On the stageToo shy to ever appear on stage myself, I still hung around theatres like a bad smell when I was younger - lighting and set design were what I was good at.
Backstage we'd attempt to sabotage every production - us lighting geeks would wind up the sound man by putting the remote "pause" button for his reel-to-reel tape machine on his chair, so when he sat down it'd start running, ruining his cues. Actors would do scenes out of order to make our lives hell. It was great and I don't know why I don't still do it.
Tell us your stories of life on the stage.
(
chthonic, Fri 2 Dec 2005, 11:02)
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Under Milk WoodI'm happy to stand on a stage and sing and play instruments, but I'm no actor. With stage production my role has always been either down in the orchestra pit (I used to do a lot of conducting) or doing sound/sound effects.
In my sixth form year I did sound effects for a production of Under Milk Wood, and because some of the effects needed to overlap, I'd created a tape on a 4-track recorder, using different channels for different sounds. My copy of the play was annotated with which sound went where, and what the tape counter should read at that point. The 4-track was hooked up to the PA system, and I was sat up in the organ loft with it to cue up the effects when required. Fine.
Or it would have been, had I not confused the slider for track 2 with the slider for track 3. If you don't know the play, there's a nice wistful few minutes in which Captain Cat is describing the start of the morning in Llareggub. When we got to the bit after he greets Polly Garter there's a stage direction for a cock crow:
CAPTAIN CAT
That's Polly Garter. [ Softly ] Hullo, Polly, my love. [...]
[ A cock crows ]
CAPTAIN CAT
Too late, cock, too late.
The sound of the cock crowing, on first night, was, unfortunately, absent... in its place were several seconds' silence, me swearing audibly, and a loud blast of pre-recorded organ music. And an audience in hysterics. To this day I'm still proud of that.
(, Fri 2 Dec 2005, 15:40, Reply)
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