A revival of sorts this is. I've been letting this blog languish for a bit too long here. I started to spend a lot more effort twittering small updates, and ran myself out of time to work on larger updates for the blog. At the time, I decided to add my twitter feed to the top of the blog here. I checked it, then logged-out and moved on with the busy part of life. Today I noticed that the twitter feed hasn't updated in weeks, partially due to a configuration bug that was introduced when one of the machines where I have this blog hosted was upgraded. Argh.

Hi happy readers. It has been a little while since I posted here. We've been pretty busy. I've been working on a show for Riverview school district. They're doing Jesus Christ Superstar, which is quite possibly one of my favorite shows. That is going well, and will probably be the subject of a few longer posts later. I've also been busy learning my new camera, which has been quite fun.

Beauty and the Beast at Valley is finished.  The show closed with a matinee performance today, then we struck everything.  I called my Dad to come to help me strike the sound gear.  There wasn't a whole lot of stuff, but things were a mess after a week of show.  No matter how neat and orderly things start out, they tend to be on the messy side by the time the week is finished.  There have been hacks and kludges and re-patched cables and all sorts of other joy by the time we get to the end of the run.  Having two people made putting things away from that a lot easier. 

Our techie friend Linda brought flowers for Shawn and me.  She's always so nice, and she's a damn good techie, too!  She's studying at a nearby college now, so she can come out to some of the setup and show days that are around weekends.  It's always great to see some theatre alumni come back, and even better when they come to help.  :) 

The show itself was great.  The kids put a lot of time and effort into this show, and it definitely showed.  The parents and volunteers and staff poured a ton of time into making this show what it was, too--the costumes were amazing, make-up and hair were great, vocal direction was cohesive and clear....  The list goes on and on.  Even better than that, there were a lot of people who came to see the show, so hopefully they did well on it money-wise, too.  I know that the crowds were enthusiastic, which was refreshing to see after being involved in some other shows with audiences that I think may have been mechanical. 

We had a new set of microphones for this show that really shined, and that was great.  We won twice with those--the boosters didn't have to pay for the mic rental, and the sound was phenomenally better than it had been with the rental mics.  We had some issues on Saturday's performance because someone flipped a switch in a closet that enabled a set of speakers that shouldn't have been on at all.  That caused me to catch feedback a few times when it shouldn't have been there, but I controlled it as quickly as I could.  I hate when it happens, though, because then I look like an idiot. 

In any case, the show went smashingly well, and now I'm tired.  All of our equipment is back in temporary storage--I have another show in a few weeks for one of the choirs at the school--and I've been fed and watered.  Now I think it is getting close to bedtime. 

jonathan

One of my hobbies is that I do sound for theatre productions.  I normally work some community and high school productions in the area.  The first show for me this fall is a local high school that is producing "Fools" by Neil Simon.  The show is quite funny, and the kids are doing a good job in it.  One of my favorite directors is their director, too, so I'm having a good time working on the show.  I like actually being able to do a sound design, with musical beds and all sorts of fun things, and I can do that with him.  I'm also working with one of my favorite lighting designers, which makes the show that much more fun to do, too.  Of course, it also ends up cutting into the sleep schedule a bit. 

Due to the show, I can't make any real progress on the room this week.  This weekend, though, we still plan to work, and hopefully get a lot of stuff done. 

jonathan