Tech Week, Fondly Nicknamed Hell Week

My life the last couple of weeks has been Legend of New York (LNY) and this past week has been no exception. Because it was spring break, we've been having rehearsals from 2-10. Thursday marked our first official day of tech and it was LONG. I'm going to be "backstage" during the show, but in our theater that means I'll be in one of the two voms that lead to the dressing room. Our theater is not like most conventional theaters. The backstage area is actually underneath the audience, as opposed to being actually behind the stage. That means that actors have to use one of two voms to get to the backstage area. The voms are just long hallways that lead underneath the audience, I think the name originated from theater in the olden days, I have a very vague understanding of the name.

Anywho, I'll be on headset for the shows, which is fine except the headsets aren't portable which means I'm basically tethered to the wall for two and a half hours. Our stage manager has a portable one, but it makes sense that if anyone gets it, it's her. It just means that during tech when actors need me to get something or if I need to move something I have to remove the headset and potentially miss something that might be said over headset that I need to hear. It's not that big of an issue in the end, though. During tech I get to catch up on my reading, which is nice. I need to remember to bring a reading light because I don't have much light on my side. I have a nice little stool and I created a makeshift table to put my coffee on. It's quite cozy back there, actually.

We were running behind a little, but today our director said that the tech crew had put in a bit more work and pre-teched some lighting cues so that we could run straight through the rest of the act and hopefully not have to stop much. And we almost got through act one! We just have one more song to stage and a small scene and then that's the first act. Tomorrow and the rest of the week is 6:30-midnight, so hopefully we'll get everything done before we open Friday. We're hoping to do a dress rehearsal tomorrow with the band and then finish teching as much of the show as possible. I think everyone's starting to feel the time crunch which hopefully means that people will come into tech more focused so that we can get a lot of stuff done.