Handoff

One rather unfortunate occurrence that is unique to my situation was the fact that the only show that I opened, Antony and Cleopatra, ran past the date my contract ended. Thusly I had the duty of having my boss shadow me while running the show and making sure the run sheet made sense to him. This happened very quickly as well so he only had once to shadow me.

My assistant stage manager had made a good run sheet for me detailing all the duties and props that I needed be in charge of stage right during the show. The particular difficulty was communication should anything go wrong. There were not enough walkie talkies for me to be on headset during the show so I had to run blind, which really means I had to pay extra close attention to where the show as at.

Briefly from the top of the show the main tricks that he had to remember was how to make "scotch" and the timing on which the sail (refer to production pictures I posted previously), a scenic unit, was hoisted and dropped. Timing was really the main thing, especially for door pages that were supposed to be silent.

I let him do the harder part of my job, such as making scotch for Jim DeVita which he had specifically requested be iced coffee. The trick to it was making it consistently. I made it 15 min. before house open. I added 5 ice cubes then two fingers of cold tap water and a one second dash of coffee to be placed in the greenroom refrigerator until it was time to be retrieved. This was to make sure that the color was consistent, the ice cubes consistently melted and the color to hold.

The other aspect of the sail, was the only aspect that needed work from my shadow. I specifically laid out the cue lines and roughly the blocking that happened on stage during the hoist and drops.

The first hoist cue line was simply "hoist the sail" easy enough, this left enough time to lash off and climb the ladder to get to the hook that attached the sail to the rope.

The second cue, the first drop, was taken on a the word "delicate" after Caesar and Thidias have exited. This is where my shadow had problems because blocking was not quite what it was every other night. As Jim DeVita and Jim Ridge exited the stage they usually didn't cross under the sail as the cue line was said, on this particular night they did and my shadow didn't drop the sail on the line. It was just delayed a bit. Nothing major but just enough to cause a slight rhythm change.

The second drop was far later in the show and the sail was hooked to a set point on the proscenium wall. No blocking was in the way and the timing was relatively simple as it the drop was taken a beat after "command."

There were a million smaller details that I had stopped thinking about while I ran the show and it was difficult to recount them despite really superb paperwork. It may almost seem a trifle to recount but it was a quasi-difficult event for everyone as I had been so familiar with everyone and with the duties of the show. It was just another reminder that people can't really be replaced but the duties can be performed by another person.