Technical glitches suck.

Last Friday was a long day. A two day show for me, with a morning changeover because the board members were discussing improvements up the hill. I believe I was on property for over 12 hours. My morning went fairly smoothly running Molly Sweeney. Then I went up the hill to run sound for Husbands.

The show was going well up until the last three seconds of the play. There are three cues. The first is a wedding bells slow fade up. The second, a bump up on the levels of the wedding bells and the third is a song for curtain call.

When the go was given for the first cue I pressed the button. No problem. The cue starts softly and I thought nothing of it when I didn't hear anything right away (I usually can't hear much, if anything, until the bump cue is given). This is the weird part. Qlab advanced to the next cue just like it normally does but for some reason wasn't playing the first cue. So the level bump did not do anything because the source file of the wedding bells wasn't playing.

This happened very, very quickly and as such I didn't have time to refire the first cue because I had no idea that it wasn't playing. So I played the next cue on pure faith that nothing had gone horribly wrong with the system. It worked which was also perplexing but a little sigh of relief did escape me nonetheless.

So my immediate diagnosis of what had happened was that something went bizarre with the software (since the last que played just fine, the patch was good and I was getting levels flowing through the system and sound on stage). The really strange part of the entire thing is that when I pressed go it advanced to the next cue without manual intervention and the active "play" symbol was present. If that wasn't the case I would have blamed the situation on myself for accidentally missing the go button and hitting the advance selection button but that wasn't the case (the two are right next to each other, which shouldn't be a problem). The only explanation was that something went wrong internally. I even fired the cues after the show to make sure something wasn't wrong with the source file or to make sure the levels didn't get reset.

I really hate when things like that go on performance reports from my end. Even though it's not my fault I still feel responsible for that moment of uncertainty. The orchestration of the actors and crew was thrown just ever so slightly and that's what I hate. So while I try not to let it get to me, not to over analyze after such a extensive diagnosis, I have to remind myself that it's a testament to how much I care about every aspect of the production. Because this particular instance makes me wary of a glitch of this caliber it makes me that extra bit more careful with all the other aspects directly under my control. So I continue to strengthen my resolve and continue to grow.

With that under my belt, today, I'm running two shows again. The first two show day that includes A&C and Husbands. We've already had some technical difficulties in Touchstone on Molly and as a result had to hold the house for a few minutes. So far it's been a brilliant performance by the actors with a phenomenal house but we still have far to go.

Looking forward to a social event tonight as well. Words Words Words a poetry night at the local bar.