the sound of the event. Along side the comfiest chair, the work desk from the sound control room, an old telephone, a typewriter, a riding crop, giant inflatable radios, and a mannequin are also press-ganged into prop duty.

Not necessarily on the same piece.

We go straight into rehearsals – over the next five days we have a couple of dozen companies to get onstage, make happy, get rid of, rinse and repeat. Three of those days are also the show days – 8 or so companies perform one after the other, then a break while the audience goes off to entertain themselves for a hour then the ‘headline’ act of the night closes the evening.

I spent most of the day enjoying the ability to move around and not be stuck at the sound desk – actually I spent most of the day listening to the sound in the house, helping make sure everything was set-up backstage, assisting in the set-up of the projectors that we didn’t manage yesterday with the all-consuming lighting fit-up/focus, helping to put down the white floor and put up the white goods and wall that Saturday’s headline act needed assisted by one stage and one flies who wouldn’t be there for the actual show, and eventually doing the splits as best I could to outline the focus position for the same act. I think the only sound I did was to add a pair of speakers upstage and delay the system back to them.

And a bunch of paperwork for the shows coming up in the next few weeks, including a rapid re-staffing for an external company due in the next few weeks.

I even stayed on an extra hour to do the splits.

There was about enough time to get a few hours sleep at home next to an indistinct shape that I presume was wife number one before

Day 3 in the BC house:

Delays on London underground brought me into another full day of rehearsals, starting with the white set which I helped to strike with a member of crew who hadn’t put it together. Then the backline arrived. Yep, in the midst of a festival that was pretty much playback and handheld wireless, someone had added a three-musician jazz band. With four instruments (drums, bass, and keys/sax).

[Shop Talk]

The sax was miked with a wireless Beta 98 running through a Sennheiser 3000 series wireless system; a Roland amp for the keyboard, DI’ed into our system; The bass cabinet was an Ampeg 4/10, also DI’ed into our system; drums were Pearl kicks, toms and snare with Zidjian cymbals and a cowbell miked with a Beta 52 on kick, SM57 on snare, three e604 across the toms and a pair of KM184 as overheads.

I wonder if it’s worth trying to get a commission everytime I mention those mic brands, I do seem to repeat them quite often.

[/Shop Talk]

The three musicians across four instruments was less of a worry than the absence of a keyboard on the rider – still I checked the last three versions they sent and no mention of any keyboard …

Pause for a quick meeting to confirm that my re-staffing meets everyone’s requirements, after the quick meeting with the recording company archiving the weekend’s events then a quick walk (in the outside) to get some food that wasn’t purchased in a supermarket. And aptly for a bank holiday weekend, a quick, heavy shower to remind me not to take late lunches.

Or maybe just lunches outside.

The rest of the day was spent dealing with an endless succession of similarly clad persons bopping onto stage to a seemingly endless selection of similarly mastered CDs, occasionally broken up by a company that had music on DVD instead.

Back home for the few hours sleep tonight revealed an indistinct shape in the spare bedroom also. Apparently, my mother in law had come down for the bank holiday weekend.

Day 4 in the BC house (show day one):

I’m in a whole hour later this morning – I still have to get up at the same time as mother-in-law has kindly agreed to finish off the tailoring on a suit picked up from the NYC holiday.

Then it’s back to the office.

Another mic runner joined the collective this morning. I think this meant this years sound crew was as large as the sound crew combined for the last two years – maybe three.

It’s not a bad thing.

Show day one didn’t start well other than that however. One group was running late for their rehearsals that day and the bassist from the jazz band had missed his flight and was somewhere in T5 – as long as he wasn’t in baggage claim, we stood a chance of seeing him some point in the day and the production team did a couple of rapid schedule alterations to ensure that there was no wasted time.

The two remaining musicians appeared at the beginning of their time and finally had a look at the instruments. The drummer was fairly happy – the keyboardist asked where the keyboard was.

Oh.

A quick peruse of the rider, followed by a few choice french swear words, leaves me with my finger on the call button of my mobile asking what model keyboard they need and wondering if the backline company is going to be open at lunchtime on a Saturday on a bank holiday weekend when the sound op pips up from behind me – “I’ve got that model in a flat in Camden”.

There was a moment of perfect stillness then he gets hustled off in a taxi to retrieve his keyboard. Meanwhile, the AV operator and the other two sound techs begin to soundcheck the drums and I run through the rest of the re-scheduled schedule noting all the extra wireless requirements that have appeared.

The key board shows up an hour later (not bad for London traffic) just in time to find that the keyboardists’ Kaos sound effect pad PSU has blown up.

The AV operator finds himself headed towards Tottenham Court Road to get a replacement as we scour the building for a PSU with the right voltage/current/connector.

A spark of good news – nope we don’t find a PSU but the bassist arrives just in time for a run-through. A phone call from a hungry AV op tells us that replacement PSU’s are only available online.

Kaos pad duly cut.

The musicians go and one of the next wireless requirements appears. “This man needs a radio mic.” Not a problem “For his trumpet.”

Oh.

We spend a little bit of time working out how to attach the 98 to the instrument with it’s somewhat short wire and succeed with time to run the piece and stay in schedule.

Then spider kid arrives for his (unasked for) radio mic. With the moves he is doing, the pack has to go on his front and the mic head on his collar.

Then the company with a beatboxer arrives.

It’s late afternoon by now and with the show having a family friendly 6pm start, there’s not an awful lot of time left for us to have lunch.

So we don’t.

One final little issue when one of the Sony hand-helds spontaneously decides to not transmit audio but we have enough spare transmitters to add that to the ‘fix later’ pile – the pile that’s normally on the work desk (the desk that by now is featuring in several pieces …)

The show opens only a few minutes late (as always, waiting for the punters) and we run through the show in fairly long order.

By which I mean there’s no real problems but we come down for the mid-show break later than we expected. The set is re-assembled for the nights headliners. It’s about this time that someone thinks to wonder what happens to the set as that company are only on for the one night – something the crew are all aware of already …

The studio theatre also runs late with the piece in there so we resume nearly an hour later than planned and start sending member of the crew home to give them their 11 hour breaks with a few lucky souls chosen to remain to fit the set back into a truck for removal.

Getting home after it all, I try on the adjusted suit trousers, now not 40″ long with a ragged edge and exchange my first words with wife number one in four days

“Turn off the bloody light”

“But I need to see how the trousers are doing”

“(mutters obscured by duvet covering head)”

Day 5 down the BC house (Show Day 2):

Leaving the indistinct shapes, I arrive in work to find that the current company, tonight’s headliners and previous participants, have brought their music in on USB stick this year. It sounds no different to last year but we duly burn it onto CD, which all goes fine until they exclaim – during the second playthrough – that the music has jumped. Running on 2 CDs simultaneously, with no discernable audio glitching and with no difference in the clocks.

We check and double check everything and can’t get it to do it again and in the end run it on two different CD’s on two different players running in unison with a third copy from hard-drive and an extra pair of eyes keeping track on all the counters.

That’s about the extent of the excitement for the day – excepting all the dancers throwing their bodies into slightly improbable positions of course. We even mange lunch breaks – obviously we aren’t working hard enough.

The show goes fine and runs pretty much to time.

It’s the going home where it goes wrong – arriving at the tube station just after the second to last train with the last one on the board. It may be a brisk walk from tube to overground train but it’s doable.

15 minutes later and I look up from the book to see the tube is still on the board but it’s arrival time has vanished.

My train is due in five mins and it’s a 15 minute journey.

Ah.

15 minutes more. It’s now 1.00am, we know the tube is being held at Camden, we know it has to come past as it’s the first northbound train tomorrow (actually, later today) but even the station staff don’t know why it’s being held.

About now, I give up and head out for the night bus.

I catch the first going in vaguely the right direction, aiming to intercept a second night bus at Aldwych. Getting off at Holburn, I’m so busy fuming at London Underground (and wondering if I can blame Boris) that I’m half-way to Charing Cross before I realise my mistake.

Bah.

It’s approaching 2.30am when I finally get into bed, next to an indistinct shape. I hope it’s wife number one – but I’m too tired to care.

Day 6 down the BC house (Show day 3 – final):

By now, we got the routine down pat. The lighting op and the LD are at the production desk in the circle, receiving regular caffeine injections; the sound op is at the mixer, fingers twitching slightly; work experience is testing the carpet at the followspot position for it’s sleepability factor; the two mic runners sit blankly on the side of stage; the DSM hasn’t moved for five days; the AV op flicks endlessly from Facebook to iTunes; the single stage crew member moves from chair to chair depending on his boredom threshold (he does keep returning to that comfy chair); the flies operator alternates from sitting at his controls and going outside for a smoke; one of the lighting techs has retreated to the office with a selection of guitar based music and the other three lighting techs seem to be morphing into each other.

Matching hairstyles, T-shirts, shorts – only the trainers show any individuality.

And the crochet.

Thank goodness this thing draws to a close tonight – any longer and we’d install a diary room …

We have a successful days worth of video, sound, lighting and dancing – the performers do okay as well.

Then we pull it all out, ready for the lucky souls who have the 8.00am start the next morning for the next show.

I arrive back home around 2.30am again to the indistinct shapes – I’m not certain they’ve moved since the morning. I flick on the TV to watch a bit of American comedy/drama to send myself off to sleep.

Three hours later, I’m still wide awake. My brain may be mush from the onslaught of bad script-writing but I’m not tired. I switch over to the ice hockey and twenty minutes later, I’m out like a light.

And in sympathy to the guys starting their morning call, wife number one and mother-in-law awaken at 8am.

It’s my turn to be an indistinct shape, muttering under the duvet …