kiwitechgirl
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My old school produced the school's version of Les Mis, and being a sucker for punishment, I offered to go in and help out (we're lucky enough to be able to get amateur rights for Les Mis here, and I'd done a run of the full-scale version a few years earlier, so I had a pretty good idea of what it entailed and the challenges they'd face). I trained up a full SM crew - SM, DSM, and two ASMs, and helped them train up the running crew, and also spent three days making two gauzes fly properly (hemp house with very little drift, I had autotrip lines coming out my ears!). I have never seen anything like the way the entire company (technicians, stage management and actors) rose to the challenge; the whole city was talking about the show. I worked as running crew on the show, with the idea that I'd be there if the SM or ASMs needed help with anything, but they were about as far away from needing help as it was possible to be. The show was flawless; the DSM, who had never called a show before in her life, was outstanding, and the SM, ASMs and running crew couldn't have been more organised.
On final night, we had an auto-trip line chew through its pulley, meaning the gauze would fly out properly but wouldn't come all the way in. The SM was able to think through his options without panicking (after racing to the grid to inspect the damage to the pulley, I did make an executive decision that the gauze was not to be flown again, purely for safety reasons) and make a decision as to how the scenes which used that gauze were to be restaged, inform the cast of what was going on, and inform the DSM and lighting operators that they'd have to be ready to busk a few scenes to cover the changes. Unless you'd seen the show before, the only thing that you might have noticed was wrong was that during I Dreamed a Dream the gauze behind Fantine was about six feet off the deck on the stage right, it ran that smoothly. I was amazed at the presence of mind that the crew of 16 and 17 year olds displayed - real initiative, despite never really having done any large-scale theatre before. I was so proud of my crew, and I'd go back and do it again at the drop of a hat!
That experience was closely followed by a recent production of The Producers; I suspect it's the first time the show has ever been done with a crew of four (SM, ASM, lighting op, sound op) and so I was hugely reliant on the cast for scene changes on what was a very complicated set. They all rose to the challenge and although I have almost no recollection of what was a crazy, crazy production week (it's one great big multi-coloured blur in my head) we somehow got it opened safely - I think the gods of theatre were smiling on us that night, because it went almost without a hitch. My lighting operator was truly wonderful (I knew that before I started, and I would not have touched the show without him!) and we very quickly settled into a really wonderful show and had a brilliant 12-week season.[/i]
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