Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Wrapping Things Up
I’m pretty bummed that I can’t stick around for Fright Fest. While Six Flags stops daily operation in September, Fright Fest is when the park completely converts to a Halloween theme park for weekends through the fall. I've never been here for it, but it sounds like they really go all out-- the entertainment department kind of gets to take over, decorating the entire park as well as putting up several haunted houses and all new shows just for Fright Fest, it sounds awesome. Since I can't stay to work Fright Fest, I'm hoping to at least come out for a weekend and see everything.
As the summer is wrapping up, it feels very different here than it did at Great River Shakes. I’m really pleased that I consecutively worked at two very different places, especially in this order. To some extent I miss the magic of opening night, the collaborative and community feel of a self-built company devoted to creating art in a beautiful, riverside town. I also miss working on actual plays. During our trip to the Wisconsin Theatre Auditions I grabbed lunch with one of the GRSF producers and he asked about how much it matters to a techie that they would be working on Shakespeare (as opposed to musical theatre or a typical summer stock season). I’m pretty sure that it isn’t that relevant for all technicians, but I’m definitely pleased that my first project this semester is Twelfth Night because it certainly matters to me.
That being said, I loved, loved, loved my summer here! I also don’t think my education would be complete without working this side of theatre. I really appreciate non-educational work, where mistakes are not brushed off and there are high standards for every show. I do think that product is important and work has to sell to continue operation in the future. Plus, Show Stoppin' is FUN. It's not Lear, but it's a loud, colorful and upbeat show, which is something I can appreciate.
I also loved working on an extended run—I’ve never gotten to do a show so frequently that it becomes routine. It not only prepared me for work that I will inevitably get in the future, but also provided the chance to really perfect every detail. By this point in the season a flawless show for me is expected, and manageable. Usually in a two week run you still have some kinks that never quite get worked out simply due to the time crunch. It’s incredibly satisfying knowing that you are doing your job to the best of your ability without having to give up sleeping during tech week and opening.
Then all the gushy stuff—between living in my gimpy but fabulous housing situation and the badass people in the entertainment department, I’ve made a lot of amazing friends this summer :) When I have real internet again I’ll put up photos, but it’s been all together a really wonderful experience for my second internship. Highly recommended to other ISU perf students, either for tech or performance. I guess this ends my summer blogging, which means that the next time I show up on this blog it will be as an ISU Theatre alum! Hooray!
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Show Stoppin' ctd.
Yesterday Sean Kingston had a concert at the park and I worked the events staff for extra hours. It was really, really similar to working at CY Stephens except the stage is a giant volcano that opens up. Sorry I don't have any pictures of the place uploaded, but trust me that it looks awesome. The space used to hold a stunt show, so when that ended they left up the volcano and converted it into a concert venue. This was the third concert of the summer, after Raven and Jesse McCartney.
My show closes August 16th so things are wrapping up fairly soon. I think one of the bigger reasons I’ve had such a blast are the people here. Not only do I live with a bunch of fabulous South Africans, but the people in the entertainment department are a ridiculous amount of fun. The techs in my building especially get along really well and it’s made a huge difference. The past few weekends I’ve had were also particularly fun—I got to play beach volleyball with the Beach Boys then see their concert at Ravinia (a nearby outdoor concert venue), see my first White Sox game, see Barenaked Ladies at Taste of Chicago, visit high school friends in the city and lay out on the beach (have I mentioned how much I love Lake Michigan?) all summed up with an employee ride night on Tuesday!
I’m looking forward to the fall semester, but things here have also been pretty great. More updates to come! For now, here's two youtube clips from this year's show:
Friday, June 26, 2009
Late Nights and Parade Floats
My days off this week were spent entirely in Chicago with Kim and Malary. I finally got around to seeing Jersey Boys-- I loved loved loved it! I wasn't a fan of the projections, they felt distracting and tacky, but if you get the chance I highly recommend seeing it. Next week is the Taste of Chicago, which includes free concerts every night in Butler Park. I'm going to see Barenaked Ladies on Tuesday!
2pm breakfast with Kim on my day off.
We are in full swing for Night Parade setup at the moment. Days have been filled with the usual three shows, then we have to break for an hour and a half until the park closes and guests leave so we can work out in Hometown Square (the area including the parade start point and an outdoor stage for the preshow). Tonight included focusing the lights on top of buildings surrounding the area and along the trusses on the outdoor parade stage. I've never done a focus from on top of trusses but it's a really good time. We have to wear harnesses and clip off as we go along which can get irritating, but it keeps us safe so I can't really complain.
Passing gel up to Erica on the truss. You can almost see my ever-classy uniform of navy Six Flags polo/navy dickies. Hooray!
Something I've loved about this job is the variety of instruments that are used here. Outside we use everything from old crappy par cans (they've been called a headlight in a tin can more than once), to intelligent lights (mostly trackspots) inside weatherproof shells, and we even mount HUGE super trooper spotlights on top of buildings (it takes a crane. seriously.). We've also been hanging strobe ropes everywhere. Before working here I'd never heard of strobe rope, but it's essentially like a string of mini strobe lights and looks like a million little camera flashes going off. The effect is really neat, I want to get some of my own to play with (except I just looked up how much they cost. yipes.). Inside there is a huge variety (lots of MACs and cybers), but the basics are covered by source fours (which is mostly what we use in Fisher) so it's nice to have something familiar around as well. I've been nerding out about learning the different fixtures :)
View from the scaffolding just below the trusses, over Hometown Square.
The whole process of lighting a parade makes me think about how much fun general atmospheric lighting can be. Anything from department stores to haunted houses to amusement rides (i.e. "It's a Small World" or "Pirates of the Caribbean" at Disney) was done by a lighting designer. Sounds like fun.
I don't have any pictures of the parade stage yet, but this is the set for Show Stoppin', my main show.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Up and Running
We opened on Friday and have done 21 shows so far. We had a few really hectic days where there was 40 minutes between shows, so as soon as one show ended we had to rush to get the house ready for the next one. I've never done three shows in a day back to back and ohmygosh it is exhausting, both physically and mentally draining. Still, is great to be up and running with an audience and by the third show each day I'm finding adrenaline reserves I didn't know I had. One more week and we add a fourth show per day. Phew.
This is me swimming in the confetti that we sweep up between each show. Hooray!
This is the set for The Looney Tunes Talent Show on one of the small stages in the park. The picture's probably too small to really see, but the detailing on the trim across the top was all individually cut out with a jigsaw and painted to match a previous set. Took forever, but it really adds a nice finish to the whole look.
Last night was an employee ride night at the park, the first since I've been here. They opened up some of the best rides (Raging Bull, the Giant Drop, Viper and a few others to anyone who's been here) and had free food and arcade games from 10pm to midnight. There are roughly 3,000 employees total, but with not everyone there and the park averaging 10,000 people each day, that meant pretty much no lines for anything! Also, there's just something awesome about not having any actual guests in the park-- it's a very different atmosphere than coming on your day off :)Me and Claire at home, before Ride Night.
Anyhow, my show is really feeling like a routine at this point. Each time through is still fun, but there are no nerves, there aren't really surprises (every now and then a zipper will break or the confetti drop will be moody, but that's about it) and there is confidence in the fact that each and every guest sees the same, solid show. I'm interested to see if/how the product grows or changes over the next two months.
All my best to everyone involved in History Boys, I'm really bummed that I can't make it back to see you guys! Have a great opening weekend!!
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Adrenaline High
Also, this job has been great in really forcing me to do creative problem solving. Since it's a new show, the problems we come across don't have an easy fix and supervisors trust us to make everything work so I find myself being extremely proactive and inventive with jimmy-rigging all sorts of things. Again, there is a huge amount of satisfaction in making difficult things work with little or no hand holding.
And for anyone who ran crew during Gypsy, there is a confetti drop in this show that I get to sweep up aftwarwards. Karma? I think so :)
We have one day left to get the venue 100% ready for an audience and I cannot wait!
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Crunch Time
We finished wiring this part of the new Show Stoppin' sign tonight. We'll add the letter facing and hang it tomorrow morning.
On a side note, today was an employee appreciation day so we had free food and karaoke at the Picnic Grove. It's a damn good time when the entertainment department has karaoke during their lunch break since the performers' job is essentially large-scale karaoke :)
More to come once the show opens!
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
The process for the show I'm working on, Show Stoppin', is a little different than what I'm used to. Setup for all the shows began in January with the full time staff, then kicked into high gear when the seasonal technicians arrived. Rehearsals began about a week ago as we continued with setup and instead of having tech the week before it opens, we are gradually adding technical elements in as we go. The lighting designer has been programming all week and running cues as the performers work through songs, yesterday they switched from using the original songs to the music-only track and added microphones. Costumes and fly cues will come next week. Since the full tech staff is here regardless, this way of teching a show makes a lot of sense to me. The performers and director have also been really great about working aorund the ladders onstage and machinery noise that's inevitable for us to get everything ready.
This is Buckley, the old hospital building I'm living in for the summer. We made jokes that it looks like it used to be a mental hospital-- turns out, we were right. What I thought were very large closets used to be solitary confinement rooms. Anyhow, it's not very plush but it's got character and I like it.
Once Show Stoppin' opens, my schedule will be awesome. I'll get to work at 3pm and do preshow tasks, followed by running the show four times (it runs about 35minutes) and ending each day with parade! Night Parade is a lot more fun than Day Parade, and it will be really nice to work 3-11pm instead of 9am-5pm.
This is me and Erica (another technician) riding the Batman rollercoaster.
Anyhow, I have the next two days off to kick back and relax a bit. I'm taking it easy tomorrow, getting groceries, running errands, etc., then on Wednesday I'm seeing a matinee of Twelfth Night at Chicago Shakes followed by Jersey Boys in the evening with my roommate, Alli!
All in all, I'm pretty stoked with how this summer is working out.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
I've been here in the oh-so-glamorous North Chicago, Illinois for two weeks now and I am having a BLAST! Apartments here are expensive, so I'm living in an old hospital on a nearby naval base with about 80 other people-- it's a lot like living in the dorms except half the people are international staff and the WiFi is really sketchy. Apparently Six Flags hires a lot of South Africans, so most of my friends here are from Cape Town. We grilled out the other night and have epic ping pong matches every few days. I'm slowly learning Afrikaans..... very, very slowly :) In any case, there are a lot of really fantastic people around all the time which makes it look like it will be an awesome summer!
Work has been a lot of fun so far as well. We'll finish setup work next week which has been mostly wiring together different light fixtures (strings of 'circus' lights, giant stoplights and a very large "Fun-O-Meter" for one of the parade floats) and putting up traveller track. For the most part it's stuff that I've never really worked with before so I'm learning a lot of practical skills. The other people in my department are fabulous, which makes the more tedious tasks go by quickly.
It's interesting working in a theme park since it is a very different atmosphere than my experience last summer at Great River Shakes. I've really enjoyed them both for completely seperate reasons. Six Flags is a very corporate, high budget, 40 hours a week, get-the-job-done environment. While there is certainly less attention paid to acting craft or equity points, the tech for the shows is really fun-- I get to work with intelligent lights, a HOG light board, a fly system that actually functions (oh, Fisher Theater), etc. It's been good for me to really be challenged on the production side of things and I feel like I'm becoming much more well rounded, which is exciting.
Bonus: I get into the park free whenever I want (plus one other person gets in free with me as well), so I've spent two of my days off riding rollercoasters all day long! My favorite one is called Batman and it's really intense!! I live next to a metra stop so I've spent the rest of my time off going into Chicago to hang out with friends from high school as well as ISU Theatre alum Kim Chelf.
Anyhow, the show I am working on opens in a few weeks and then I'll fall into a backstage crew routine each day, followed by driving a parade float at night. And I have to admit, driving the trolleys/floats/antique cars in the parade is a whole shit ton of fun :)
This is a clip from last year's version of the show to give you an idea what I'm working on. It's pretty much what I expected theme park entertainment to be.
Another clip from last year. This year's show is 40 minutes and includes "Circus", "Single Ladies" and "Love Story". They were rehearsing "Single Ladies" onstage today for four hours and I don't think I'll ever get it out of my head.