So after realizing that I am producing my solo show a scant two days before the first performance, I had to go into overdrive. I have produced before, but when I am broke, I really don’t prefer it.
One of the theater company’s shows was performing the night before and so I was not able to enter the space and rehearse in it until the night before my show. In a few hours, I would have to rehearse, do my tech and dress rehearsals all in one. To add to my pain, my director booked a gig in London and could not be there at all. So I was doing it alone.
The technician they got me is a nice guy who speaks little English. Somehow, with my halting Spanish, we got along fine and was able to communicate. He and another guy was striking the stage for an afternoon puppet show called La cucarachita Martina, or Martina, The Little Roach. (Yes, I have to follow an almost anthropomorphic arthropod.)
I still don’t know why it took two and a half hours to strike a set that measures 10’ by 18’. (Yes, it’s that small.) Anyway, I didn’t get the space until 7pm.
My show is basic: a chair, a music stand, a microphone on a microphone stand and a screen to play projections. However, their CD player couldn’t read my CD (which had mp3 files). The DVD player, however, could read it. They no longer had a laptop there so my power point projections could not be used. After a while, one of the theater producers told me he would bring his laptop the next day. So I could only do a dry tech with no projections. I decided to just rehearse the transitions and not the whole script, considering I was paying the technician for his time. I was in and out in an hour. I told them to meet me at 2pm the next day (Sunday) so that we can do more tech before my 5pm performance.
They both were a half hour late. My friend Basil tagged along to try to calm my nerves. My other friend Howard was doing my box office. And the guy who was bringing his laptop, well, his mother volunteered to be my usher. He was bringing the laptop but not operating it; that would be the job of my technician.
My technician kept screwing up the cues and I am looking at everyone with the evil eye. Basil kept telling me, “Breathe in goodness, breathe out positivity.” I retorted, “Breathe in stress, spit out evil.”
It turned out that my technician, as good as he is, has a hearing problem in one of his ears. He wasn’t incompetent; he just couldn’t always hear me. Also, for him to operate the lights, sound and projections by himself required to be the love child of Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four and an octopus. When I realized this, I felt crushed.
Basil could tell something was amiss and asked me what was wrong. I told him, “My show starts at 5pm. It’s 4:30pm, he still doesn’t have the cues correctly, I haven’t done my hair and I look like Dagwood from the Blondie comic strip!”
Basil then asked, “Do you want me to do your sound?”
I looked at him and said, “How many ways can I say yes to you right now?”
With Basil doing the sound, the technician doing the lights and projections, Howard doing my box office and the associate producer’s mother as my usher, I was ready to do my show. And I think I grew about ten new gray hairs.
The first time I ever did the show in that space in its entirety was in front of a paying audience. This felt like theatrical bungee jumping. But the show is a subject for another blog.
