Tales From The Past: Music Man AGAIN?

So, I totally intended to tell the story of how I ended up pouring water on my bandmate in the middle of a gig back in 2000, but for the life of me, I can't remember exactly why I did it. Neither can anyone else that was around. We came to the basic conclusion that he said something that really insulted me to the audience, but other than that, nothing...so back to the well of The Music Man in 1997 I go...

However, I think this might be one of the last significant stories from The Music Man, so there is that. There's also the time the house set came on to stage slightly crooked and managed to screw up a curtain as a result. Of course I have other stories from other shoes. I have at least one from Cinderella, a few more from Peter Pan, a couple from All My Sons, several from The Importance of Being Earnest, and countless from The Diviners (since we took that one overseas to England as well). So the theatre well is far from dry yet. My gain, your loss!

The Music Man gang, I'm front and center. John has the long hair up and to the right, Katy right above me, she comments here sometimes, especially after these stories...Justin not pictured.

Anyway, as I've mentioned in countless other recountings of goings down during The Music Man, I was the master flyman, responsible for the curtains, legs, scrims, and any flying scenic elements. I had my nice cozy fly loft gallery above the deck, and stayed fairly busy during the show.

Well, smack dab in the middle of the run, I came down with...well, something. Maybe the flu. Definitely a reaaaaaaaaally bad cold at the very least. But I was in bad shape. I don't remember much about that night, but I do remember bits and pieces.

I remember thinking "the show must go on" a lot.

I remember intermission being out on the loading dock and everybody telling me I looked terrible.

I remember heading back to the ladder up to the fly gallery, and finding my friend, and in a few years roommate, Justin starting his way up the ladder. I asked what he was doing and he told me that he was going to take over for me. I said something along the lines of "the hell you are, you don't know the cues" and somehow forced him off the ladder. Keep in mind that Justin has me by probably 70 lbs, easy, at this stage of my growth, and that I was dog sick. Not to mention that the cues were written down meticulously by me, and that my assistant flyman would probably have taken over for me, while Justin took his cues. Also not to mention that Justin was master flyman the year before for Peter Pan so it wasn't like he couldn't figure it out.

The gang years later. Justin pictured this time, on the left. I'm on the right. John's the one getting sorta headlocked by Katy. The other Katie and Ryan (or mrnumi as he comments on this blog as) fill out the group.

And that's pretty much all I remember. Apparantely, after seeing me on the dock, everyone convinced Justin (who was on shift crew, they move the scenery) to take over for me. After I put up a fight, Justin let it go. Probably shouldn't have, I was pretty bad. I mean, kind of dementia'ed bad. Oh well, the show must go on, and it did. And I'm still here to talk about it.

Tales From the Past: Oh, We Got Bubbles

So, another story from The Music Man. That was one eventful show. I told you about the Wet Tech, and I told you about how my brush with death. Now, for one of the funnier moments.

On the last night of the show, we would generally figure out some pranks. As I alluded to, but never actually outright mentioned, in The Great Mountain Dew Caper, we usually would try to hide it from the audience, because Chief, the head of the program, frowned on "changing things" on the last show. In fact, he would usually gather everyone in the "green room" (which was actually only our makeup room) to give a standard closing night lecture about this.

Well, one of the stage crews pranks (there were a few) was to put Simple Green in the town fountain in the opening scenes. Simple Green is a cleaning agent.

Only problem was, nobody coordinated or communicated on this.

So, show starts. I have a really great vantage point from up in the fly gallery. My assistant flyman and I look down, anticipating the small frothy show that was only for the actors. After a few seconds, we look at each other, because we both realize something is very, very wrong. Because it looks like a washing machine spilling over already. We stifle giggles, and right as I'm about to turn to my assistant to ask him what he thinks Joy, our stage manager, is gonna do, Joy's voice comes crackling over the headsets. And pardon my french here.

"What the HELL? What is coming out of the fountain? Who the fuck did that??"

Therein was the problem. Almost everyone did. At least five people surreptitiously added Simple Green to the fountain, thinking that no one else had. Miiiiiiiiiiistaaaaaaaaaake!

Luckily, most of the cast were in front of the fountain, singing the mainstay "Oh We Got Trouble," and blocked it from the audience, but Joy had a slightly higher angle from the control booth. Also, most of the bubbling over went behind the fountain.

However, this didn't stop the actors from noticing, and according to my sources down on the deck, many of them came off from the scene laughing and singing "Oh We Got Bubbles, Right Here in River City!"

The Quarter Life Crisis.

That would be the episode title if this story was an episode of How I Met Your Mother. Except they're in their mid to late 20s while I was 20...but I digress. Since I made the HIMYM reference I might as well frame this story as if it were an episode of said show.

Kids, have you ever wondered if people think to themselves, "how did I get to this place in life?" I'm sure a lot do, but I don't. I can trace my current life's direction, most especially my job, to the Quarter Life Crisis.

Some background is required. Fall of 97. I'm 19 soon to be 20. I've basically been named Assistant Manager of the retail store I was working for part time (it became official not long after). I stop going to college classes (though I obviously keep working on the shows at the theatre, because I've told quite a few stories about that particular show), but I make the mistake of not actually withdrawing from them. Cut to late winter/early spring 98. Said retail store fires me for really bogus reasons (that I heard were actually protested by a couple of store managers, which made me feel good, but let's look at this: I announced my intention to become a full manager and take over a vacant store after I basically ran the store I was an AM at until I inticed an old manager to come to it...and a week and half later, I'm being fired. Sheeeenanigans!! It's not the story, but let's just say that there was a new regional manager who had a vastly different agenda than the old, and was weeding out people she saw as being too latched in to the old...one of my old managers, right before the new RM drummed him out, tried to warn me, but I was 20 year old kid. Invincible. This was a very long parenthetical). Around the same time I receive the letter from the college, telling me that I've been academically dismissed, which is a nice way of saying "you flunked out, dumbass."

So, I learned a couple valuable lessons there...there's no such thing as job security, and if you stop going to classes, WITHDRAW FROM THEM.

Well, I guess I got used to working full time or something, because my first solution was to go to a temp agency. I started getting work almost immediately (being able to type really fast helps a lot in the temp world, no matter what gender you are, but believe it or not, I actually type faster now). Then, around late May, early June, I get an opportunity at a temp-to-hire position. Customer Service Call Center for the now defunct MCI Wireless. The first three weeks were in a isolated room being trained (though the last couple of days we started taking calls while being shadowed by an experienced employee, while being monitored by the rest of the class one by one...talk about pressure). I got in to that groove for about a month once the classes were over.

I was making decent money, but wow, not my kinda job. You were expected to always be on the phone and there were managers monitoring how long you kept your line off the queue list. But you also had to fill out a lot of paperwork depending on the nature of the call...so you'd have to learn to multi-task and do that paperwork while handling BS type calls, like angry guy doesn't like his bill, etc. That was easy, I'm not horrible at multi-tasking...but not in that enviornment. Too much stress. This was back in the days when cell phones didn't have the convenient packages with minutes per month/free nights and weekends and people used airtime WAY more so they were always pissed off at the size of their bills. And half the time I couldn't understand them because of various accents. Suffice to say, it started to take a toll on me. I really started living for lunch break and watching the clock a lot. Even though all the experienced people thought I was worth keeping, which they told me a lot. They had a lot of turnaround, after all, hence the temp-to-hire stuff.

Then, in August...The Quarter Life Crisis.

I woke up, and dragged my ass in to work. All the feelings that had been building about everything basically came to the surface at once after the first caller of the day. What am I doing? Why am I doing this? I can do better than this! Etc. I went out for a break (that was one cool thing that place had going for it...they recognized that it was unfair to let people have cigarette breaks but not give similar breaks for non-smokers), and walked around the building.

And in a way, the QLC (get it?) made me snap.

I walked back in, I grabbed the few personal effects I had at my cube, and I walked to the floor manager and said "sorry, I can't do this anymore, I'm out." And proceeded to leave while they were still spluttering.

I do kinda feel bad about just walking out, but that's why I refer to this as the QLC...I really had a form of a breakdown that day. And damn this story is long.

I didn't even drive home. A lot of the middle of that day is hazy. I remember talking to a lot of people about what happened, but the only person that I specifically remember talking to was, of all people, my then best friends then girlfriend. I think I picked her up and we went to the music store or something. Or maybe it was just on the phone...shit...like I said, really hazy. But somewhere in there, I realized I had to go back to school...that's what was really bugging me that whole time. And various people (including said ex of the ex-best friend) reinforced that. So, still under the influence of the QLC, I drive right up to the college. Wasn't that far, it was a JC after all. My first stop was the theatre...old habits die hard.

And we now get to the exact point where I can see where I am in life today from what happened 10 years ago.

I walk in to the theatre, and my friends John and Justin are there (I know I've talked about John before, he now teaches set design at LSU, not sure if I've mentioned Justin...I would live with both of these guys, and another guy, for awhile right after I got my bachelors in 03). They've worked there as house technicians for awhile, and they're doing summer work. Cleaning, maintenance, that sort of thing. But it's near the end of summer, and both of them are leaving for regular colleges in the fall. I tell them I'm finding out about getting back in to school, and they tell me that if I'm successful, to come back when I'm done. I'm like, okay. Figure they just want to talk more.

So I go to admissions or whatever they called it, and found out I could definitely come back, but I would have to write a petition letter, and once back I was on probation. First sememster back I could only take one class, and it had to be a class I failed. Next semester, assuming I passed that first class, I'd be restricted to under 12 credits for two semesters. Completing that, I'd be off probation. So, if anybody wanted to know why it took me 5 years to get my associates degree after graduating high school...that's a big part. Academic probation is a biznitch.

I head back to the theatre, and tell John and Justin the (relative) good news. They then tell me that if I needed a job, well...they were leaving and the theatre facility manager (a really good guy named Pete) was actually on his way over to check on something for them. I stuck around, and after saying hi (I knew him from the "old days" of course), John and Justin were like "hey, Bart's looking for a job, he's coming back to school." Pete practically hired me on the spot. In fact, I do believe I ended up working for him two days later in the sweltering heat, going through a big metal container (like the one in the picture) outside looking for old storage items to throw away...that was a fun day.

Anyway, that's how I first started getting paid for technicians work. And if I didn't have that under my belt, I wouldn't have gotten the student employee job when I went to my four year school, and then wouldn't have had the full time job basically handed to me once I graduated.

All thanks to that Quarter Life Crisis.

Or maybe I'm simply psychic and I knew MCI Wireless would tank...naw.

Tales From The Past: The Great Mountain Dew Caper

Okay, so I guess I'm not done. Another Pascal Center for the Performing Arts story for you all. Kinda reminded to me when my friend Katy commented on the last story, and in response to her, I mentioned I had recently run in to this stories principal player.

This time I take you to November of 1996. I was a strapping lad of 19 (just turned in fact). The show: Peter freakin' Pan. The musical version, flying and all. We even had a laser beam TinkerBell. It was awesome. I worked on the show a little, but mostly I was a pirate. Of course, all of us pirates were press ganged in to the "great house shift" at the end of the first act, when the Darling nursery melts away to each side of the stage while the children take flight with Peter. Done right, the audience tends to go "hey, where'd the house set go?" because their attention was focused on the actors in flight. But that's not the story.

The assistant stage manager - stage right was a guy...we'll call him Donn. Because that's his name. I love that gag. Anyway, Donn loved Mountain Dew. A bit too much. But he sure did love it. We had a fridge backstage, in which he had put one of those 24 can cases, those old cubes they made (at least I haven't seen them in awhile). He was quite upset when it was predictably raided by the theatre jackals on both sides of the curtains. So he put notes on them. I also think he would tell people whenever he saw them to not drink his Dew, but I might be foggy on that part.

Anyway, annoyed and amused at his undying Dew love, two of the stagehands decided to pull a prank on him. During the first act, when the stage is static and they had a good amount of free time, they took his cans of Dew, and punched tiny holes in the bottom, draining them. They then refilled them with water, and put a little bit of gaffers tape on the bottom. This wouldn't hold forever, but for the length of the prank, it would suffice. They then replaced the cans in to the case, and waited to reap the benefits.

Intermission comes, and Donn grabs a Dew. He heads out to the loading dock, which was kind of a hangout at the theatre. He cracks it open, and takes a drink. Makes a face, takes another drink. "This Dew tastes kinda funny. Taste this, am I going crazy?"

Let me tell you, the acting on that loading dock from everybody in the know was some of the best that theatre has seen.

He gets another, opens it, takes a drink. "This one too! It kinda tastes like water!"

Shortly after, he figures it out. He goes on a mini-rampage. He goes up to just about everyone that could be under suspicion and grills them. Nobody spills of course. He even goes up to "Chief," the technical director and the head of the fine arts program at the college, and goes "someone replaced my Mountain Dew with water!" Chief laughed in his face. Wouldn't you?

Anyway, Brian and Daryll, the stage hand perpetrators, ended up feeling bad. So, they bought him a new cube to give him at the last show. However, someone came up with a rule. I can't remember who, it could have even been me. I honestly can't remember who did, though. The rule was: Donn would get his case back can by can...and each can had to cross the stage during a scene, fully from stage left to right. Needless to say, this created some interesting solutions for the cast and crew.

Wendy had one hidden in her costume when she "crashed" (poooor Weeeeendy...) when arriving in Neverland.

The crocodile had some cans in it's mouth.

Lost Boys would run across stage with them tucked away in their pants.

The pirates rowed Hook across stage during the "rock" scene with about 5 cans in the rowboat.

All the while, Donn, was making a pyramid of his recollected booty, and, to his ultimate downfall, seemed awfully pleased with himself.

Ultimate downfall? What do you mean? you might ask. Well, someone decided that he was too "gloaty" and cooked up the cherry on top of this ongoing gag.

After the cast had their curtain call, and took off for the backstage area, everyone "in on it" which included most of the crew and the pirates, grabbed a can, thanked Donn, and drank them right there.

No, we'll never grow up. Not us.

Tales From the Past: Wet Tech!?

Hey guys.

Remember me telling you about my brush with death during a dress rehearsal of the Music Man? Well, allow archiving technology, and a hyper link, take you back for a refresher. I'll wait.

Back? Cool. Anyway, that show was seriously effed. Effed in the A to the max. Shut up, I like talking like that. So many different things went wrong on that show, and some of them were even perpetuated by us and not the theater gods trying to kill us. Like the soap in the town fountain/Oh, We Got Bubbles incident. That's another story. This is one of the theater gods ones.

As mentioned in the previous tale, the week up to the opening of the show is tech week. The night in question was our "dry tech rehearsal." No actors, only the techies, running the show without people around to gum up the works.

Allow me to set the mood in the most cliche (spell checker wants to change that to cloche...what the hell is cloche??) way possible...It was a dark and stormy night. Don't laugh, it was. That's important. Remember that. Things were going along smoothly. I guess, anyway. I honestly don't remember what we were doing up to "it" happening. I know I wasn't in the fly gallery, so maybe we were making some adjustments to a set, or something.

Whatever it was we were doing, some of us noticed a bit of a drippy drippy leak. Uh oh. It was raining after all. But we don't like leaks. Well, I vaguely recall trying to do something to keep the deck dry. That's when it happened.

It started to rain in the theater.


I'm not freaking kidding. It was raining in the theater. How is that possible? Well...

The place had a pretty standard fire prevention/containment feature. Fire on stage, asbestos curtain comes down to protect the house and audience, and fire doors on the roof trigger open so the fire goes up there, in theory.

The fire doors had opened. Which happened from time to time. But not like this.

From here, I remember a mad dash up to the roof, which is why I don't think I was in the fly gallery...if so, I would have had a head start up there, as the access was along the same pathway as getting to the fly gallery. As it was, I was like the third or fourth person up the ladders. We get up there, and keep in mind this is a cold November rainstorm, and there's about 2 and half feet of standing water on the roof. The weight of which triggered the door release mechanism. A group of us immediately got to shutting the doors (which was a delicate process involving slamming them shut and kind of "laying" on them to get enough weight to engage the "lock.") in the middle of a torrential downpour while in a makeshift wade pool, while some others tried to figure out why in the hell we were in a makeshift wade pool to begin with.

Of course it was a drain blockage. Leaves, I think. Thanks maintenance. I think we had another opening a few minutes later (memory is fuzzy there) but eventually the (exact opposite of) fire had been put out, and we returned to the damage. Which, luckily, there was little of. I was told recently that a lot of our electronic gear in the control booth got wet in a related leak, but as for the deck, it was mostly simply wet. We did what we could, counted what little blessings we had, dubbed the night Wet Tech, and figured that was our catastrophe of the show. Oh, how little we knew that the theater gods were desperately trying to get us to not run that show...

Oh, and I only recently got my feet, ankles, and lower legs warm again after the impromptu makeshift wade pool dip.

Here's another photo from that era. That's me, pulling an emo kid pose behind the piano (I honestly don't know why I look like that), and I apologize to my friend John for the really crappy smile he has on his face. He's the one who reminded me about the wet electronics. He's also Mr. Smarty Pants with a Masters from NYU, and is a scenic design professor at LSU. Go him. When I own my own theatre (yeah right) he's gonna be my go to guy whether he likes it or not. Girl's name is Gina, and not too long after this show she sorta disappeared. Wonder where she is. Hell, I wonder where half the people from back then are.

Brushes With Death (or at least, serious injury)

Edit: An old friend fleshed out the story a bit more...

There have been a few times in my life, when looking back, I breathe a sigh of relief with a "phew, that was close." Allow me to weave you one of those tales...

It was the very early winter, November of 1997 (imagine those wiggly flashback lines now). I was a strapping young lad of 20, in fact, only recently had my birthday a week or so before. I was Master Flyman for "The Music Man." I didn't corral house flies. I was in charge of the curtains and flying scenery...anything that was rigged in to the fly system. This show was designed as fairly fly intensive, so I had an assistant. That probably saved my life (or prevented serious injury).

It was tech week, as we called it at this theatre. The week before a show opened when you finally got actors on stage with sets and props and the other intricacies of tech. The show opened that Friday night. I honestly do not recall if this was a tech rehearsal or a dress rehearsal (only real difference is that you're supposed to soldier on in a dress. Tech is to "work out the kinks" so to speak), though I do know it wasn't a "dry tech," because that means no actors. There were definitely actors there, because what happened could have hurt or killed one of them.

During the middle of this run, I had a cue. Of course, I had cues at pretty much every scene change, like I said, this was very fly intensive. Part of the change over was to pull a scrim out. A scrim is a relatively light weight fabric curtain on which you can project light for neat effects. From the back you get shadow type effects, from the front you can make it colored for sky stuff. I'm sure you've all seen them in action, especially as a shadow effect, but never knew what they were called. Now you do. Scrim. Most curtains are weighted at the bottom by chain or pipe. Doubly so for something like a scrim which is light and without that weight could easily billow around from the wind created by actors walking. Now that I've set the scene, allow me to go in to the heart of the matter.

I released the safety lock, and began to fly the scrim out. After about 20 feet I felt a wrench on the rope, and vaguely remember hearing a ripping sound, followed closely by a loud crash. At that point, it became survival instincts as that rope started to move WAY TOO FAST in an upward direction. But not my survival instincts...

See, a fly system works on a system of counter weights. In the fly gallery there are weighted counters on a pulley system to help counter the curtain weight, and make the curtains almost effortless when moving them up and down.

All the weight was now on the counter side...so the counters were going down, and the pipe (what the curtain hangs on), was going up to the grid (the metal griding above most stages). Here's the thing: Both things would have been ultra bad. If I simply let go of the rope, the counter weights would crash downward with such force they may bounce up and out of their carriage. The counter weights carriage rest position was approximately 2 feet forward and 20 feet higher than my current position. Also, if the counter weights jumped their carriage, that would create an imbalance in the opposite direction, causing the pipe to crash from the grid, 100 feet up, to the deck (stage).

In the heat of the moment, I did the only thing I could think to do in this emergency situation, which is usually only talked about in hypotheticals. I grabbed the rope, and dug my heels in to the rail so I wouldn't go flying up. This hurt like hell, and wasn't really working very well. But like I said, I had an assistant, and he made it over about a second before I was either going to go up with the rope myself, or simply let go and dive out of the way and hope for the best.

With my assistant's help, though, our particular catastrophe was averted. We slowly let the carriage get to its home position, and then offloaded the counterweight so we could bring the pipe back down. The scrim had dry rotted. When I first made the up move, the force of its own weight resistance caused the entire scrim to rip off the pipe. In a case of dumb luck, nobody had been underneath the scrim making any scenery moves when it crashed to the deck (though Katy, an old friend(in the group photo she's directly above me) who was there, had this to say in a comment she left: "I had a brush with death at almost the same exact second as the pole from the bottom of the scrim came barrelling down a few feet from where I was standing and left a two inch gash in whichever set was directly next to me (the mayor's house I think? I have no idea, I'm old). " So my memory was faulty and there WERE people moving scenery right below, but it was dumb luck that the pipe hit no-one). Somewhere out there, there exists pictures of the crew tying a new scrim on to the pipe with this cool haze swirling around them. The haze, unfortunately, was the dust from the fallen scrim that was still kicked up.

I'd like to say that was the only problem we had with that show, fly wise, but that'd be a lie. This was the only scary one, though.

Here are some pictures of that time. One of them is of me alone, waving down from my perch in the fly gallery. The other is of most of the crew. I'm center low, grinning like a maniac. Oh, and ten years younger. :)