Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....

My apologies, gentle readers, for my absence last night. We stayed in a Quality Inn in Homewood, Alabama which, sadly, was long on Inn and short on Quality. After working for about 45 minutes, the wireless network apparently went into cardiac arrest whilst I was out at dinner, and I was unable to access ANYTHING. They had a wired Internet connection in the lobby, but that was down as well. When they finally did get that working I discovered that the parental control settings were so strict that I was not allowed to access this site. That's Alabama for you, make sure to protect the kids from open discussion and free thought.

Yesterday was quite the eventful day, but I will get to that later. Right now I am in Memphis, TN. Sadly, I won't be able to see any of the city while we're here, since a large tanker truck overturned on the freeway and traffic is backed up for miles everywhere. So the outing was nixed. That's okay--we'll be in Nashville tomorrow night, and we already know where there's a bar with a mechanical bull. Yes, gentle readers, I shall get my Irish Yankee ass on a mechanical bull. If you don't hear from me for a few days, it's because I'm recovering nicely in traction somewhere. Today's show in Brimingham, AL was very nice. It ran smoothly and the crew was incredibly helpful. It was a beautiful old theatre, which meant the wing space was miniscule and the dressing rooms were tiny (and BAKING thanks to the radiators) but that the house was gorgeous and ornate and had to hold about 1500-2000 kids. We were only 2/3 full, but the crowd was responsive and the show went pretty smoothly, save for Ted somehow getting wrapped up in the curtain cord as the Headless Horseman and finding it wound around his body UNDER the puppet. Suffice it to say, it was not the smoothest ride ever. But at least it kept him from going too far in either direction and falling off the stage.

Which brings us very ably (If nothing else, I segue like a champ) to what happened yesterday in Atlanta. It was a very odd day, with a crew that was incredibly friendly and warm, and who had the majority of its members show up late. We had a great show that felt really good to all of us, except for a few HUGE technical problems. And the crew made tear-down and load-out a breeze, save for the near-death experience. You could've changed the name of the show yesterday to Yin/yang instead of Encore! It started with us meeting the head lady on the crew--Cindy, who if she's not a lesbian, should just cut her losses and become one. I have to love anyone who shows up on the loading dock to greet me at 8:00 in the morning wearing the same biker jacket as me. Unfortunately, she was the only one who DID show up. The other two guys didn't show up until about 20-30 minutes later, but they too were friendly and once they made it there, amazingly helpful. So we got the whole thing up really fast, which left us with a good long amount of time to relax before the show. We discovered that this theatre (The Ferst Center, on the campus of Georgia State) is one of those theatres that lets the shows that perform there sign the brick walls backstage. We had signed a few of those walls on the last tour, and it's a lot of fun to do. There were two other Chamber tours that had signed the wall, so we were all talking about signing after the show. HAd I thought about it, I would've suggested that we sign it before the show started. That might have saved us some issues later on. But more on that in a few.

The performance itself went very well, as I stated earlier. The crowd was into it, and we all felt good about how it was going. Then we got to the end of Sleepy Hollow, and the ride of the Headless Horseman. Well, we have a fog machine that we use during that scene, and when we use it, they like to really pump the fog, because the eyes on the Horseman's pumpkin light up red and it's a great effect through the fog. The problem? We haven't been able to use the fog more than once or twice in the last month because we've been playing mostly schools, and you can't use it in schools. ANd we never really had much time to tech anything in Boston, so we barely rehearsed with it there. This long amount of exposition is to let you all know that Ted has not had much experience trying to navigate the deck while in the puppet with the fog all around him. The Horseman puppet is very large, and it is difficult to see anything when in it to begin with. And the fog really does obscure your vision. I mean I'm not inside a puppet and there are times I can't see the step I'm standing right in front of. So we start the ride, and the fog rolls in, and Ted starts his moves, and I'm shooting looks back over my shoulder like I usually do and I see that Ted seems to be having a little trouble on the deck. He's not moving as smoothly as usual, and he looks out of position to me. Well, I make it back to the deck, and throw my hands up and scream like I'm supposed to, and instead of there being a beat before he swings the pumpkin head at me and roll off stage like there usually is, he swings the head at me as I'm finishing the last line. It hits my outstretched hands, and I roll off the back of the deck early, but with no real problem. I gather up the seven and a half miles of fabric hiding him so he doesn't step on it and trip and kill himself, make sure he's in position for his next bit, and head offstage to change. Well, it turns out that what happened was he couldn't see where he was going in the fog, got too far downstage, and almost fell off when he started moving side to side. In fact, he almost fell twice, once so badly, he wasn't sure he was going to make it back up on the deck. So I wasn't at all surprised that his timing had been thrown off. (He told me this as he came offstage at intermission and got out of Bubba--our name for the puppet) 

What happened next is why I have lost whatever small amount of respect I had for Levitt as either a stage manager or a human being. As Ted is making his way to the dressing rooms, she comes whipping backstage, finds him and says, "Do you know how dangerous that was? You swung that pumpkin head way too early and you almost hit Andrew. That is far too dangerous and we're going to have to run that tomorrow because you could have hurt someone." Now, I will admit that she probably couldn't tell from out in the house what had happened to him, so she was unaware of what he had gone through, but he tried to explain to her that he couldn't see and had almost taken a fall twice, and she kept interrupting him and telling him he needs to be more careful and he can't put other people in danger like that. He heads up to the dressing rooms and she comes over to me and asks if I'm okay. I then explain to her that He had almost fallen  in a puppet where the majority of the weight sits on his shoulders and above, and that he's a good 18-24 inches above the venue's stage when he's on the deck, so that's why he wasn't quite sure where he was. Her response? "Well, even so, there's timing, y'know?" referring to the rhythm we had set up for my last line, a beat and then the swing. I told her that narrowly missing serious injury twice within the space of about three minutes would be enough to throw off anyone's timing, so really, I can't blame him. And besides, what's the worst that can happen? He misjudges the timing and I get hit with a big piece of styrofoam. She NEVER asked either him nor me if he was okay. And it took her until today to apologize for going off on him. And I have a feeling if I hadn't been so strenuous in my defense of him, that she never would have. Like I said, I will fully admit she probably didn't know what had happened when she came backstage. But the intelligent, compassionate, professional, HUMAN thing to do would've been to find him and ask him what had happened and why the swing had been early instead of ripping into him the minute you lay eyes on him. Then to be told what happened and not change your tone AT ALL, and to not inquire if he was okay shows, to me, a complete disregard for him a person. It's obvious she does not like him, and due to that, will not give him the benefit of any doubt nor give a good goddamn what happens to him. It's pathetic. That is the most reprehensible type of behavior. I don't give a shit if you like him as a person or not, you treat the people you work with equally when it comes to making sure everyone is safe. And if you're any kind of professional, which she constantly reassures us she is, then you find out the facts of a situation before you go off half-cocked. What I really love is that she rips into him in front of everyone, including crew, but she apologizes in private. It's sad. Why does this business allow so many people who never got past being 14 to work in it? Even today, when we were loading out of Alabama, we were using the lift gate on the back of the truck, and we were putting a box of cyc lights on top of another box (which is where they live IN the truck) and she comes out and yells because of the fact when we use the ramp the have a tendency to slide a little and she rips into Ted for putting them on top, even though they're being lifted straight up in the air instead of on an angle. And she does this in front of the crew, who turn to him and either defend him to her (which never works because no matter what the situation, she is always in the right) or, when she's gone, turn to him and ask, "What the hell was that?" And that's what I find so funny about her behavior. She's so convinced that no-one takes her seriously because she's female and working in tech, so she tries to be this uber bitch hardass to prove she knows what she's doing and should be taken seriously, and it's that kind of knee-jerk crap attitude that makes people look at her as an idiot who DOESN'T know what she's doing because she never takes advice on anything from anyone. You want respect from old male deckhands? Then just do what you know how to do, do it well, and if someone gives you advice on something that makes your job easier, take it. Then people respect you, regardless of which set of pipes you've got. So yeah, I have written her off. You do not behave that way toward someone and call yourself a professional. Especially someone who has done nothing at all to deserve such treatment. ll Ted tries to do is assist and make people's jobs easier. Yes, he can be a little annoying with his statements about how this is the best whatever in the universe, or his never ending stream of useless trivia, but he's a nice guy and does his job to the utmost of his ability, and he doesn't deserve to be this dumbass' whipping boy.

Then, as if that wasn't enough drama for one day, as we were loading the truck yesterday after the show, Flo and CIndy were bringing the huge proscenium arch onto the truck, and the top of it bumped the truck door. This arch is very badly balanced, and any jarring sends it tipping over, since it's way too topheavy. Well, the ramp was bridging from the truck to a slightly lower loading dock, so the two of them were out over empty space about three or four feet above ground. Once the arch started tipping, they twisted to try to keep it up, and Cindy went right off the ramp, dropping the arch. THANKFULLY neither she nor the arch were seriously hurt. She took more of a controlled jump and slightly twisted her leg when she landed, but was right as rain a few minutes later, and somehow the arch didn't break. But everyone had a good scare. And thee was little either Schneider or I could do since we were busy holding wheeled boxes back from rolling out of the truck since it was on an incline. Oy. Then, as if that wasn't enough, once we DID finish loading, Schneider and a few people wanted to sign the wall. That idea was vetoed by --guess who??? Yep, according to Levitt, "That's what you do on your first tour. This is like my fourth. I'm hungry." Never mind the fact that for the vast majority of the cast this IS their first tour, and even Bob, who's done this ten times, wanted to sign the wall. The thing that drives me up the wall about her is that she lays down all these rules (like don't navigate from the backseat--only the navigator and the driver can discuss navigation) or enforces the rules Chamber lays down (like when it comes to things that are not directly work-related, majority rules) but then disregards them completely when they don't suit her (like always being up Alice's nose whenever Alice is navigating or vetoing things because she's hungry.) It's sad. And I understand that part of it is because her husband is on a different tour and their schedules are different since his show performs at night and they don't get to talk to each other very much though I can't imagine why that's a bad thing since all they do is scream at each other when they do talk but hey, I'm not married to her so maybe in their world that's foreplay, but you still have to be able to put aside your personal shit and do your job And if you can't, then get the hell out and let them find someone who can. I think the best way to describe her is with a baseball term--bush league. Pure and simple. 

So that's what's been going on here the last few days. Today was easier, as I said, and tomorrow should be fun. I get to drive the van tomorrow for the first time and Alice is navigating, so I fully expect I will have to remind Levitt of the van rule of keeping your mouth shut in the back seat. I look forward to moments like that, because a) I say them in a way it sounds like a joke but you can tell I'm serious but you can't act like what I said was offensive because then you look like a jackass with no sense of humor and b) I never say anything like that to her unless I'm stone cold right. I also am glad I'm driving because that means we'll get into Nashville with MORE than enough time to ride that mechanical bull. Yep, that's me--Andrew Pond, urban cowboy.