Igor The Magnificent – Portuguese Technician Man

** At time of posting Tim was unable to load any photos for some reason and will aim to do so shortly **


And now, onto the craziness of the whole ‘Tango Fire’ Portuguese Experience...! I was told, when doing my prep, that in Figuerra we’d be playing a Casino and could use their gear & that for Oporto & Lisbon, we’d have the same gear as it was going to be coming from Ricardo’s theatre. So, I did my standard prep and this was promptly thwarted when we hit Figuerra and their resident show, “Hot Dance” was in residence and we had to make ‘Fire’ work in and around their set & lights....! This was not the deal that I signed up for...! Ricardo waved his hands around and said that ‘Hot’ had been going so well, they nearly cancelled ‘Fire’ but he had managed to still allow for us to perform...! The ‘Hot’ set could have come straight out of a strip club...! (Or so I was told...!) Fireman’s poles, hideous fluro paint and just terrible, terrible & tacky lighting (I’m actually guessing it looked tacky due to the way things were focused and the colours used!). Pretty much the entire, no strike that, the entire ‘Tango’ set was instantly cut as we weren’t allowed to move or touch anything!! I eventually managed to convince the house people, along with heavy hitting back-up from Dan & Toni, to be allowed to focus 8 lamps (that got reduced to 6) so I could at least have some sort of front light...! I also plunged to never before seen depths of my artistic integrity for this performance....!

There were some really basic moving lights in the rig (non that were actually in a position to be of any benefit) and they became my ‘cyc’ lights...! Our ‘cyc’ for Figuerra was a thinish piece of black material that we had eventually managed to convince the casino to hang on one of the bars that we weren’t allowed to touch in order to hide the gross-ness of the ‘strip club’! I put crazy gobo after crazy gobo onto the cyc and even managed to work it into a few numbers where they rotated...! Massive amounts of ‘tacky’ were employed to make it look ‘good’ rather than try to achieve “Fire” and have a very badly lit performance. Looking at the wrongness of how ‘Hot Dance’ looked, judging from their focus, I was convinced that this was the kind of look that Portugal wanted...! Show went well but at a massive cost to my own integrity, not to mention the show’s...!

Oporto, where we were to have the same lights as Lisbon, which was to follow, looked like it was going to be ok. They had decent source 4 fixtures and these heavy duty 2k fesnels that had a lot of punch...! Nice! We also had a crew that toured with us of about 4 or 5 and then they were basically in charge of the local crew. My main man was Conzales and he was decent but I will admit, he bore the brunt of a few jokes that Dan & I made over our time in Portugal. I hadn’t been able to remember his name so I started to call him (between Dan & myself), Igor. He also had a fairly decent monobrow and the running gag was that if you wanted something done, you went and scratched him with your index finger, just above his nose. Another gag of Dan’s of getting the Portuguese to do something was to flick them on the forehead. Now this may sound quite rude & I guess to a point it is but please note that it was not to their faces (not that that makes it any better) but a way of channelling our frustration & anger at the situations we found ourselves in. It helped to keep us sane and not blow our tops or become aggravated. We’ve applied similar circumstances to situations before.

No, it’s not necessarily right in this day and age of political correctness but not alot of stuff in theatre is! Humour is a great way to vent frustration but I in no way condone it being used as a form of bullying – ie. face to face or even on a mass scale to everyone behind their backs. The ‘name calling’ that Dan & I were doing was only for us. I admit it sounds terrible but I know full well that people who I’ve worked with before – both above & below me – have done the same thing. And I don’t mind because it also serves as a ‘quick release’ so that you don’t harbour the anger & frustration that’s building up. After all, it’s highly likely you’re going to be working with them again and/or you need them to be on your side, not against you. All it would take on stage was a raise of the eyebrows to Dan and he would do the flicking motion, which in turn made me smile and then I was ready to turn back to the carnage. I know it doesn’t sound right but in a job where your schedule can be turned on it’s head by the smallest of things, you need to be able to keep a calm head and have a laugh in order to keep moving ahead!

Conzales was actually quite funny and you could tell from his demeanour that he was stressed working his ass off to get the lights ready for the show. When it came to plotting he quickly caught onto the way I worked and we made up many countless little gags that got us through. You also have to remember, he too was working under Ricardo and without anything being said, I think we found some common ground....!! There was definitely some mutual respect (despite what I’ve said previous!). My main frustration was from the fact that I’d been told one thing, made notes and prepped accordingly but for what...? Nada!

Then there was Lisbon – Ricardo’s home town and family’s venue... Surprise! It was not the same equipment as we had used in Oporto, “They wanted to hire for another show. I said yes!” So we ended up with C level equip – well I did, can’t speak for Dan. Conzales had been told the same thing – hence where the respect/bond formed. I’ve also added another way of giving the spots the location of their ‘targets’ on the stage– (spelling not correct), es-scare-doh – left & de-right-a – right!

Overall, Portugal was a crazy, crazy technical experience but the actual country was quite cool. Overall, the show was ready on time each time and the guys we were working with were decent and there were laughs along the way – we just had issues with Management!! At least that’s a consistent theme amongst workers world wide!!