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February 10, 2003
"Peppermint Ice Cream"
It's been a busy Neutrino Project week, a busy AYUMDS week, and a busy Bare week. And the ol' personal life has been an unbloggable rollercoaster. So... get off my case, Don, for the lack of updates.
We had a tech rehearsal at IO on Wednesday. The two big changes were sound and where Greg sat.
Everyone we spoke to who had done a show in the Del Close Theater said "get your own sound." I guess the speakers cut out a lot and such. We didn't want to risk it, so Shaun and I went down to Guitar Center and bought a Fender PD-250. Which brings our total expenditures for this show to somewhere around a half-a-jillion dollars. It's all equipment we can use for this and future shows, but still. But, I can't wait until we get a golf cart to mount our PD-250 on.
We also had to figure out where to stick Greg and all the gear. The lightbooth at IO is pretty small, and the runners would either have to run across the picture or come in the back door, which is currently broken. So, we stuck Greg just to the right of the stage. I'm not sure if having him visible adds to or detracts from the show. But that's what we're stuck with.
The tech rehearsal was also an opportunity to break in a few new folks. Because the extension was so last minute, no one had cleared their schedule for the four Fridays. The only person we're losing completely for this run is Rachel Michalski (which is a huge shame) but the rest of the schedule is a hodge-podge of people missing one or two shows. Add in that we're trying to give each of the runners a show as an actor and we're back in huge, complicated chart-land and we're pulling in some Neutrino Project alumni (Tim Sniffen) and some new faces (Trish Conlon, Chad Reinhart).
A big advantage of a Saturday show is that I can put off lots of stuff until Saturday afternoon -- for a Friday show I need to be ready for by Thursday night, so I can go straight from work to the show. And since I was going to Steppenwolf and Lakeview Lounge for my birthday on Thursday night, I had to go home after the tech rehearsal on Wednesday and blank all the tapes and pack up cables, etc. Whew -- planning ahead?! What do you people want from me!?
So, Friday came all too fast and we were still short a runner. At 5:30, when I needed to leave for the theater, I walked over to the desk of Ben Taylor, who was fortunately still at work, and asked if he'd mind running. Ben wins the all-around-great-guy award of the year for saying "sure" and heading to the theater with me. (Ben's the band leader for the two-piece that will be doing the scores for the AYUMDS.)
The suggestion for the show was "peppermint ice cream" and the show was more-or-less about childish behavior. Dave Colan (in his Neutrino Project debut) and Andrea made a giant mess as food-artists at the Billy Goat and Beth and Jen were a professor and frightfully under-age student at Mullen's. Mike Starcevich was in San Diego, so Scott McNulty, who had run camera in some of the early rehearsals, stepped up to the plate and acquited himself well as a videographer.
We had an audience of about 40, which was about what we were expecting for moving theaters, days, and times. I hope too many people didn't show up at WNEP on Saturday at 10:30 (or if they did, I hope they stayed for Dirty Bible Stories). Forty people in WNEP feels pretty full. Forty people in the Del Close Theater doesn't feel quite so packed, so I hope things pick back up in the next few weeks.
I know that one concern is the higher ticket price at IO, so here's my special you-read-this-far-you-must-be-cool offer -- send me an email and I'll hook you up with a 2-for-1.
Posted by Fuzzy at February 10, 2003 11:56 AM