oh to be in Yorkshire now that summer's here...
I'm back in the south to do a show, one of the rare occasions when my employers play a show in their home town. I've been very slowly retracing my steps from a tour I did in 1992 (see previous blog about Bristol), my next date back then, was a certain theatre, best known for presenting the snooker once a year. Co-incidentally, the then production manager is now my colleague, I don't remember much about him except that he was rather bad tempered, plus ca change...I went in to the theatre today to do a bit of a prerig, my colleague is en-route from Korea, and we're snatching a bit of time. Although the theatre has been closed for most of the last couple of years for 'refurbishment', re-opening annually for the snooker, of course, it looked much as I remembered, if even less practical. They have a fancy new electronic flying system, which seems mostly to work, and there was a huge lighting rig still up. I questioned this, and was told that they had been doing a special gig just to show off all the new equipment that they had acquired as a part of the refurbishment. I was puzzled; 'some of these lights must be at least forty years old?'
The reply was equally baffling, 'yes, they didn't buy us any new ones.'
Turns out that they had been given a huge hire budget for the gig, so anyone who attended would have been given the impression that they had a state of the art lighting rig, rather than state of the ark as it actually is.
If there's anything positive to be drawn from the current financial state, then at least they've stopped building casinos in this town, the centre has been pretty much gutted in the interest of increasing property values, but that seems to have ground to a halt for now, long may that be the case.
posted by Lampy @ 4/02/2009 07:12:00 pm
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