Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
Wait, why is he up there!? Shit!
There is a convention, in the theater world, called "calling time." It's pretty much what you'd imagine, and if you ever watched the Muppet Show, you've seen it. It was when Scooter would run up into the guest's dressing room and call out, "Five minutes, Mr. Belafonte, five minutes!" That's pretty much it. The stage manager runs around, and tells people how long they have until they're on, making sure everything's ready, and dealing with any problems that arise.
So, the final step in calling time is shoving the actor out the door (at least metaphorically) and onto the stage. If the stage manager isn't on the ball, actors end up going on late or early, and it can cause real havoc. If the actors don't pay attention to the stage manager, and cue themselves, it can cause at least as much havoc.
For the purposes of SketchFest, we don't have any internal cues to give actors, they all handle that themselves. However, we (well, the stage manager, R.) tells them when to go on, and she gets the next group ready, and so on. This year, we're also having a "host," who comes out and warms up the audience a little bit before the show, and thanks them after the show.
The hosts are stand-up comedians, which sounds like a good idea (why not introduce comedy with comedy?), but is having some teething troubles. The biggest one we've encountered so far is that stand-up people are not, by and large, theater people.
Imagine, if you will, that you're sitting in the audience at SketchFest. You've just watched a great show, Ten West. They put on a neat, basically mum show which might put you in mind of a Vaudeville act, including bowler hats and suits with suspenders. The lights go down after the performers bow, then a solitary light comes up, where the host stood before the show.
Seconds pass, finally what feels like a full minute (and when you're facing an empty stage, a minute is a long time) goes by. Finally, the host trots out, and gives the traditional, "Let's have a big round of applause for Ten West!" Everyone applauds, lights change, you get up to have some beer.
That's kind of annoying, but (at least to me), an acceptable mistake to make. It really only impacts the host, and chances are good that it was his problem to start with.
As it happens, there was a technical problem with our video intro for Ten West, and I was frantically conferring with our amazing video creator, Josh Knisely. (Really, I'm very very impressed with Josh's work, he's done fantastic stuff for two years now.) Anyway, the intermission flew by as I was talking with Josh about how to fix the video problem.
I heard R. call 10 minutes over the headset as Josh and I were talking. Then I heard a 6 minute call as we were wrapping up. I turned to start getting ready for the next show (Karla, as it happens, a culture-lampooning duo from LA). To my horror, I saw the host standing on the stage, hoisting the microphone up to his lips. Oh, no.
At this point in the process, I was frantic from the DVD problem, and had done none of my preparation for Karla's show. The prep isn't hard, and it's only about 30 seconds of work, but in the high-stress booth, that's not such a clear-cut thing. Now I was looking at this guy standing on stage, practically tapping his foot, waiting for his light to come up.
Not ready to do anything else, I grabbed the slider for his light and slammed it up. H., my delightful sound operator, looked over at me, and said, "Did you hear places?" "No," I replied, "and I'm not ready!" We wasted a few more seconds in a similar vein, confirming that neither of us had spontaneously lost our reason. As the host (who, despite a long and rambling introduction to the first show, had spoken for perhaps 10 seconds this time), turned to go, I keyed the headset and said in a low, urgent voice, "The booth is not ready. Send him back out or something, but we are not ready to go."
H. and I scrambled through the frantic urgency, and got Karla's show prepped (which involves doing ten seconds or so of actual stuff, and then double- or triple-checking everything -- the double-check has saved me more than once). The host slinked back out, and said, in a slow obsequious drawl, "Well.... I've... been asked to... come out... and... stall. Staaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllll. Yeah, so..." (I'm not making that up, that's reasonably close to what he actually said, including the 10-second long, drawn out "stall.")
At this point, I somehow signaled to him that he was done (I don't remember now what I did, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it involved rude gestures), and he slunk back off the stage as his light went out. Karla's video intro ran, and we got through the show without any further problem.
I had doomy thoughts running through my head as the first sketch ran, though, since the first time we did Karla's show, I clipped several of their sketches short accidentally, one of them about 10 seconds after it started. I figured for sure that between the DVD not working, the host showing up 5 minutes too early, and the screw-ups in the previous show, I was screwed. But, it went off without a hitch, and my hastily scrawled notes kept me from killing their show again.
As we were scrambling around getting ready for the next show after Karla, I passed R. (the stage manager) at some point, and said, "We'll talk later," as she looked like she was about to explain. I was actually too busy to talk at that moment, although I was burning to know what had happened. I suspect my voice and face had an ominious, glowering quality about them, although I didn't really intend that.
After the shows were all done for the night, and we were getting ready for PUSH! (the experimental, "bring what you got" cabaret at midnight on Fridays), R. came up and gave me the story.
Apparently, feeling bad for having missed his cue at the end of Ten West (I didn't get the story on why that happened, although the Ten West show is about 10 minutes shorter than normal), the host was bound and determined not to do it again. R. had circled around (as she does) to check on all the things she needs to check on -- the lobby, the actors, the booth, etc. She called 6 minutes over the headset (this was just shy of 9 pm, which is the nominal "go" time, although we usually end up waiting for 5 minutes to catch any straggling audience members), and circled around to tell the host 6 minutes, only to find that he wasn't there.
Right around that time, she would have been hearing his amplified voice jabbering about something, overlaid with my urgent, "The booth is not ready." He had apparently cued himself, in contravention of all ingrained theater habits. Except, of course, that being a stand-up comedian, he didn't necessarily have much theater experience, and so had no ingrained habit of obeying the stage manager.
After he confidently strode off, I'll hazard a guess that he got a look sufficient to wither men's souls from R., before being urged to head back out on stage and stall for time. R. is sweet, but I wouldn't want to be in her bad graces. Fortunately, we work well together, so it's not an issue.
The stress over, R. and H. and I had a good chuckle, and went on to have a great session of PUSH!
I can't honestly say that the stand-up comedians we've had so far are doing a bad job. I couldn't possibly do what they're doing. They just need to have a few theatrical habits ingrained. You know, with a stick or something.
Posted at 12:28 permanent link category: /theater
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater