So as I mentioned yesterday, I had to head to Philly today to take my continuing nightmare show out… So many thing have been so miserable with this entire production that I have found my level of shock has been raised… What I mean is that, on any other production, I would have been outraged if there was no coffee/tea/soda for the entire tech week… Since that happened on this show, it just seemed to be another minor bit of the continuing stupidity… Today was no different… Allow me to explain…
I got up today at 5am to get to the theatre, ready to break down at 8am… Naturally, I was a little early, so I wasn’t surprised that the only other people around were the two truck drivers for the semi’s… Around 7:50, the Production Manager came around, and asked if I had seen anyone, which of course I hadn’t… Well come 8:00, and there isn’t any crew, I accept that somehow the day is winding itself up to a major SNAFU… PM tells me that they had discussed striking at 9am, and perhaps they had gotten confused… Of course they had also discussed striking on Saturday, as well as Next Sunday, so that offered me little hope… Several phone calls later, I am informed that there was a breakdown someplace between company management, and the theatre management… The theatre isn’t even sure if they can release the set to us… (that translates to, they don’t know if the tour owes them any more money yet) So, I’m told, to wait while they work it out… As a side note, I’m standing in an alley at this point and the temp is around 36 degrees… As you might imagine I am not thrilled with the idea of waiting around… Some time later, about the time I was loosing feeling in my fingers and toes, I am informed that we will indeed be striking today, and they were working on getting us in the space so we can start the process while they somehow pull a crew in to do this, and load the trucks… Well we got the set down, and just started to load the truck, when I find out I am now putting scenery on the wrong truck… Apparently there is going to be some shuffling of sound and lighting equipment, so they were shipping that back on a 48’ truck as opposed to the 53’ truck we usually use… You’re thinking hey, its only 5’ right?... Let me tell you, 5’ makes a massive difference, especially since I had to haul the musical instruments on my scenery truck this time too… So we had to unload the scenery, and swap trucks… Now by the time I have the alley cleared of cars to swap trucks and start them moving, sound and lights finished up striking, and suggested they load first since their truck was there… I’m thinking, hey, that’s logical, so we put the trucks back where they were, and load sound and lights… Unfortunately, the sound and lights guys want their truck to leave immediately, which will be difficult since we’re backed into a one way alley, barely one truck wide, and the trucks are heading the wrong direction on that alley… The logical thing to do, is back sound and lights up 70’, take 40 minutes to load my scenery, and they both pull out together… Alas it was not to be as the sound and lights guys whined louder than I did, so we lost another 30 minutes to that debate and the great truck swap… So finally I got my truck in, and now everyone is tired, and cranky, and my scenery is getting tossed around… They’re bringing units on the truck so fast I could barely figure out where they go, and the pack is a massive mess… I am hoping desperately that I didn’t forget to strap anything, but I’m just not sure… I have a sinking feeling I’m going to have lots of damage (aka Road Rash) to figure out in the next venue…
The point of all this, is that somehow, while I am irritated about all of this, I’m not in the least shocked… Somehow no matter how simple something is, and strikes are pretty damn simple folks, it is almost guaranteed to go horribly wrong when working on this show… Today is also the last time I am polite and allow sound/lights to get out the door before me… They can wait ‘till hell freezes over from now on. My day went from what should have been 3 hours to 7 hours… I can’t wait until this crappy show tanks…