When I first looked at the contract I skimmed over the chicken scratched technical rider and didn't think much about it until my first phone call to the venue. When I started inquiring about rigging and our carpentry needs the venue TD, Tom Henning, paused and with possibly a little trepidation in his voice and told me that the venue was not a theatre, but more of a larger church or concert hall with a thrust stage and no grid or proscenium.
Tom assured me that they would "create" a proscenium for our show and that they would be able to hang and build the show just as I would in a traditional theatre. Also, being that we had a show the day before, there would also be no way to load in the evening before and we were set for a school matinee at 11:30 AM. Oh...and the 'theatre' had to be dark at 10:30 for church who was to speak for 20 minutes. (It was in the contract, and there are just some things you can't bargain around.) This put our normal 4.5 to 5 hour load-in with a professional IA crew and a theatre at a grand total of 4-hours even. I was skeptical and eating antacids like candy. I knew from my experience in arena shows and rock concerts that doing this properly was a colossal task, and much more complicated than I could ever expect from a student crew in a very small town in Iowa.
I WAS DEAD WRONG! And never more happy to be it. Tom, Kendall, Martha and the rest of the crew got our show up in 3.5 hours, looking exactly as it was in a large professional theatre. They flew a large square truss with 9 chain-hoists, put my electrics and carpentry pipes dead on the money at distance and trim, and hustled to get the show off the truck and in the air. As the 9 motors started creeping upwards around and hour and a half after the truck door opened, the set of the Velveteen rabbit in its entirety slowly unfolded until it was at trim and the whole thing in one glorious thirty second climb stood before me as if Landis Smith himself had waved a magic wand and made it all appear.I was elated. This was one of the fastest load-ins we have had, all of the lights were circuited and focused and colored perfectly and it was in a non-traditional space to boot.
Then, just around the 4 hour mark, as the church organ was starting to play I discovered that the cross-stage data run, which in layman's terms makes all of the lights change color and the moving lights have motion, was run backwards. As I was trying frantically to figure out what to do, I stepped into the one place on stage that was not well lit and not 'railinged', far out of where I was supposed to be, and to add injury to insult... fell off of the stage. Great! A nasty bruise from a clumsy fall, and I still had to solve the problem of making the perfectly laid out and focused light plot work with absolutely no time to do it.
Tom, Martha, Kendall and the spectacular house crew stuck by me... with a ten minute house hold arranged, they guided me around the stage in a genie lift where i fought with the blasted cable to extract it from the mess that it was buried in. I was running out of time, and we had to open the house. I pulled a drop across stage just downstage of me working in the air and finished within 2 minutes of curtain.
Phew, I thought I was done, and that I could now get the show off without a hitch. Then I realized that in all of the excitement I hadn't yet given the sound guy the show's soundtrack. As I was sprinting to the light booth I turned back and somehow laid down my prompt book as I was grabbing the show CD. I sprinted back up the stairs and at 1 minute late started the soundtrack and called house to half. Smooth sailing from there.... Nope. I hit go on the light board...and...nothing happened... again I hit go....nothing. The board locked up. The board that I had been using all day and the whole tour without a hitch...locked up. I rebooted holding the house at half and finally the show was able to start.
It has to be alright now right? Nope. As i took the first few lighting cues from memory I looked down and realized that I had left my prompt book somewhere else. I hit a cue with about 1 minute until the next and started to sprint backstage to find it. Just as I got to the top of the staircase, another Luther College angel, Trudy the custodian, was already there handing it to me. Shout out to you Trudy, for being alert, and saving the show. I will never forget you.
Don't ever miss the chance to get to Luther College and work with the best local crew in the country! Heck, the Dave Matthews Band didn't when they recorded their album 'Live at Luther'.
I'm a little more relaxed in the past few days, and I say this to the rest of the country. Throw anything you got at me. I'm ready and I think I finally have my TD stripes...even if they are black and blue.
~Matt
(Kendall (far left), Tom (center), Martha (far right) and some of the Luther crew. (Thanks for the photo Tiffany!)
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