Half Hour Please: First Days of Work

Wow! What a couple days it's been. If I had the time, I would write on and on about everything I've been doing, but I don't - and I'm quite certain that no one would actually read all of that. But, nonetheless, I'll do my best to summarize everything as much as possible.

So yesterday was my first official day of work. I came in at 9am with Breanna, another Electrician, and we started wiring lamp sockets. The main set piece of this show is a giant four-sided marquee that hangs 15 feet above the stage. It's about 20 feet long on each side and 5 feet high. And all together there's about 400 (!) lightbulbs on the structure, split into 7 different circuits. For every one of those lightbulbs, we have to install a socket for them to screw into, and we have to wire a hot and a neutral wire to every socket. So Brianna and I spent most of the morning finishing that, which they've been working on for a few days now. (See the photos below).

After lunch, the other three electricians arrived for the day. The carpenters had to steal the marquee set pieces away from us so they could get them in the air, so we started troubleshooting the actual light plot and getting everything ready for the focus that night. At 6pm, the designer arrived and we started the focus. There are 5 electricians on staff, and to make focus go quickly, everyone was focusing. While we focused overstage, we had four of us in various elevation devices and one person on the ground moving us around. Then when we finished overstage, we all went to the catwalks and focused different positions while the designer just switched between us. It was very intense, but very fun, and we managed to focus the entire ~150 unit plot in about an hour - that's roughly one unit every 25 seconds! After focusing and working out some problems, we went home at 11pm. I was out as soon as I hit the pillow.

Today, my call was for 8:30am - a half hour later than normal because we had worked so much on Sunday. We spent the morning continuing to wire up the sockets, except with one tiny change - we were now trying to do it at 20 feet in the air. Wiring hundreds of sockets, lamping them, and screwing them into a light box is hard as it is, but trying to do it while straddling a ladder with people working underneath you is even harder! One thing that we don't replicate in high school theatre is the concept of departments. In any professional or large community theatre, people and equipment are strictly divided into departments - Electrics, Carpentry, Paint, Wardrobe, Audio, and so on. In general, Carpentry (scenery) work has priority ,with electrics right behind them, and then paint and audio. What that means is that we were constantly having to work around the carps as they finished their own work on the marquee - we're both behind schedule, so it was difficult to try to stay out of eachother's way. We basically spent the whole day continuing to wire the sockets in the marquee, as well as troubleshooting some problems in the light plot and hanging some new units that didn't get hung the previous day. Around 5, the designer came back and we focused some of the new units, and I made some small changes to the units we had focused the day before. Then at 6, the show officially went into tech and I was done. Breanna and Tyler are still there because they're running the first show, but my first show assignment isn't until next week. I start tomorrow morning at 8am, and we'll likely be continuing to work on the marquee - hopefully we'll get it fully working tomorrow!

So I know this is a pretty boring post - sorry. I'm really tired and it's hard to explain a lot of what we're doing unless you really know the theatre. So to make up for it, enjoy these photos!: (click on each one for a larger, more detailed view)

Some of the sockets just after wiring.

The Downstage Letter Box

Another view of the Downstage Letter Box

Red Fred - We have two Freds at the Hangar. FRED stands for "F**king Retarded Elevation Device". They are incredibly old and don't look too good, but they're surprisingly sturdy. They move up and down by cranking a very loud and squeaky hand crank.