Teardrop on the Fire
Before I moved away to university, I was involved in quite a lot of technical theatrics. I'd started at secondary school with the annual school plays, I sometimes ran the sound for my parents' church in York, and I was part of the local amateur operatics society. I also went to a few of the more technical Pied Piper gigs, including spending one dark evening projecting large red triangles into the sky using a GoldenScan.

It's from the operatic society that the more amusing of my stories come from. Our production of 'Annie Get Your Gun' completely ruined a metal dustbin because we used it to detonate maroons in (being far too cheap to get hold of a proper bomb tank). The show we did with dry ice gave one of the techs a black eye - but if you stick dry ice and boiling water in a bottle and screw the lid on, what do you expect?

One evening, many hours after the rest of the cast and crew had stopped rehearsing and left for the night, myself (sound) and Lee (lighting) had to let Martin (lead spotlight) and the rather attractive female lead out of the backstage changing room, where they'd been locked in because they had been ...hiding. Rather energetically.




My favourite play, though, was at secondary school. At the time, I'd do more or less anything to get out of normal lessons (computing, technical drama, anything - I must have been the geekiest kid in my year) and so I got involved in the school play. This meant three full days of rehearsals, and another day for us techies to set up first. After the first show I did, I was hooked, and when it came time to choose my GCSEs, I was the only person in school to do Lighting and Set Design instead of Drama.

So when I was asked by the head of drama (Mrs Hawes, lovely lady) to run lighting and sound for a group of year elevens I was more than happy to help. It turned out they were doing quite an emotional piece - rape was involved - and they wanted some music to accompany one particular scene. Anyway I ran the lighting and the tape for the rehearsal and, if my memory serves, for their assessment; but Mrs Hawes had asked them to perform the play in the school assembly.

So for said assembly, I'm sat at the front of the hall next to the cassette player, so that I can run the music and fade it out at the right points. The group is introduced, the play is performed, and when all was done I don't think there were many dry eyes left through the whole school.

To my shame I can't remember much about the play itself, but I do remember the music. Whenever I hear Massive Attack's "Teardrop on the Fire" I'm transported back seven years to that assembly hall.




Unfortunately, all that remains of that period of my life is a working knowledge of lighting and sound equipment (came in useful at a Latin American society gig I got invited to), and the fact that the headphones I wear about the house are more appropriate for an on-stage foldback engineer at a gig.

Anyone - amateur theatre, pro theatre, venues, bands - in [south] Manchester looking for a sound/lighting engineer? My email address is in my profile...
( Legionary - My god, Brian, there's a message in my alphabets, Fri 2 Dec 2005, 18:08, Reply)