Wading in the Velvet Sea

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July 29, 2003

You Should Be Dancin', Yea!

I told this to Tim and Diana a few weeks ago, and it bears repeating for the general public: I dunno how the starving artists do it.

OK, they are not starving, but they are putting in an incredible amount of time pursuing their artistic impulses for little to no financial compensation, all in the name of eventually being able to economically support themselves through the art form they cherish above all others.

Me? I cut that crap out years ago. Man, it was killin’ me. Let me sell out (my stock options) and live out my hollow lie of a live in the Hamptons, baby. Bling bling and all that fuh-hizzle.

OK, so not quite to that extent. I get my creative rocks off just writing these days, a far cry from the wear and tear of two to three shows a month, which was the clip I was on for roughly four years. I’ll take ‘writing for 45 minutes a day’ over ‘hauling 200 pound bundles of cable while 60 feet in the air for a Sunday’ pretty much any day of the week.

So, when an old acquaintance asked my friend and I to help them with their ‘little’ dance show over three months ago, I initially didn’t wanna do it. After all, I didn’t wanna willingly go back to a literal theatre of pain. But hey, it looked like one days’ work, I’d just have to lift heavy things, and spending a day with women in crop tops might not be quite the suckiest way to spend a Sunday.

One day eventually became three, which I should have known, but fine, more fool me. As I outlined yesterday, I spent two hours Sunday picking out color filters for the lights, which were mercifully hung in a house plot already. I had to pick the gel, slip it in the lights the following day, write some cues with my friend, and boom, done, right?

Wrong.

Get to the dance space around 5:45 pm. Meet and greet the tech director, Dan. ‘Got some interesting news, Boss,’ he says. He calls me Boss all the time. Makes me long to travel down Thunder Road to recapture some of those Glory Days. Cuz, you know, I like others have a Hungry Heart. ‘Apparently they cleaned out the office during the day today, and all of your gel is gone.’

OK, we’ve gone to DefCon 4 in my head right now. Dan says the dance space has some old gel upstairs, so I could scrape together what I could. I trudge upstairs, muttering something about taking out some kneecaps. I get upstairs. Hey, who turned off the air conditioning? Oh hey, NO air conditioning in here! Awesome! Where the nearest puppy I can kick?

So, I spend the next thirty minutes piecing together a make shift color palette out of an old bin on the upper track of the converted gym. In this box were assorted gel, random color frames, a map of Tunisia, a human head, and Elizabeth Berkeley’s career. The person who went to retrieve my original gel came in during this, and said how sorry she was that the gel had been removed. I told her how I couldn’t believe that they had thought to clean out the file folders on the wall.

‘The what?’ she said.

‘You know, the file folders on the wall that I explicitly described in my email detailing where the filters were,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ said ‘Yasmeen’ (whose name isn’t Yasmeen but let’s run with it). ‘I didn’t look there.’

She goes back over to look again. I plan out my color attack, which, if I’ve done this the way I think I have, should generate a nice color palette of ‘complete ass’ onstage when all is said and done. Bollocks. I keep going to my ‘happy place’ which involved ‘not doing theatre’, the aforementioned puppy punting, and getting a lap dance from Drew Barrymore to the ‘Pink Panther’ theme song. Yasmeen comes back, and lo, they still weren’t there. So, onto ‘Operation: Make Dancers Look Ashen’.

I’m slipping in the color, and unbeknownst to me, another guy who knows the office better than Yasmeen has gone to look for said gel. As I throw in the last color and am about to start, he calls over to say he’s coming over with all of my original gel.

Defcon 3? Achieved.

So now, my partner in technical crime shows up. I give him the breakdown up until that point, spitting venom onto his shirt. I have also assigned two people to replace the gel. As they finish, I realize that I haven’t accounted for certain units, and therefore am short gel. Argh. I cannot get to the filters without a keycard. No one there has a keycard, but you can get one by presenting a student ID to the front desk at the theatre across the street and get one. I grab Yasmeen and head over. When we get to the front desk, I ask Yasmeen to fork over the ID.

‘What ID?’

‘You know,’ I say patiently, trying to avoid Global Thermonuclear War, ‘The ID which will let me into the office and get the filters.’

‘Ooooh. I just thought you needed me to lift stuff with you. I left my ID back in the dance space.’

Well Jesus Tap Dancin’ Christ, Kyle. Guess where we are? DefCon 2!!!

Cut to 40 minutes later. Office hull has been breached and filters obtained. All filters have been inserted back in the dance hall. All lights have been tested. My friend and I are ready to begin. We sit in front of a large light console, replete with buttons, faders, LED screens. And we realize that we have completely forgotten how to program this board.

Whoops. For 15 minutes, it was an approach of ‘Well, I think this used to work.’ And then pressing a button and muttering a swear word under our breaths. The girls were patient but a little antsy, and kept saying, ‘Maybe you should ask Dan.’ Pshaw, I’m thinking. I’m a manly man. Did tech for years. I have a degree. I can figure this out!

So ten minutes later I get Dan. I’m half expecting Tic-Tac-Toe to pop up on the monitor at this point. Hell, the computer had gotten six of the access code numbers already. Stupid Joshua. Dan works us through a few keystrokes, and, much like bicycle-riding, it came back to us. Granted, up until this point it had been like riding a bicycle with a flaming porcupine as a seat cushion, but hey, we were on our way.

And the best part? I get to do it all over again tonite! Theatre’it’s faaaaaaaaaaantastic. So God bless you, Tim, Diana, and all other artistic troupers out there. My sell-out self salutes you from the end of the bar. And then I’ll point to you and laugh, Nelson-esque. Ha ha!

Posted by Ryan McGee at July 29, 2003 10:02 AM

Comments

Posted by: Megan at July 29, 2003 10:49 AM

Posted by: Commander Foley at July 29, 2003 11:47 AM

Posted by: Lizbet at July 29, 2003 04:21 PM