OKLAHOMA! Starring Sandy Dunkan as Aunt Eller
DAY 1: Well, I made points with the big man this week! When I walked in to the theater at 8 a.m. on Monday morning, Jim, the lighting designer (LD) and Spencer were still at it. I brought donuts and coffee for everyone and made many happy points with all. We spent most of our morning setting up for our first �10 of 12�, aka the tech rehearsal from hell�start at 12 pm, break at 5 pm-7 pm work until 12 am. UGH! Long day!
However, I got the first 12 chapters of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix read in between my spot cues. With OKLAHOMA! I have only 18 cues in the entire show, most of them in the first act before the 20 minute ballet at the end of the first act. It gave me lots of time (35 minutes of ballet and intermission) plus a lot of time during the second act, too.
Only �bad� part of the day, really was when I saw Sandy Duncan backstage at around 10 am. I said �hello� and she didn�t even acknowledge that I�d said anything. It nearly broke my heart since I�d always thought she was a cool lady�guess that�s what happens when you assume things about people.
I ran a spot for the first time in many many years today! Before rehearsal, I �played� trying to get a feel for the instrument and my positioning. I was told to not spot the actors because they�d get �pissy�, but everyone else was fair game. I knew that my first cue was going to be on Kep, the music director, so I tried lining up my spot and practiced hitting him. When he noticed my light, he began to play. He stepped away from the piano as I followed and then he backed up. He did this several times, quickly, which actually helped me with following. It all culminated in Kep jumping into the pit and �hiding� from my light.
DAY 2: Dress and opening today. LX (aka lighting crew) arrived at 9 am to clean up some focusing problems and move the tech table. Dress went relatively smoothly, which was cool. But MAN is OKLAHOMA a long show! We started at 2 pm and never finished until after 5:30! Crew had to be back by 6:30 pm and since we had to fix things before the show, we had about 15 minutes for dinner. Made for a VERY long show!
I introduced myself to Kep at 11:30 am before we started rehearsal by saying �Good Afternoon, I mean Morning, Kep! I�m Stephanie, the spot operator you were playing with yesterday!�
He said, �Hi! It�s nice to meet you, Stephanie, but it�s still morning until your first cocktail!�
My response, �Well, it�ll be Morning then until Thursday night when I go out drinking!�
And he said, �Well, I�ll buy you a drink the next time we go out!�
It ended up being a running joke until Kep left at the end of Guys & Dolls.
Regardless, I never liked OKLAHOMA! And I still don�t. Some of the actors are cool. JB Wing, who played Ado Annie was totally excited when I told her I was her spot op. However, since I haven�t run a spot since before I was in college (many, many year ago), I was rather surprised that she was so excited. By the end of the week, I had control of the spot and actually was hitting my marks with relative accuracy. By next week, I should be much better�which is good because I�ve been warned that we�re gonna be extremely busy!
Another great person I met was John Fedele. He�s a wonderful guy who loves to talk and gives fantastic hugs. From the moment I met him, I was �Sweetie� the rest of the week.
DAY 6: The highlight of this week was my dinner for the cast and crew on Saturday between shows. I made my infamous �Sweet & Sour Sloppy Joes� I made something like five pounds of meat and it was all gone before I went home Sunday morning. Sandy Duncan tried a couple bites and decided she liked it! She even signed my program with a �Great barbeque!� Maybe she�s not as �not nice� as I thought after all.
Change over started right after the show as well. For us, that means, after arriving at 11:00 AM and running two shows until 11:30 PM, we were waiting around for three or four hours �til the scenic guys get their stuff out of the way. This, technically means, for me at least, that we were helping them move their stuff out so we could get in as fast as possible. We finally got to lighting change over at about 4 am. Luckily, Jim was kind to us and we didn�t have to move a whole lot of stuff and only really had to change some color and focus. We were actually done with our change by 6 am.
DAY 7: Work, work, work 10 am until 10 pm. Helped with scenic load in until then. Did what we could lighting-wise, but mostly scenic again. At 10 pm, the BARNUM cast had the stage for two hours. Slept in a back hallway (okay, laid there!). Then work until 5 am. No sleep for the LX crew again!