PANTS

So I'm breaking my almost year-long internet silence to talk about something REALLY IMPORTANT- black pants.

Pants shopping for women is always a difficult/stressful experience- arbitrary sizing, muffin tops, etc. Shopping for black pants to wear backstage is about 1 million times more difficult.

It is actually absurdly hard to find black pants that not only fit, but also:

-Have belt loops

-Have normal pockets

-Are made of some sturdy, denim-like material (ie not spandex or linen or some dress slacks synthetic fabric blend or HORROR OF HORRORS corduroy)

-Are actually solid black, without holes or artful fading or glitter

-Are not either ultra-skinny-leg jeggings or super retro huge flares.

I have a pair of show pants that I wear 80% of the time backstage. They are perfect. I've had them for about three years, and they are beginning to fade. I'd given up hope of finding another pair, and was seriously considering buying a bottle of rit and dying them back to their former glory.

But today, miracle of miracles, I FOUND THEM AGAIN. And not only that, but they were on sale- buy one get one free. I am the proud owner of TWO new pairs of the perfect black show pants... I just have to find room in my suitcase to get them home with me!

And yes- I am so excited about black show pants, I'm writing a whole blog post about them.

meanwhile, back at the ranch...

SO it's been almost a month since my last post... I'm going to recap some stuff in bullet points.

-We survived The Miracle Worker. It was an excellent run of an excellent show. The set turned out gorgeous, and although I never actually saw them, I've been told that the lights were gorgeous too.

-We survived The Producers too! The actor who stepped in to play Max did a fantastic job, and the reviews of the show were fantastic. We struck that show last night...

-So about The Producers... the set for that show was so intense/had so many moving parts that we ended up getting the lighting designer, the ATD, the sound intern, and the carpentry intern to be our run crew, in addition to the 3 run crew members we already had. We tried at first to get by with crew and actors moving the set, but the scene changes took forever and were just dangerous, so we ended up with shop staff doing it. It worked out so well, though- it took 2 of the guys to move each wagon, where it took 4 actors to do it, and they did it in half the time.

-Another fun thing about The Producers is that there was not enough room backstage to store all of the set pieces, furniture, and props, so we set up a big pavilion tent outside and at intermission, we rolled up the elephant door and switched out stuff that was only used in Act I for stuff that was only used in Act II. It was ridiculous. There were also times (like the Accountant scene in Act I that required 5 rolling desks with chairs attached) that furniture came offstage and literally just kept going straight out the back door. We were scared about what would happen if it rained, but we got super lucky- there was only one night that it rained, and it held off till right after Intermission. We knew it was coming and did the shift in 7 minutes, literally running back and forth between the backstage and the scene shop, where we were keeping all of the props that could be damaged in the rain. It was really windy and the clouds were just black, and almost as soon as the Entr'acte was done, the bottom fell out. We group-hugged and said a prayer of thanks to Thespis and Dionysus for holding off the rain for us.

-A perk of having half of the tech staff on the run crew instead of high school apprentices was that things got fixed really fast, sometimes within minutes of it breaking onstage. That was super helpful when it came to things like the gun that kept misfiring or facing coming off of platforms as we move them on and off stage.

-Also, while all of this Producers craziness was happening, I was in rehearsal for Alice in Wonderland. I have neither the time nor the inclination to open the can of worms that is the recap of the rehearsal process for Alice at this moment, so that will wait for another time.

Silly rumors!

So Winny's ex worked at Weathervane a few summers ago, and when he found out I was working here he was like "Oh no, I wish you'd told me before you accepted the job there- their SM quit halfway through the summer because the company was so awful!" which of course freaked me the hell out. I finally got the skinny on what actually happened- two years ago (my SM's first summer here), the current SM was hired as the ASM, and this girl got hired as the SM. She quit after the first week, on her day off, and didn't even tell anyone. So they bumped the ASM up to PSM, which is the job she's had for 2 years now. According to her, the original girl was a terrible SM to start with. Anyway, that makes me feel a LOT better. I mean, nothing that I have experienced so far would make me think that conditions here would drive someone to quit- most of the backbone of the staff is the same as it was 2 years ago, and they're all pretty great.
We "ran" the whole show today, sort of. It's rough not having a stage crew yet to handle the scene changes. What's worse is that a lot of the furniture will be on wheels, so it can be moved on by one person, but our rehearsal furniture isn't, so it takes 2 people to move it. I can't wait until I'm not the one having to carry this furniture around!

Also, I found out an interesting tidbit today- Weathervane's tech rehearsals are from 5PM-midnight, which SUCKS, and is NOT the norm. Turns out that the reason they're so late at night is because the theatre wasn't fully enclosed (hence the current incomplete renovation) and they couldn't start tech rehearsal until it got dark, because they couldn't set any light cues while there was still daylight. My SM was hoping that since we have a roof now, we could move the rehearsals earlier in the day, but the answer to that request was a resounding no- they've scheduled focus and scenic painting to be on stage during the day, so it's a no-go on us moving earlier. That was such a foreign concept for me- having to start tech at night because of the daylight. Also, we're concerned about actors not being used to actual blackouts now. We'll see what happens on Monday!