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.

Red Flag

I got an email today forwarded through several people, about a company looking for a stage manager for an upcoming production.  When I got to where it said, "This is a paid position," like there was any question that it might not be, I stopped.  Of course I wasn't available for all the dates, and I doubt this gig was Equity-approved anyway.  However...

Being that it's a paid position, I'm sure it would be a great job for somebody just starting out.  But honestly, nobody deserves to stage manage for free EVER, unless it's in school, or for charity.  Whenever I see that in a job description it makes me crazy.  The implication that under other circumstances a "professional" company or individual producer might have been looking for a stage manager for no pay is just sad.  Come on, if you've got the money to put up a show, however small, you can find $100 to give to the person doing the hardest and most thankless part of it.  I know some people really do need the resume and experience, but I think anybody has the right to refuse to work for free.  In fact it would be nice if enough people did it that producers wouldn't think to ask.

Sorry, I had to vent about that peeve.  Am I being overly sensitive?

Baruch Revisited

Late last night we departed Frostburg, MD, and this morning we woke up home-sweet-home on 24th St. and Lex. We said our final goodbyes to Bart, and unloaded all our luggage and other belongings from the bus into a hallway by the loading doors at Baruch College (see photo).

Last night in Frostburg was a Save the Ta-Tas Load Out.  This is something we do every now and then, where the whole crew will wear our Save the Ta-Tas shirts that Daphne got us for opening night in New York.  Like so, in Tucson:

We decided pretty much at the start of this leg that Frostburg would be a Save the Ta-Tas Load Out since it was the last venue before returning to New York.  The interesting advantage of this was that the next morning when we got up in New York, it was easy to tell who had decided to sleep in their clothes, as they were the ones still wearing their Ta-Tas for load in.  I didn't exactly count, but I'd say it was four or five of us, including me. Speaking of which, we have submitted our photo to savethetatas.com, but it hasn't been published yet.  I did have a nice email conversation with their customer service lady about our company -- she wants to see us when we come to California -- and she assured me it would go up "soon."  That was like a month ago.

Baruch is kind of the most hellacious load-in situation ever. Unloading the truck on the street, followed by a lot of ramps and hallways, to a rather small freight elevator, and then down some more winding and public hallways to the theatre. Apparently it took 5 hours to unload the truck. Sadly for my friends, Nick and I did the stage manager thing and helped unload the road boxes, then broke off with our box and did our jobs and went home. We both felt bad for our friends, but my personal philosophy is that when you're playing Poplar Bluff, MO and the show must go on, and you need a few more hands, that's one thing. When opening a show in New York, there's no reason stage managers should be needed to work as stage hands, without compensation and when their home is just a subway ride away. At any rate, I feel slightly less bad since I also had to come back at night for a late-night cueing session for The Spy. Due to the tightly packed schedule (if performances and film shoots manifested themselves as fish, this week's would be sardines), there was no other time to do it but late tonight on load-in day, and as this is the New York premiere, we want to try to show it a little more love than it's been given on our very Henry-heavy touring schedule. At least I had a chance to shower, change, and show up nicely dressed and clean like a normal person. I even have some simple jewelry on.

My first task upon coming back to Baruch at night was to set up our wireless network. As I have reported before in this post from December, Baruch's theatre is in the third basement of their main building, surrounded by more concrete than any radio wave can get through, so cell service is a complete impossibility, and setting up a router in one room and expecting it to work three rooms down the hall is sketchy. When we teched The Spy here, it took me the better part of three days to get a reliable wireless signal to reach the theatre from the single ethernet cable in the production office. The solution I came up with was to bring in two of my own personal routers -- an old UFO-shaped Airport Extreme, and an original Airport Express -- and to place the Extreme on top of a filing cabinet in the production office, where the ethernet was, and to plug the Express in in the shop, which is just behind the stage. The signal from the Extreme went just far enough to reach the Express, which then passed it on just far enough to reach the tech tables in the house, but not quite enough for a steady signal in the booth. I may see what I can do about that this time, as I will be spending pretty much all my time in the booth.

This whole day has been deja vu. So many things have changed since we began our journey here, and yet there are other things that are exactly the same. When I came back at night, I found a couple of the tiny Spy columns, which we call "nubblies," nestled against a diagonal wall, where six months ago another pile of short unused Spy columns sat when it was decided they weren't needed (or something). This time they will be needed, but because we're repping Henry and Spy, they are simply waiting there while Henry takes the stage. As soon as I glimpsed the greenroom through an open door I was instantly taken back to our final post-invited-dress notes session, on the eve of beginning the tour, and thought of all the people who were there who are no longer with the company. It's been kind of a bittersweet return. But with all the drama along the way, the very fact that we are back here and performing both shows is an accomplishment in itself, so we can be proud of that.

Dear Apple

Thank you for your recent emails suggesting that I get my mother an iPod Touch for Mother's Day.  Were it not for your almost daily reminders, I would not actually have been aware that Mother's Day was approaching, or that I needed to be planning gifts for both my parents (as I'll be out of town by Father's Day).  I've been quite busy on the road and thinking of days in terms of load ins and load outs, and completely oblivious to weekends, birthdays or national holidays.  Actually I'm turning 30 in a few days, and the most I can tell you about that date is that we have performances of The Spy at 2 and 8, with a seminar prior to the matinee.  So you can see how I greatly appreciate your reminders that I need to get a gift for my mom.

However, while my mother is a Mac user and might have an iPhone except that AT&T sucks at her house, I don't believe that the iPod Touch is the ideal gift for her.  She's not much of a music lover -- I think she still has yet to spend all of an iTunes gift certificate I got for her several years ago -- and I don't imagine she'd enjoy watching videos or TV shows on such a small screen.  Personally, I don't see the point of an iPod Touch for anyone who doesn't intend to use it first as an iPod.  I would like someday to be able to get her an inexpensive Macbook, as she would truly use that, but this would be exceedingly more difficult if I now spent $300 on a gift she won't really use.  And P.S. Mr. or Ms. Apple Marketing Person, I have a feeling you have a larger and more regular income than I do and can afford to drop $300 on a Mother's Day gift -- and then presumably match that gift a month later when Father's Day rolls around.  Well good for you.  

In brief, I appreciate that you're looking out for my mother, and for my own preparedness, but the next time you feel the need to send me 5 or more emails suggesting I buy a specific gift for someone, please pick something more appropriate.  Thanks!
Love, KP