PTT Program 5 Day 7 Video 3.txt

And main rag in, go. House to to pull. Go. Thank you all. Great show. I'll take work lights. It's a 1 o'clock call tomorrow for rehearsal. 1 o'clock, everybody. Have a great night. Get home safe. When a show decides to go on tour, your job as a stage manager gets a lot more interesting. I've had t...

And main rag in, go. House to to pull. Go. Thank you all. Great show. I'll take work lights. It's a 1 o'clock call tomorrow for rehearsal. 1 o'clock, everybody. Have a great night. Get home safe. When a show decides to go on tour, your job as a stage manager gets a lot more interesting. I've had the great fortune to have toured for over 6 years on various types of tours. One type of tour is a bus and truck 1 nighter tour, where the show is only in town for one day. You load the entire show set, lighting, costumes, props all in that morning, set up, perform the show, and then load out and move on to the next city to do it all over the next day. Another type of tour are large scale direct from Broadway musicals that take several days to load in and can be anywhere from 14 to 25 semi trucks of equipment. They will sit down in a city for a week to 4 weeks or longer. These shows are larger in the technical nature and take more time to set up, so their run time in a city will be longer. Shows like Les Mis, Phantom, Lion King, Mary Poppins, and Wicked have had this type of schedule through the years. Each theater is different in terms of the size of the stage house, the number and locations of dressing rooms, and the physical aspects of the building itself. This is where the adaptable and flexible qualities of your job come into play. Let's talk about touring a show. When a show tours, you are moving that production from city to city. On a touring production, the stage manager and company manager will work in tandem to facilitate a lot of the day to day routine for running the company of the production. They work very closely with the head carpenter for the show who is responsible for all of the technical aspects of the production and the crew. The head carpenter will deal with all of the details of how the show moves in the load in and load out of the production. It is crucial that you do your prep and your homework and be prepared for the next theater the show is going into so you will be able to handle any surprises with ease, and they will come up. On some shows I've worked on, there might have to be some cuts made to the scenery in order to accommodate the show. The head carpenter and production stage manager will address what these are and why they need to happen and try to make decisions that will still keep the artistic integrity of the direction and design intact. The company manager is the business end of this team. They will handle the payroll of the company, all company travel, air, hotels, cars, as well as dealing with the settlement for the show or how the show gets paid. They handle contracts, publicity, and dealing with the producers of the show on a daily or weekly basis, whereas the stage manager, along with the dance captains and musical director, are maintaining the artistic side of the production with the crew and department heads. Each department has a department head that typically travels with the show, costumes, hair, makeup, lighting, props, carpentry, sound. These individuals and their assistants will then work with the local crew members who are hired on to make the show run on a nightly basis. The number of crew members touring and also hired locally are dictated by the size and demands of the production itself. These people ensure that the technical Circumstances are sometimes out of your control, but Circumstances are sometimes out of your control, but the last resort is always to cancel the show. The adage, the show must go on, is true and the only answer most of the time. Trucks being delayed between cities, scenery breaking, weather causing a lack of power, a leaky theater, it goes on. These are just some of the issues you can face when touring a production. People often ask what the hardest thing about touring is. The answer, touring. Unlike working in a regional theater, summer stock, or even in LA or New York, you are moving the show across the country. This means the group of people you are working with are also the same people you are being social with, and you are basically forced to become a family. It's an experience like none other. In New York or even your hometown theater, you go home at the end of the night to your house, your apartment, and your friends who you don't work with. On the road, you get done with the show and you go back to your hotel room, or if you socialize, it's with the people you just finished doing the show with. In addition, 8 shows a week and only Mondays off can get tiring, and it's a lot. The plus side is you get to see the country. But for performers, you're subjected to different climates and locales. For example, you'll find the altitude in Denver affects your voice. The dry climate in Vegas, the humidity in the Midwest, the moisture in the Pacific Northwest, all affect your body and how you're able to do your job. You have to make hotels home, and you find comfort in humidifiers, blankets, and the kind of things you need to make living on the road more manageable. Theater people who tour are a special crop, and you will find you have a different work ethic if you have experienced a tour, even if only once in your life.