Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the village hall....along comes panto!
All over the country frustrated directors are tearing their hair out trying to get local am-drams, who can barely remember their lines, to appear to the audience as prime candidates to be selected as the next Maria in the West End! And the side effect on the long suffering technical side of the industry? Well, of course, all these directors want the show to look like the finale of 'The X Factor' while running from 2 13a sockets with a budget of £100, shared with wardrobe.
Well Phosphene does its bit towards this magic, by keeping its prices really incredibly low! (Advert over). But there are a number of little niggles that come to the fore during this season of goodwill to almost all men.
We've had a go about one of these before, but I was reminded of it only a couple of nights ago. Simple, stand mounted, lighting for an orchestral concert in a church... and come the get out, with everyone wishing to be home (or to the pub in the case of the brass players) with as much speed as decently possible, we experience the usual frustration of gaggles of people stood determinedly smack in the middle of the gangways. Some of these are audience, who maybe know no better. Though common decency and sense (in short supply these days, just try walking down an avarage English street without having to dodge people who are determined not to veer out of the way) would imply that once you've been asked to shift 3 or 4 times by guys carrying equipment you might get the message. No these are regularly members of the orchestra, complete with the usual array of bulky cases (piccolo players) and funny shaped portacabins (cellists and bass players) who'll be the first to complain if they can't get their instrument past something when they eventually do move.
Couple this, in village hall set-ups, with those well meaning (?) people who start the get-out by piling all the stacking chairs on top of the cable run that goes down one side of the hall (have you noticed they never stack the chairs the other side? I routed the cables the long way round one year in one hall, having had enough of this problem at that venue... only to have the chair stackers change their long established routine and stack on top of the wiring yet again) and the odd technique of starting to sweep up BEFORE the gaffa tape has been pulled off the bars, so you've got no-where to chuck the rubbish as you de-rig, and end up trying to clutch an growing ball of sticky tape in one hand while climbing ladders. Panto brings out another frustration... or perhaps in these risk-assessment obsessed days we should call it a hazard. The cast children, who wander into the midst of the get-out, usually just as overhead stuff is decending, and run about underneath it throwing the finale glitterfetti about! Their parents are always the ones who won't like it if the hire company tells them to mind out of the way!
Bless!
Maybe, just maybe there really is some sense in the am-dram routine, which I really don't like, of postponing the get-out till the Sunday morning! .