So, two months ago, today, I got married in Scotland. A week later, we were back in LA. A week after that (or so) we started seriously working on ThePlay that would eventually come to be called [http://undergroundparadigm.com/dc|
Director's Cut]. That was seven whopping weeks ago.
Opening night was last night and while the show was far from perfect, I'm pretty damn happy with what we have to show for the past 7 weeks of extreme effort. Acting-wise, everyone did a great job. While they did rush things, I think generally everyone did their jobs just fine and I'm sure they can only get better. Alas, on the technical side of things, we had a much bumpier time. This is thanks to having no full tech rehearsal with all of the systems we'd actually be using for the show. I missed about 8 of my 15-20 cues (see? I haven't even had time to count my cues) and the lighting board has somehow spit out different lighting and fading time almost every time we used it. I don't understand why it's a better idea to program a board to do the cues for you when a human is about a thousand times more reliable than some wonky board.
Keep in mind, however, that I have precisely ZERO experience in the booth--I'm a part-time, occasional projectionist and have never set foot in a lighting booth as an adult EVER. So, the board could be perfectly fine--all I know is that with our inexperience with it we couldn't get the lighthing we told it to give us.
So, I'm bowing out of the technical side of things for this and other reasons. I'm terrible at catching cues--it's all about performance anxiety. Trying to keep things straight in my head while following the events on stage, or at the very least the script of the stage manager is difficult for my easily-distracted brain. The director wants me to keep doing it because she knows I'll get better at it, but really she just doesn't want to take the time to find someone who has experience. I don't blame her since there's still work to be done to get the alternate cast up and running for this coming Friday's show.
In the end, people seemed to like the show just fine. They spotted a couple of technical errors but said they were still able to enjoy the show. So, I'm very glad about that. Still, the show did go as badly as I expected and the rest of my life is kind of falling apart now that I've been living and breathing this damn show for the past 7 weeks. I really need to stop doing stuff for the show and get back to the job hunt. I need a job fast or I won't make rent in three weeks. Ugh, and I don't want to work at some restaurant or retail place. I'm an immensely talented guy who just wrote about 80 percent of a show in about 3-4 weeks. After that I designed a poster for the show, flyers and even the stage bill in the 3 weeks that followed my work on the script. I also redesigned how our multimedia cues were done (I work with audio/video technology) and heavily tweaked the videos we use in the show in about three days.
There's got to be someone out there who can pay me to do one of those things!!
So, here's my list of things to do once I'm done working on the show:
1) find a job
2) sell my first novel
3) write more
4) draw more
5) spend more quality time with TheWife
6) schedule my wedding reception
7) start working on my next play
8) sleep... a LOT
