Hello fellow nerds!
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CM Harringtonreplied to Vayl Larkin (they/them) last edited by
@VaylLarkinPoet oh lovely! I miss singing. Fun fact… I was an alto in our chorus for my secondary school underclass years — after my voice changed. One day, I got really sick, and it broke my voice. Now I’m a bass/baritone, but never re-learned how to sing in that register.
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@octothorpe electrician from highschool through college, technical director out of college, took whatever work I could find for a few years, then joined Ringling Brothers as an assistant electrician/protechnician, then Disney on Ice, then Walt Disney World, freelance for a bit, and then equipment rental house tech. Still test and maintain lighting consoles.
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Solarbird :flag_cascadia:replied to Solarbird :flag_cascadia: last edited by
@octothorpe thinking about it more my _second_ most successful show, i was lighting crew. so it's really close.
(that show is really memorable because I was able to take a live lighting fuckup and turn it into _part of the show_ and then they did it that way on purpose after that.)
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@psychoatberea woah! That’s a wild ride!
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CM Harringtonreplied to Solarbird :flag_cascadia: last edited by
@moira cool!!
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@octothorpe Lights, and some set construction. Maybe stage manager once? It’s been a minute.
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I love LOVE all your stories. This has made my day!!
Thank you all!
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@octothorpe And only one serious head injury!
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@emarley Lighting is The Way (although I’ve done it all… I think it’s important to do all the jobs, I loved doing lights the best. That said, I hated getting up taaaaallllll shaky ladders to adjust the wing lights in the auditorium.
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@octothorpe Performed in seven musicals and three plays, stage managed a play, and follow spot tech for... three musicals? I put performer in the survey.
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@psychoatberea There was a staircase from heaven (lighting booth and sound booth) and earth (ground floor/audience level) with a low ceiling. There was a small crack in the plaster. Scrawled above it in pencil were the words ‘Alecia McDonald leapt here’.
The legend was during a show, there was a problem and she had to leave the booth. In a hurry, she tried to jump the stairs, but smacked her head, HARD. She didn’t make even a whimper, did the thing, and made it back for her next cue!
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@octothorpe was a performer briefly was unaware of how things were done, got an epic chewing out at a big rehearsal and walked ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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@onikaze d’oh!
I have an anti-ability to memorise lines, so the one time I was forced (long story) to be on stage (as Duke Theseus in Midsummer Night’s Dream) was an epic disaster. The only thing that saved anything at all was my ability to improvise in iambic pentameter to get people on/off as needed.
I could see you doing fly, or carpentry/set design on the other side tho.
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@octothorpe My dad was in charge of building the sets so I usually spent a few Saturdays helping with that some way or another. Christmas Carol might have been the most interesting for lighting. We found these cool flickery candle effect bulbs that looked so real from the audience.
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@octothorpe and dad also got mad when we kept breaking the knobs on the lighting slides. I think there was too much leverage in the way the knobs were shaped.
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@octothorpe And there was the director who declared this time we would really really run through the whole play without stopping, and had to get all our lighting cues and everything right. And I don’t think we made it through a whole scene before we had to stop because someone fell through the offstage access to the trap door.
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@octothorpe so long as the pit counts as performer...
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@mrwweb sure!!
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@emarley (just catching up with all this) OMG. Were they hurt??
I loved all the different rehearsals. We would do full tech runthroughs where we’s just go cue by cue without the actors, then we’d progress to full dress, where we’d basically do the whole show.
My boards were always fairly primitive… but not ‘giant knife-switch wall’ primitive. No computers, just current, and on-deck. I usually worked with 24-36 dimmers though, so a lot of flexibility, and a lot of tape.
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stephen ryner jr. 🦉replied to CM Harrington last edited by
@octothorpe 239 votes!!
