This week was a bit
of a mess. I think my brain fell out of my head and my body just kept going
through the motions without me…
We had our second
on stage day on Tuesday. It went well. After knowing what it’s like backstage
on the Festival theatre stage, it went way smoother for me. I knew what to
expect and what our plan was. I had forgotten to bring the shoes back down from
fitting sessions, so there was a bit of running around, as the shoes were not
brought back to the SM office after the fittings. At the end of the day, we
packed everything up, as there are 2 other shows sharing our space and we
weren’t back on stage until the end of the week.
Our next two
rehearsals were back in the rehearsal hall. Going back to a rehearsal room that
isn’t big enough for your show after being on stage and using the entire space
sucks. Besides the fact that everything has to be moved back into the room and
we had to reset the all the furniture and props and costumes, it feels like
you’re moving backwards. Unfortunately it’s just the way it works when you have
to share the stage with other shows. We didn’t have rehearsals Wednesday or
Thursday, but I didn’t look ahead at the Thursday morning fittings as I figured
I’d be able to bring the shoes up Wednesday night at the end of my office
hours. Wednesday after delivering the daily, I go down to the costume storage
for the Festival Theatre Stage so I can grab the shoes needed for Thursday’s
fittings. Both shoe baskets are missing… My costume rack is there, but no
shoes! It happened to be an early day for the crew and everyone had gone home
by 6:30 (my adventure started at 7) I spent an hour looking at all the places
they could have possibly been moved to (triple checking every location in case
I overlooked something) and then admit defeat. I go home and send an email to
my SM and the head of wardrobe “Hey, 2 baskets of shoes have been misplaced and
I can’t bring you so and so’s shoes for his fitting tomorrow afternoon. No one
is around to ask, so I’ll come in tomorrow morning and see if anyone knows
where the baskets have been moved to. So sorry…” About 10 emails are exchanged;
my SM stops by the theatre later in the evening to take a look and after about
45 minutes also gives up… The next morning I get an email from my SM saying the
shoes have been found, they were tucked away behind our set, in a dark corner that
can’t be accessed without moving the entire set back into place (or climbing
over walls and such to get to them). So the shoe situation gets sorted. Lesson
1: look ahead at fittings if you aren’t in rehearsal for a few days. Lesson 2:
Move things yourself to a place you know is safe… Until there’s a dresser on
the show (the dresser is the person that takes care of all the costume related
things once the show is in performance mode, they usually join us at our first
dress rehearsal) I’ll move things myself.
Thursday we have
rehearsal during the day and nothing from fitting has been brought back to me,
so I had to go up and look around for them as they were not in obvious places.
We also had to reset our room, so it was bit of a messy afternoon. I found most
of the shoes, but couldn’t find 3 pairs. I apologised to the actors and told
them I’d get them for the next day. At the end of rehearsal I bring shoes up to
wardrobe for the next day’s fittings. Everything seems fine…
Friday morning I get
an email from wardrobe looking for one of the actresses show wraps so they can
have it for her fitting. I completely forgot to bring that up for them (I had
brought her shoes, but as the costume piece is the only show piece we have
right now, it completely slipped my mind). They couldn’t find it on the
rehearsal rack, but that’s exactly where it was…my SM was in the building at
the time and found it immediately and brought it up to them. Thank you!!
Our next rehearsal
was Saturday night. Again, I didn’t get the shoes back, but this time I knew
where to look so it was a bit easier. I also didn’t get the wrap back and the
wardrobe department doesn’t work on weekends so there wasn’t anyone to ask…I
eventually found it and was grateful that I had come in early to find it. Saturday
night was our last rehearsal in the rehearsal hall, from now on we’d be working
on stage!! We did a run of the show and finished the night early. We had to do
a big cleanup of the room and the actors helped us rip up the tape. It felt
good to do our last move.
We hit the stage
Sunday night again, and started our ‘Q2Q’, here they call it a ‘tech work
through’. We’re a day a head as our show is really straightforward and simple,
Sunday was supposed to be our 3rd on stage day without tech, but
we’d already worked through all the spacing issues and were ready to move
forward. The other ASM and I have gotten into a good rhythm with our crew and
things are going pretty well on stage. In our first work through (a 2 hour
session) we got through act 1. The thing that slowed us down was the popping of
a Champagne bottle in the middle of Act 1…This stalled us for 45 minutes. It
was…special…if you want to know the whole story, I can share it in person. We
got through Act 1, did the transition into act 2 a few times and then called it
a night.
It was definitely
quite a week. I feel like I was in a place where I was starting to take things
for granted and that’s when things started to fall apart. I definitely made a
few stupid mistakes, didn’t do things that I should have done that I know how
to do properly…but I got to the end of my week and I definitely felt like I
hadn’t been performing at 100% so it’s time to get back on the horse and do
better, be stronger, work harder. Just because I’m a place of comfort doesn’t
mean I should slow down and not be at the top of my game. It’s been really slow
in the office this week on Sunday before my evening rehearsal I spent a few
hours mapping out the entire week of classes, fittings and events, making sure
we maximize our upcoming week for the entire ensemble. It felt good to use that
part of my brain again. I love scheduling and working on puzzles.
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