oh the horror, oh the humanity...
Welcome to Newcastle in freshers week, in a theatre that has barely re-opened after a four year closure and a major refit. Our Hotel is lurking in that philosophical chasm that exists between demolition and refurbishment; there are no phones, the lift (to our top floor rooms) is broken, and all the paint is missing from the walls. Back at the theatre, our crew are young, mainly inexperienced (read cheap), new to the venue and talk too much, they also possess boundless enthusiasm and still appear to enjoy their work.
My colleague was Chief LX (electrician) here in the 1870's and has been on a massive nostalgia trip ever since we arrived in town earlier in the week. So far, most of his favourite haunts have been demolished/turned into student pubs/or improved, however, we struck lucky with the Crown Pasada pub; a long narrow wedge shaped bar, it has to rank alongside the Vicky Bar in Glasgow as a great place for a drink. Among its minimal entertainment facilities it has an old valve record player on the bar and a pile of dodgy old LPs, customers are invited to play the records or bring their own.
We have brought two shows to the Northern Stage, and a small exhibition (to complete the set of performance areas). We were the first show in on Stage 2, and it was a wierd experience, trying to fit up while the house boys were grinding bits off the seating rostra and smacking things with sledge hammers. They all seemed curiously detached from the idea of putting on a show, a feeling that I have had since I got here. As has been said about so many new venues, it'll be nice when it's finished.
Tonight an overwhelming need for a pee (something to do with the local bars 'buy one get one free' policy on beer) drove me into the Eldon Square shopping centre, all I can say is that it is the most unpleasant shopping space I have ever been in, the architects, planner and operators should all be shot before they are tempted to commit the crime again. They have the biggest and best M&S I have ever seen, and apart from that and a John Lewis, it is chav city. The ceiling height is about seven foot, the lighting is bright and very artificial, signage is minimal and assumes that you know where you are. I shudder to think what it would be like for someone with a visual handicap.
Oh well, rant over, next week I am taking the blog to Rio for a dirty week, more reports then I guess.
shoe people
This is not a posting about Imelda Marcos, or yet another investigation of the curious phenomenon of foot fetishism (apologies to googlers). No indeed, this refers to that much darker perversion; the childrens TV spin-off theatre show. These are almost inevitably tawdry and cheap, the performers are either recent graduates trying desperately to earn enough to survive, or booze hardened veterans who just don't care about the indignity of it all anymore.
In fairness, I should point out that there are quality, non-exploitational theatre companies out there, producing wonderful, imaginative childrens theatre. Whirligig and the Polka Theatre for Children are spectacular examples. What we are talking about here, however, is the shoddily produced, brightly coloured version of a saturday morning cartoon. If you've ever worked in a receiving house you will have done them all; Fireman Sam, Postman Pat etc, etc. They are usually shoehorned in on top of another show (to cut costs), and will have minimal sets and staging (ditto). The performers are entirely anonymous as generally speaking, they will be wearing enormous polystyrene heads and padded costumes to mimic the character, a bonus here (see note about cutting costs) is that one performer can play several parts, as long as there aren't too many characters onstage at any one time. There will also be 'the gimmick'; Postman Pats' Van (a golf buggy with added polystyrene), Fireman Sams' Fire Engine (A council rubbish trolley with more polystyrene), these will lumber clumsily onto stage for no perceptable reason, and then will have to reverse off again because there isn't room for them to turn round without demolishing the scenery.
The show which still brings me out in a cold sweat when I remember it was 'The Shoe People'. I had (and have) never seen the programme, but I was given to understand that it achieved a similar level of nauseating banality to that of 'The Flumps' (why did that never make it onto the stage I wonder?). The premise being that somewhere in an Enid Blyton landscape there is a town (Shoe Town) inhabited by lovingly stereotypical shoes, each one of which has a 'personality' to match its type; thus we meet margo the ballet shoe (dippy but loveable), pc boot ( crusty but loveable police boot), trampy ( dopey but loveable old tramps boot), do you sense a throughline here?. I have absolutely no idea how many single shoes inhabited this fictional place, when I encountered the stage show we had six performers and several more shoe characters.
The actual prop shoes were enormous, a sort of fibreglass and polystyrene pedalo in which the performer sat, all expression (which was limited) was achieved by manipulating eyes and mouth. Because they were sitting in giant shoes, all the turns were on radio mics, and this is where my traumas began. As this was a low budget operation (have I mentioned this?), they didn't tour a sound person, and for some reason, I drew the short straw. I was reassured that it would be fine by the DSM (deputy stage manager), he would be on cans (talkback headphones) and there was a very good plot-sheet. First show all started swimmingly, the DSM would tell me who was coming onstage, and I would fade up their radio mics as soon as I saw them trundle onstage. The point where it started to go wrong was when the DSM told me the name of the next character on and then said 'just going off cans for a minute', blow me, ten seconds later he came onstage dressed in a pinstripe suit (not a shoe costume) and sang a song. I was getting confused now, without the DSM I was lost, I had no idea who any of the characters were, and there were only wiggling eyes and mouths to indicate that someone was speaking. Most of the time I got it right, but there were moments of sterotypical radio mic chaos when someone was speaking, and I then faded up the wrong fader producing either silence, the sounds of an argument in the dressing room, a toilet flushing, or someone phoning his booky. The rather stupefied Birmingham audience who were present at this spectacle took it all in their stride, either their expectations weren't very high, or the Wooster Group meets Harold Pinter version of the show that I had contrived to create was exactly what they wanted.
After the show had come down, I went backstage with a certain degree of trepidation, expecting at the very least a small rocket, far from it, the DSM, who was also the company manager, thanked me, and said he thought it had gone very well. Begging the question, what on earth had it been like when it had gone badly?
I've done some research, here are the lyrics of the theme song;
Every time you're skipping down the streetThink about the shoes upon your feet, todayIt's a magic world when your toes uncurlSh-sh-sh-shoe peopleSh-sh-sh-shoe peopleSh-sh-sh-shoe peopleSh-sh-sh-shoe peopleSh-sh-sh-shoe peopleSh-sh-sh-shoe peopleWhat've you got between you and the groundWhen you want to dance of simply run aroundThere's some friends down there to take you everywhereSh-sh-sh-shoe peopleSh-sh-sh-shoe peopleSh-sh-sh-shoe peopleAll good stuff as you can see, more horror stories later.
By request, here are a couple of images:
bad hair day
I'm slowly recovering from the industrial hideousness that was PLASA, I looked at the new lighting desk, and very nice it is too. It'll be even nicer when they've finished it. When I go to these events I get depressed very quickly, there is so much stuff, and the place is full of suits trying to convince you that their product is the best, cheapest and most reliable.
Genus techy seems to divide into two groups, essentially the old and the young, the old is recognisable by a general stoutness, the thinning hair is in some way individual, a pony tail perhaps, or just wild bushiness. Things that might have been quite endearing in a younger man, and just look silly now. The younger version is mostly skinny and knobbly, wears jeans, and a black t-shirt advertising some technological product or other (alternatively some sort of obscure and grungy rock band may find favour). This is definitely the accreting stage, anything that can be clipped onto a belt or hooked onto a belt loop will be; if a junior techy falls into water, he will drown, unless he can get his jeans off.
I make it a point of honour to try and avoid collecting too much stuff on these occasions, I do not really want a house filled with product catalogues any more. Swag, on the other hand is quite fun, and can become a mildly competetive and slightly silly game, this year I managed to acquire a thermos coffee mug, a stick on LED torch, another LED torch designed to go on the belt (oh dear), and several chocolates. I avoided the infinite number of pens and only took one catalogue. I was meeting a friend at the exhibition, and he phoned me to ask where I was; 'next to the stand with the belly dancer on,' was my reply. 'That's where I am' he said, 'but I can't see you'. 'I'm on the corner, behind a large bloke with really bad hair.' As I spoke, I looked around me and realised that every corner was populated by large blokes with really bad hair. We met up eventually.
The other thing I was doing yesterday was putting a bet on at the local auction rooms, my sister (as readers of The Deep North will know) is writing a biography of the painter Edward Burra, and I spotted one of his drawings in the auction. I was quite pleased to win it, and not for the maximum bid either. When I went in this morning to pick it up, I was amazed by how byzantine and inefficient the sale room was, rather like my own office, all relevant and irrelevant data was contained in great wobbly piles of paper. It took at least 40 minutes to locate the invoice, find my deposit cheque and so on, despite the presence of a number of computers these seemed to be treated with great suspicion. In many ways it is quite reassuring to find a company that is just muddling along, doing things their own way and apparently thriving. On the other hand, it is faintly irritating that they don't seem to be able to get the invoices out without jumping through all sorts of hoops.
uber geeks
Tomorrow I am going to that haven for the techy, and the would be techy; the PLASA show at Earls Court (PLASA is the professional lighting and sound association). I see it as something of a necessary evil, whilst the place is overrun with pasty faced spotty geeks with ponytails and pubic beards, their hips clanking with enormous bunches of keys, I do get to meet a lot of genuine colleagues, and most years I pick up some work.
I am also going to a two hour seminar on a new lighting board, I made the mistake of telling someone I thought it looked very pretty, and now I have to spend two hours in a hotel room with an intense american. Generally speaking, when I play with a new board I manage to crash it with in about 10 minutes, my record is finding six software bugs in about five minutes. This is not, I hasten to add because I am some sort of computer maestro, but rather that if I don't quite know how to do something, I tend to blunder about trying different things rather than look up the instructions (old techy saying: if all else fails, read the manual).
Anyway, if anything mildly entertaining occurs at this festival of flashing lights and muted sound, I'll report back tomorrow.
more bigger snacks now!
I was, rather against my will, over at the Brick Lane Music Hall on friday, essentially to recover some lanterns that had been left in the rig there for two and a half years, and which, apparently, the gig I have been on today could not do without. The main reason that they had been left in was that they were positioned on top of the high lighting trusses which run the full length of the building on either side. These trusses are not accessible at all points, which makes rigging awkward. When I spoke to the proprietor and told him that I was coming in to remove these instruments, I told him that I would be bringing a truss monkey to speed things up. When I turned up with said truss monkey, a very nice former student of mine, the greatest living exponent of music hall asked me with great puzzlement; 'Why did you need to bring someone else? I thought you had a truss monkey.'
'He is the truss monkey,' I replied. I am still trying to work out what he thought I meant in the first place.
Today I have been working at the home of Blubena (tm), I had forgotten how massively bureaucratic their procedures were, in order to be issued with your contractors pass, you have to fill out duplicate A4 sheets, read a health and safety booklet, sign in triplcate and tear out the last page, watch a video, and finally go to another part of the building where a security guard painfully copies (by hand) all the information contained on one of the sheets of A4. Whilst standing in line, (as you might imagine, it takes quite a while for 15 people to be processed), I actually read my health and safety handbook and was somewhat baffled to notice among the list of mandatory safety equipment was a shepherds crook. I can understand hard hats and safety goggles, but this item hasn't featured in my working experience so far.
I am truly grateful that I am not expected to attend the actual conference, there is a three hour workshop and brainstorming session on Horlicks for example. The funny thing is, when you meet these people under ordinary circumstances, they all seem quite normal, it's only when they get together that wierdness ensues. We have a room full of cement mixers and miscellaneous construction equipment, and another where the floor has been marked out as a football pitch, these are presumably laboured marketing analogies, it all goes straight over my head I'm afraid.
wall, oh wall
Those among you who have been eagerly waiting for news of the wall, I know that you can be numbered on a cartoon hand, but still, bricks have always been a minority interest. Here we go, as of about 3.00 pm we are now in possession of a fine fettled 120' brick wall. The rude mechanicals have raked the paths, spread the earth and sowed the banks with wild thyme seeds (I made that bit up, I already sowed the banks with wild thyme, it died).
All is well, the neighbours are happy and their daughters have stopped feeding apple crumble to the workers, for which they are probably very grateful (the girls collect up all the fallen apples each day, but sadly their culinary repertoire is very limited, so crumble it is). If I'm feeling very charitable I'll buy them an apple cookbook.
Now that the wall is done, we have a bit of a lacuna where the flower bed used to be, in many ways it's quite nice to have a blank canvas, on the other hand there's over 90' of bare earth to fill, eek! I guess it'll be bulbs for christmas, columbia road in the spring.
pyjama case
The AP's cat is on good form, she just been in to the vets for her annual MOT, and passed with flying colours. Not only that but she has lost nearly a kg in weight, this is entirely due to her being restricted to 50g of cat food a day, and not being able to steal food from my cat.
No matter, she is now a svelte 5.2kg in weight, and the vet says that if she keeps it up she'll be at her correct bodyweight by next year. So congratulations to her!
deckchairs on the titanic...
You know how it is when somebody asks you to do a show, and you know it's going to be bad, but somehow you can't imagine how bad. Rather foolishly I agreed to light a music festival in the Chilterns this weekend, located in the village where one of my principle employers is based, the upside was that many of the other freelancers I work with were going to be doing it, the downside was that it was for 'chariddy' and I wasn't going to be paid anything. Now, if you offered me a choice between sitting in a pub carpark in the Chilterns for twelve hours listening to home counties heavy-metal bands with pseudo-american accents and poking lighted cigarettes in my eyes I would be hard pressed to make a choice. Still, once a promise is made, however foolishly, it's not easy to get out of it.
Things didn't start too well, when I got the call asking me to hire a van as they hadn't organised any transport. We prepped so much stuff that we repacked the van four times, and then had to pack the overflow into another car. When we eventually arrived onsite, it didn't look too promising, the stage had been built by a local scaffolding firm, and the weather protection provided by rather domestic looking green tarpaulins. As it was already raining when we arrived on friday evening, we concentrated on putting the lighting in, and weatherproofing it, leaving the PA system for the morning. The stage surface was made up from scaffolding planks, wobbly and with up to a 2" gap in some places, not a place for high heels.
Yesterday morning the rain had stopped, although there were some impressive pools weighing down the tarpaulin over the stage. It was, however, rather breezy, and the weather protection a tad on the inadequate side. As we started setting up, it became pretty obvious that the tarpaulins weren't really very robust, as the eyelets quickly tore free, leaving the edges flapping in the wind, the roofing crew came back and made reinforcements at regular intervals, and somehow we got it all in. My original control position had been in the car park, under one of those garden gazebo tent things, once erected I watched it blow away over the fields and opted for somewhere that offered more protection. This was the catering tent, I was a bit dubious about sharing a tent with a barbecue, but a thirty foot army tent has a reassuring solidity that I felt (as it turned out erroneously) would be more sensible.
Even with ever darkening skies and scudding clouds there isn't much for a lampy to do on an outdoor festival, just put up a decorative lighting state and do the crossword and wait for the sun to go down. My restful afternoon was interrupted midway through the second band when my tent decided to partially collapse and attempt to blow away. Fortunately there were several beefy rugby types around, and they were persuaded to stand on the tent edges while a solution was sought. Eventually all the half barrels of flowers from around the pub were carted over to help weigh it down. While this worthy activity was being carried out, a shout from the front of the pub was followed swiftly by the green flapping object that had been the admissions tent, did I mention that it was rather windy?
Just as the cake stall and the tombola were being carried into the beer tent (this was a rather home counties music festival), even though it was a professionally erected 60' edifice, it too opted to go with the flow and collapse, its sole occupants being a nun and a collection of patients and their carers from the local mental hospital. For a time, the band, gamely playing on against all odds, were witnessed only by groups of struggling men and women, each one either hauling on a guy rope or hammering in a tent peg. Eventually the beer tent was brought under control, and extra ropes and pegs were brought in. The rural nature of the gig was brought home to us by the sudden appearance of a trailer load of straw bales, mostly to be used as sound baffles, but eventually as audience seating, the loose nature of the straw meant that the audience was machine gunned by stalks, and whipped with straw dust.
During all this mayhem no-one was paying much attention to the stage, or the stage covering, one of the crew, the curiously appropriately named Mad Stu, had done some of the rigging, and had rigged a worklight over the stage. As he is; a) lazy and b) afraid of ladders, he hadn't tightened it up very tightly, naturally the wind, flapping tarpaulins and vibrations were more than enough to vibrate it loose, and it fell from the roof, dangling unnoticed about six inches above the head of one of the band members (the band in Ill.2, picture after offending lamp was removed). I had the mild embarrassment of going onstage with a ladder and taking it down during their set, the audience of two nuns, a dog and the bands various mates watched in slight bewilderment.
At no point during proceedings had the wind in any way abated and eventually the stage covering was removed, as it did nothing other than flap dangerously. We had two more bands, who were a living example of the value of contraception and then it began to rain. The headline band, formed by the former drummer from The Jam, which sounded like nothing other than The Jam, decided that they wouldn't play on the outdoor stage, but they were prepared to play indoors in the function room. At this point, the organiser, who had breakfasted on Stella Artois and kept his energy up with industrial strength spliffs, told us to shut the stage down. We were instructed to move the PA into the function room, as it had taken five hours just to set up the sound, this wasn't an option that filled us with enthusiasm.
After four hours of derigging and a further two hour drive round the M25, I finally crawled into my bed around five a.m. I can't say that I felt that any of it was worthwhile, still they did make a little money.
