I am not sure who the freight company is that transported our set from Wisconsin last week end to Rochester this week. Even if I did, my new more gentle rules of calling people out on my blog would not permit the admission. The truth is we were told it would be here on Wednesday and paid extra to insure that would happen. That would get the set in the day before we opened which seemed to be a minimum requirement. It did not arrive and after several calls to the company it was determined that they did not know where it was. They seemed to have no tracking abilities except to document it when it arrived.
Finally one of the executives at the company assured us that it would be on site at 1:00pm on opening night. That would make it a little tight but manageable to focus the lights and have a 7:00 show. When I arrived at the theatre at 2:00 the crew was sitting around still waiting. More calls were made and still no one knew the exact location of the truck. They had a number of the shipment and a number for the truck, but evidently no way to reach the driver by radio or phone.
I think the truck finally arrived at 3:15 and it was a fire drill to get it up and the plot focused. Because John is running the sound and the lights himself it was easy to check the cues and do a outline run through. It is great to have John running the show from the audience again like at the Atlantic Theatre where we started. We do seem to have a psychic connection and breath as one on stage. I could tell the cues were just a little more crisp with him punching the buttons himself. And I don't know that I have ever had a better sound guy.
It was not a full house on a rainy Thursday night. It is a cabaret theatre so the show plays a little differently with people down front sitting at cocktail rounds. I will have to figure out some differences in timing although one nights performance is not enough of a good sample. Like always no situation, no audience and no theatre is ever the same. The entire operation even thought there were bumps in the road was not nearly as strenuous as the three shows in three states on consecutive nights a couple of months ago.
Tomorrow stories about the Frat house we are staying in... the star accommodations. I think the house is haunted or just very noisy internally. More on that for another blog.... assuming that the world really doesn't end tomorrow and I will get to write another one.
As you were,
Jay