Goodwill and purity

I know I said I was working in my last post – this time I really have been working.

You know things aren’t shaping up well when a weeks’ worth of shows requires counting by using more fingers than available on a normal human hand and the first couple of weeks of June showed a very full work calender.

We started with a couple of days on a new opera piece – that had the lighting, video and dsm controlled from positions onstage on a set that was Dharma foundation and Dr Strangelove in Ikea. Remotely controlled camera’s for close up shots to flatscreens facing the audience and  numerous Pixeltubes in parallel lines hung over head made for a set that was not opera traditional, and while I don’t remember the critic’s response, I don’t think the purists were too favourable – something that will re-occur later.

Once the opera had gone, it was the turn of a contemporary dance company. Their main set was a white dance floor flanked on three sides by constructions that linked Angel of the North with oil pumps. The long thin ‘wings’ were used as projection screens at heights from stage level to several metres up. There was a barrage of side light light and several Fibanocci inspired geometric design gobo’s projected onto the floor.

Wasn’t around for either show but the visuals were fairly impressive of what I saw.

My time was mostly being taken up by the next couple of shows – two in two days, with the first then being repeated a week later with a new cast and after a third show had been in and gone.

The first was a large children’s show showcasing dance and singing. Bringing together eight different performance schools from around the country, the first half was based on Motown hits, each school providing a choir for two numbers and dancers for two more in a looping fashion while the second half was a loose version of the classic Blues Brothers.

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Staging first – though it was a standard black masking and white cyc set-up, there was a fair amount of steel deck onstage, giving five levels of platforms for the current choirs to stand upon. These were arranging in a U shape with the base towards the audience with a professional band in the gap between and solo singers from the schools along the base facing the audience. Of course, it wasn’t until the steel deck arrived that it was discovered that no-one had hired any additional crew to help put it up …

Lighting was a little non-standard – four fly bars (one each upstage/downstage and one each side) boxed the dance floor and were full of Parcans. Our Mac 500s were out to provide pretty patterns and there was a little overhead light – but not as much as would be expected.

The band consisted of two trumpets, one trombone, one sax, two keyboards, electric bass, electric guitar, drum kit and percussion (conga’s, small marimba, and some toys) plus an MD.  Most  mics were and were the expected AKG/Shure models, though we did try out the operators Shure Drum Mic Kit which seemed to work fine. Drums, brass and MD had Max12 for monitors and the electric instruments used their own amps.

As well, there was a Sony wireless handheld for the MD’s final speech,five vocal mics for the solo singers (another Sony handheld and four SM58), four SE300 bluelines to help pick up the choir and five PCC160 along the front to help those dancers who also had speaking or singing parts. Our usual EAW/Midas/Mediamatrix rig in place.

The video recording was done from an OB truck from a company who specialise in remotely operated camera’s and have done for a number of years. Cables didn’t take any longer to run in for these than for fixed or operated camera’s, apart from having our newest security guard attempt to find the key to open the door to the OB route.

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The show itself went well, once the choir finally started singing, though one of the keyboardists didn’t make it through the show, thanks to a touch of flu.

That show took it’s leave and we were in early next morning to start on the next one (number four for those keeping track). This was for a pop artist to promote a new album as part of a small tour. The initial site meeting had said to expect a black box, string quartet, piano and not much more. All backline would be done by the company.

As you can guess, it proved to be a little bit bigger.

The truck arrived late, which was a good start. Lighting was mostly done already – an overnight crew had taken down the kids show and put up the rig for this one.

After the driver had found his way, we started on the stage. Soundwise, a Midas Heritage 3000 took it’s place stage right next to a whole heap of IEM racks while lighting began to place over a dozen lanterns from 500w to 5kw on stands around the musicians for the main artist – including baby grand, synth, large drum kit, guitar, electrix bass, backing vocals, 6 violins, 3 violas and 3 cello’s. Just compare that list to the first list. Every person had in-ear’s and there was a mix of wired and wireless mics supplied by Brit Row and John Henry’s.

A stack of EAW 750 and allied subs went up each side and had to be aligned to our system which was staying in also.

I’m going to note here that the company had only asked for one sound from the venue, alongside their monitor engineer, backline/effects guy and FOH operator who also had a manager role. By 9am, we already had 3 in-house staff working on this just for sound.

The stage crew (all one of them) started to bring up all our odd rostra and old blacks which over the course of the day were artfully designed into a ‘mound’, unevenly starting at stage level and rising to a few metres high behind the musicians platforms.

Meanwhile the  single fly man was beginning to program moving sequences with every empty flying bar going from just over head height to high up in the fly tower.

Lunchtime came and went with another sound tech joining the fray to get it up and running for the delayed sound check (issues with the IEM’s and a very long look at how to artistically arrange 75kgs of mylar confetti on the legs to turn the black mound into a silver mound)

It was about this time (mid afternoon) that we were informed that the support band – who we were supplying all the sound kit for – would not be sharing the main sound desk, despite that having been what was agreed the previous week.

Thus at the point at which the in-house sound team was expecting to start taking staggered breaks, and while a lifesize wooden artists doll was being given the instruction to look ’surprised’  we had to both keep an eye (ear) on the ongoing sound check, we also had to work out how to run in an additional desk to control the system without affecting what was already going on.

The main sound check over run, in part due to a runaway (flyaway) helium balloon with a 4m diameter and at the point at which the house was meant to be opened we had just about squeezed the support act into a narrow strip in front of the main set-up. As the main act had borrowed a couple of our monitors for their own use, it turned out lucky that we still had the additional hired speakers from the previous day.

We didn’t get much of a sound check for the support group (a great band called Blue Roses who are worth checking out) and unluckily their gig suffered a little for it – somewhat ironically as one of the band had mentioned as we were setting them up that they weren’t certain going into this one that it was a good idea …

Under-crewing and not staying to schedule are never good …

The main act had a good show which the audience seemed to enjoy greatly (no IEM issues for those concerned) but a couple of the strings clip mics failed right before the start for no particular reason – one of which was the spare.

It took several hours to get everything out the door afterwards, which included having to reclaim as much mylar as possible. The mess from the two large confetti cannons (didn’t I mention them?) we kindly left for housekeeping …

I was disappointed in this show – not for the actual performance but for the organisation. We never saw a sound channel list for the main act, the lighting plan turned up with three days to spare, and while lighting had half a dozen people, both stage and sound were severely under-crewed. Only the fact that we had put extra people on the day out of our own pocket allowed them to put the show on and only then at the expense of the support band.

If you ever work alongside or for Metropolis music, be warned. They may be fine with you, and I hope they are, but they can also cut administrative corners if they think it’ll save them a little money.

Trying banking the goodwill instead …

Anyways, with that show gone, I took a couple of days off as two days into my working week I had worked over half my  contracted hours and spend them finishing the End of Course Assignment for my Open University course.

Of course, I may have been away from the theatre but the theatre was still going and another show was taking it’s place upon our stage.

Another contemporary piece, it was a revisit for a pair of dancers who have performed several times. This time, the addition was a film crew for DVD release. I’ve talked about this show previously  (though I seem to have misplaced the link …) so I won’t say much more about it. It was well received and the company know what they are doing – though the stack of CD’s for it gets bigger, the scratches in those CD’s get longer and it does seem as though some of the tracks’s should go back into the studio for the amount of EQ changes they make.

Then they leave and overnight the lighting went back into the rig for the schools show, back this time with the same running order but with eight new schools providing their versions.

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Though we mostly left everything the same, we did make a couple of changes. Firstly, we made sure that there was crew for assembling the steel deck.

One of the brass monitors was moved to provide some extra support for the solo singers, we dropped a PCC160 and swopped the cardiod heads on the SE300 for the choir with two rifle heads and two Beyer MCE shotguns for better coverage

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The band had some different members on guitar/bass and the choirs this time had better singing voices, though that wasn’t true of all the soloists … but on the whole the show was as it had been a week before.

Then that show was gone and we had the next company in, this time a ballet company with two programmes based on Diagheliv, who 100 years old probably turned ballet into the style as recognised today. These programmes have been making the news recently, though this has more to do with Coco Chanel being involved in the design and construction of some of the principle costumes than for any Ballet Russes related items.

We’ll tend to remember it for having a pre-show talk and a post show talk while being archived and having a separate film crew all on the same day(different strokes for different folks and all that).

And while the critics, and the patrons, have mostly been appreciative, I do remember one gentleman present for the post-show talk who took offence at one piece that was a re-interpretation rather than a revival and spend a good five minutes or more haranging the post show panel for their choice of including this in the programme.

Purists …