Transition Complete! This blog is now closed!

Well it turns out Wordpress has a rather nice auto-import feature that takes all your posts from Blogger and imports them with images, tags and everything intact. So the whole blog is duplicated over at the new site, thegobutton.net/blog HeadsetChatter.com/blog. There's even a new post today.

This will be my last post here, so please update your bookmarks to the new site, and be sure to check out the new features (some are still under construction, but you will see an idea of what's coming).

Thanks for reading, I hope you like the new site, and if not, feel free to let me know!

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!

It is with great fanfare that I announce the birth of

thegobutton.net!

Since I created this blog, I have long dreamed of having a full website where people would go for stage management tips, tricks, stories and downloads. I was held back only by my complete inability to properly design web pages.

A while back I purchased Macheist Bundle 3, which includes lots of fun software. One of the more popular apps is Espresso, which is a new app for web developers. While on tour I started feeling a little bit inadequate as a geek because I didn't know any modern programming languages. So since I have this random free copy of Espresso, I thought I'd take some time to start out small and work my way through hand-coding websites in HTML, CSS, and onward from there. With nothing but free time between the tour and the Reagle season, in just a few days I had progressed through HTML to basic and intermediate CSS, and I decided to go ahead and buy the domain I've had my eye on for over two years, thegobutton.net (thegobutton.com, unfortunately, was taken, otherwise I probably would have bought it when I started this blog).

Along with that I purchased a hosting plan from godaddy.com, and uploaded the little site I developed onto it, and began expanding it. As of this writing, I have been working on this little project for three days, and I am ready to announce it on the blog. It's very much a work in progress, there are a lot of placeholders, but if you're curious to see what I'm working on, you can browse around, and there's a forum that's up and running, too (what I need a forum for at this point, I don't know, but I like forums).

This blog will eventually move over there, as soon as I figure out exactly how to do that. In all likelihood I will install Wordpress and transfer all the posts over.

And I promise, the banner will calm down. I needed to design a dummy one to get started, I had new Photoshop filters to play with, and things just kind of went from there.

End of Tour

Well the end of the tour has come.  I'm sorry I didn't have any posting to do during the 6 days of our final leg.  Our internet problems continued and worsened, to the point that there really wasn't any convenient time to sit and relax with internet access that might have lent itself to blogging.  On top of that, there wasn't really anything spectacular to blog about.  It was kind of same-old-same-old.  We came, we saw, we did shows.  We finally got to perform The Spy a bit, between the end of the New York run and the final leg, we actually did more Spy than Henry.  It finally started to evolve into something as natural as it had been when we rehearsed it in New York way back in November/December.  It was kind of sad to see it finally coming together too late, and to get a hint of the potential it might have had if not for all the misfortunes that befell it (and the fact that most of America's presenters apparently had no interest in booking it).

Overall the tour turned out pretty well after its rough start.  There's a lot I think we can do better next year if we build on what we learned this year, and I hope to be a part of that.  Romeo and Juliet and a workshop of a new adaptation of Alice in Wonderland are on the agenda for next season.

I think this concludes the Tour Mini-Blog, I hope you had fun reading of my adventures this season.  I'd like to give one final plug to my Flickr photostream, over yonder on the right sidebar.  It contains almost daily photos from life on the road, along with some pretty detailed descriptions, and it covers some aspects of the tour I didn't blog about (and certainly was too lazy to post photos of in the blog).

My Week "Off"

I feel like I hit a milestone in my career this weekend. It's the first time I've been asked to call a show in performance without any rehearsal, based on having called a different production of the same show.  

Last summer you may recall I was PSM for a production of No, No Nanette starring Donna McKechnie. If not you can read about it in the August 2008 archives. Anyway this week we are laid off from The Acting Company, and my friend Brian is PSM for a production of Nanette for Amas, who in addition to producing Off-Broadway, also run a program for high school kids where they get to learn about theatre and at the end of the school year put on a full-length musical with a creative team and tech staff of working professionals. I have worked with Amas a lot, and worked as ASM on one of these shows a few years back.  So due to having the week off, I decided to support my friends and see what the kids were doing with Nanette.

Brian's assistant couldn't make a few hours of tech on Thursday, so I agreed to stop by to be a warm stage managerial body, and then stayed to watch the final dress. Which is a good thing. After the run, Brian found out the next night his other show, which his sub would be calling for the first time, would be welcoming the Times critic.  How could Brian call the show for the Times when he was supposed to be calling opening night of Nanette at the same time?  Unless of course there was someone who already had a working knowledge of calling Nanette and preferably had at least seen this production. The next morning at 9AM I got the confirmation that they wanted me to call. I finished reading through the script about ten minutes prior to the show, then listened to a couple bits of the original cast recording to remind myself of a couple bumps I didn't remember and the end of the overture.

The show went fine and I didn't have any major regrets upon actually seeing what the cues do. I came upon a couple funny situations due to the fact that the show was slightly cut down.  I had a restore cue and wasn't sure if the tag at the end of the number was kept or if they would go straight on.  So I took the cue to be safe, and sure enough they did the tag.  A few bars before the end of "Hubby Gone Blues" I couldn't quite tell from the markings if the entire boys' section was cut or if the last bit was in, which greatly effected where the final cue went. So I had to ask on headset, "um, strange question, but do the boys come in in this number?" "No." "Ok, so this is the end right here then." "Yes."  It was a fun time.

Turning 30

You know when you're playing an RPG, where you have to complete some side tasks before moving past a certain point in the game, or not make any mistakes, or else you'll never be able to achieve the good ending? And once you've failed to do that, you might not even be halfway through the game, but from then on you know the best you're going to get is the generic ending. And maybe you bother playing the rest of the game out, but you're not really enjoying it, because you screwed it up and no matter what you do you can't get to the result you want. That's how I feel about turning 30.