Way out West (incorporating Way up North)

Rio stories part tries.

Too many phones, not enough people. Every one of the festival people we have encountered has two phones, not only that but they ring constantly. Raphael, our minder/official time user, is called by his manager every 15 minutes without fail, and every day has to give a report on our activities. Not surprisingly the turns are beginning to rebel, and are refusing to be taken to lunch/dinner, nor do they want to be whisked past interesting places in a minibus with blacked out windows. Our hosts are very charming and generous, but they have obviously decided that we aren’t safe out and have to be kept occupied at all times.

Tonight my production manager and I eschewed the common herd and decided to go eat in the locality, we had previously stopped for a beer at a bar/charcoal pit diner, and were rather taken by the staffs’ obvious liking for their own food, when we were sitting there they were forever cooking bits and pieces for themselves, always a good sign in my opinion. Our food was very good, I had a spit roasted mini-chicken and my colleague a skewer with about a pound of beef on it, the bill for both meals, with beers and salad, came to about £10.00. On our way back we stopped at a beach front kiosk for a caiparinha, the local speciality drink: crush limes and sugar together, add about a pint of the local spirit, shake vigorously with some ice and stand well back. I think I’ll sleep through any traffic events tonight.

Friday: At last we are allowed into the theatre, and very rapidly it becomes clear that whilst there have been a lot of e-mails flowing, and a lot of information sent, none of it has percolated down to the right people. Extra lighting equipment has been hired in to supplement the frankly suicidal lanterns that the venue owns, but nobody has a list. We shouted and screamed to get a 9.00 am get-in, which was fine, our transport was late because Raphael had to drop his report off at the office, but it didn’t matter because the crew were later, and the hired lights weren’t due to arrive until 11.00 (eventually turning up about 12.00). My situation is relatively straightforward, despite the best efforts of the local crew to make it seem otherwise, it is a small, fairly uncomplicated design, meant to look shabby. I would expect to be able to deal with it in a couple of hours without having to stress, twelve hours later we are still not done, and the house electricians desire to be helpful, from a point of total misunderstanding, has made things even slower. The festival technical manager has spent the whole day sitting in the front row of the stalls, shouting into her two telephones, not very productively it has to be said.

The poor sound bloke (my production manager), has had an even worse day; his brief is very uncomplicated, two cd players, three microphones and a reverb operated from a desk onstage (and feeding a pair of speakers onstage, about which more anon), with a feed going to the front of house sound desk. A large part of the show revolves around these two crap, clichéd roadies (actors, obviously), who generally torment the other performers (I don’t know where they got this from, we’re lovely, mostly). Suffice it to say, there are endless microphone checks, insensitive use of smoke etc, etc.

The point is that someone from the theatre saw the technical requirements and said; ‘they don’t need all this stuff, the house system is fabulous, we can do it all without having to put a desk onstage’, so we were a little put out to find that the sound hires weren’t turning up until 2.00, and more put out to discover that they had cut almost all of it. This afternoon has seen a procession of noise boys bringing stuff to us, only to be told it won’t do. The classic is the two onstage speakers, these are moved about by the roadie actors, but they are also stood on, and at one point a woman in a gorilla costume climbs on one and pours beer and water all over herself (The show is non-ironically titled ‘Bloody Mess’). The sound company produced a pair of powered speakers (ie, they have an amplifier built in), the idea of adding beer and water to this equation was not attractive. The current impasse is two non-identical speakers, one grey, one black, but apparently all that is available in the whole of Brazil. Oh well, tomorrow is another day, and more importantly, the opening night, whatever happens we’ll have a show, a few hours tomorrow morning should fettle it.

posted by Lampy @ 10/07/2006 02:03:00 am