propitlikeithot: lies haha! Gotcha. I think I was mostly caught off guard by a non techblr…
lies haha! Gotcha. I think I was mostly caught off guard by a non techblr mentioning meatgate. It always surprises me when two seemingly unrelated people have a connection- I’ve seen it a couple times between sara Bareilles people and theatre or techblr and webseries. It’s a small world eh?
It is. But in point of fact, I have actual tech experience.
It was 36 years ago, during my senior year at Mira Costa High School. I was going out with my first real girlfriend. Her name was Nanette, and she was wonderful. She was also in drama.
I would go sit in the back of the theater and watch her rehearsing for that year’s play (she was one of the kids in God’s Favorite). After a week or so of this the teacher/director asked me if I’d help out with doing sound in the pit. I said sure; it got me a better view of rehearsals.
According to Nanette the reason the director asked me to do that was that the kid who was already doing sound was a big stoner and she (the director) didn’t trust him to get all the complicated cues right. And I had a reputation for being smart, so she thought I could help settle things down with my big brain.
The ironic thing was, the regular sound guy was really good at his job, and had it all down, while I didn’t know anything. It ended up that he only let me do one thing: press the Play button to start the set-change music between the first and second acts. I worked hard at my job, and got to where I could do it without screwing up, mostly.
The set change was really cool. We’d take the lights down and start the music (my one job! I felt so important), and then swap out a big set of the interior, with a half wall and a bunch of furniture, and replace it with the burned-out version. We didn’t have a curtain; we just did it in full view. Then we’d bring up the lights for Act II.
As we got closer to the show we worked on that set change, trying to make it faster. At one point we figured out we could save a few seconds by not taking the overstuffed chairs out through the wings, but instead just pushing them into the pit, where stoner guy and I would catch them. So I got a second job.
At the main performance, with a packed house, there was an audible gasp and an ovation when the lights came up for the second act.
It was the coolest moment of my high school career.
Reposted from http://ift.tt/1BvpuFK.
