You know who the techies are. Whenever the door opened on "Star Trek"--techie at work! Whenever an octopus attacked Lloyd Bridges--techie at work! When ever the lights go out during a play and the set changes--you guessed it.
Yes, techies are those folks that dress in black, sneak around in the dark, and move furniture. We had a sort of "techie gospel" : "Remember that thou wast born techie; born to walk in silence through the dark places of the world" (This is almost as creepy as Alistair Crowley's "Let my servants be the few and the hidden--for they shall rule the many and the known.").
After I graduated from high-school, I took a bus out to Eureka Springs, Arkansas to work at I.P.F.A.C. (Inspiration Point Fine Arts Colony)--or 'opera camp' building sets and hanging lights. The shop was a barn, the theatre had ceiling fans (which were occasionally attacked by Luna moths), and we ran out of water once when the well ran dry. It was three months in hell.
I got back from Arkansas (and cheered with delight when I saw a four lane highway) and started doing free-lance work with my lighting teacher’s boyfriend, Stan Smith. (Mary Ivory and Stan are married now; this is good because it means Stan's Mormon family can visit without feeling like they've entered a 'den of sin'.)
My first job after I.P.F.A.C. was running the follow spot for the Leather Man convention in Addison. I don't mean Leatherman the tool--I mean Leatherman the S&M/B&D deal. I have never seen that much leather, chain-mail, latex, or rubber in one room since. It's amazing. This was also a good time to get in some under-age drinking, a practice I had started in Arkansas. (There's not much to do out there.)
(As a matter of fact, it was during a reception at the Grand Kapinski Hotel that we had one of those “people who should never meet in an elevator” moments. I was going up with a couple of guys in full regalia when the elevator opened up for two matching couples on their way to prom. There were the couples, all cute and adorable with their little corsages and such--and then there’s me, in sandals and jeans, surrounded by guys in leather, chain-mail, and Christmas tree spikes. The two couples were standing there shivering with fear when one of the larger guys (something about bears comes to mind) reached out with his huge fingerless, leather, biker-glove clad paw, took some of the fabric from one girl’s dress between thumb and forefinger and exclaimed, “Where did you find chiffon in that color? I’ve been looking for that everywhere!”)
This was really my introduction to Dallas theatre, and I've worked most of them. Stan dragged me along for another fun filled time--this time for Gryphon Players' production of "The Maids" by Jean Genet. I remember one day we were trying to get and incredibly heavy set piece up some stairs to the theatre one day--and I really couldn't do it at all--when an angel in shorts and not much else hopped of his bike and asked, "Do you need help with that?" in that really low, sultry, sexy gay man voice. I think he picked that thing up with one hand. Stan was having trouble keeping up with him.
I wound up becoming the technical director for Gryphon Players. During 1993 we put on two shows, "Ring Round the Moon" and "Lysistrada". I got to do set design and construction as well as lighting design and construction for both. I also brought both shows in under budget by using a handy trick a learned in high-school: hire your friends. "Ring Round the Moon" was a great set and I was incredibly pleased with how it turned out. By the end of it all, the set fit in my car.
And while I was returning the fire-proof curtains to the Addison Center Theatre, I got another job offer from their technical director. Cabbages and Kings was doing a show called "Museum Madness" and they needed a tech director. I took the job, and regretted it later, but everything turned out okay in the end. We brought the show in under budget and on time, even though the stage manager never did give me a schedule, even though I asked him for one several times. Thinking about it now, I don’t think they ever had a real schedule. They were the most disorganized pack of yahoos I ever met. Case in point: the costume designer called me to ask about color scheme and it was her, not the director, not the stage manager, but the costume director, who informed me that two of the set pieces from the original design had been scratched.
From the summer of '92 until I moved out of my parents' in '95 I was working for the Dallas Children's theatre. If it could be done, I probably did it--from painting and building sets to hanging lights, to running the light board. I ran around backstage and dressed actors. I herded children and set chairs out for the audience. I even taught kids in the Sitcom and Makin' Movies classes. (Makin' Movies was two weeks, twice a summer, and we would make a quick little 30 minute movie. I've got six tapes in my collection that I occasionally pull out and watch. God, those kids couldn't act, but we had a lot of fun.)
There were two theatres we were running out of: El Centro and Crescent Theatre. El Centro is the downtown Dallas community collage with concentration on the arts. Crescent was a display-case for a model of the Crescent Hotel/Shopping Center. Each theatre had it’s own pros and cons.
El Centro was big and had a pit, as well as a revolving stage; and the shop was directly behind the cyclotron forcing you to make a 250 degree turn to get anything on the stage. The whole thing had been designed by an architect who had never worked in theatre and there was no fly system, everything ran on runners from stage right.
Crescent Theatre had all the problems that come with being a temporary structure. It was made of stamped steel girders and corrugated metal sheeting. The light grid wasn’t a grid as much as it was a couple of pentagons that had been put in place to light a model in the round, not a stage. There was no cyclotron except what we hung for each individual show, there were no wings except what we built for each individual show, there was no fly system, period. There was no curtain, period. The control booth was built off to the side of the stage, it was open, and you had to crawl up a very awkward ladder past an A/C unit to get there.
It was a blast.
I usually ran the lights at the Crescent Theatre because I was one of the few people who could get up the ladder past the A/C and through the tiny hole into the booth. This is where the most fun in theatre is to be had—hands down. Just you, the sound guy, the stage manager, and a show you’re seen some fifty times before. After a while, it takes on this “MST3K” feel as anyone with a headset adds their own little comments. If anyone on stage knocked on a door it was “Land Shark”. If someone asked “Who?” at any point, everyone on set would chant, “Mitchell! Wakka-chika, wakka-chicka, wakka-chicka.”
We even had calls specific to our theatre group. Example: Kelly Gibbons was stage manager with Brian Beatty on Sound in the booth and Rebecca Lewis and myself in a control booth on stage. The show was “Apollo to the Moon” and we were supposed to look like some sort of Major-Tom-Ground-Control. I was running lights and Rebecca was running slides and video. It was a very technically complex show and because we were on-stage, it was hard to think about anything but the show. Somehow or other, we got Kelly to sing the “Davy Crockett” theme song. Now, Kelly was supposed to be calling the slide and videos cues; but she was so busy singing the damn song that Rebecca just took the cues without Kelly calling them. By this time, we could have done the show in our sleep, so everything ran smoothly, Kelly or no. At one point, there was a lull in the order of cues and Rebecca asked, “Do you want me to take slide cue 74?” And Kelly stopped singing and scrambled over the headset, “Uh, cue 68, cue 69, cue 70, cue 71, go, go, go! I hate you all!” After that, whenever anyone, onstage or off, forgot something vital, everyone on headset would start singing, “Davy, Davy Crockett.” That’s an example.
Another was the show “Come in to the Light”, or as we referred to it, “The Hanukah Musical”. There was one scene where the father is supposed to run in and hold his son in his arms, finding the true meaning of family and Hanukah and all that. The father’s cue was when the kid put his head down on the table and cried out, “Broken! Broken!” in reference to a menorah which had been passed down through the family and had broken during the death of a family member. So, the big scene arrives and the kid lays his head on the kitchen table, and cried out “Broken! Broken!” And then cries out “Broken! Broken!” again because the guy playing the father is goofing off backstage and has just missed his cue. And the kid cries out, “Broken! Broken!” one more time. Ever since then, any missed cue is greeted with cries of “Broken! Broken!” by everyone on headset.
I know this stuff may not seem that funny when you read about it like this. It’s more that “had to be there” kind of stuff, but I’ll bet you that there are theatres across the nation and around the world that have little backstage calls like this of their own. As a matter of fact, I bet there are still people at Dallas Children’s Theatre singing the Davy Crocket theme after someone screws up and they have no idea why.