Well here we are in Athens, Greece and I gotta say, it’s a pretty cool city. It’s a busy city – incredibly so with both pedestrians and cars everywhere. And this might sound dumb but it’s a very old city – I expected it to be more modern in look, even though I know it is a city steeped in history. The style of the buildings reminded me of elements of both Buenos Aires and Cairo & what is amazing is that there are these 2,000+ year old structures smack bang in amongst it all. I don’t know why but I had it my head that the Acropolis, Temple of Zeus etc would all be outside the city, not part of it.
We’re playing at the Badminton Theatre that’s only 2yo. It’s an interesting space, a huge theatre that seats just over 2,500. The stage area is decent and then the seats just extend upwards and outwards from the edge. Why they would call a theatre after a ball sport I was quite curious to discover... Turns out that the theatre was the Badminton Courts for the 2004 Olympics!! Somewhere after the Games somebody in Athens decided that they were never going to hold another badminton tournament and converted the court/stadium into a theatre!! I think that’s pretty cool! I have no idea who won gold in Athens but it’s an interesting feeling to work/stand where some history, even though small, has happened.
Christos and his band of Merry Techs are good folk. They’ve got ok English which is good as my Greek isn’t quite up to scratch!! It’s also weird that alot of what they were saying I could understand as there are similarities to Spanish! Not many but some. The traditional Greek stereotype, in Aus anyway, says “Whoppa” very loud and very often. The crew were doing it all over the shop and it was nice to see it actually used in context rather than as a punchline. It seems to be the universal ‘sound’ for exerting energy or saying ‘stop’.
The crew don’t seem to understand that my name is Tim either. Here, it seems, in Athens I am to be called Jim. I don’t know if there is a ‘t’ sound in Greek but they couldn’t pronounce... hang on a minute, they have tzatiki, that’s pronounced with a ‘t’ sound.... Why for then must I be called Jim..? Oh well, it’s better than ‘Brian’!
They’ve got an ETC Congo console and I had a file saved to my USB stick but that was lost in Atlanta..! Didn’t really matter as it only takes around 1-1.5hrs to replot if need be. The tech who was to be crunching the numbers for me was new to the desk and we were the first show he was to plot on it. I would have preferred a more experienced operator but hey, you get what you’re delt. Problem was he was incredibly slow and couldn’t do even some of the most basic functions you should be able to perform when plotting a show. It had taken us around 45mins to plot 8 cues, with me getting a little frustrated, when he decided to open up the Control Room windows. The window was made up of 4 separate sections that could all be slid to either end. Problem was, he opened them up so that I was now looking through 4 panes of glass...! Not the best way to look at the work you’re creating..!! I asked him if we could move them so that I had a clear view of the stage, to which he obliged and grabbed the first of four by its little indented handle and started sliding it along it’s track, using no force at all...
... about a foot into it... CRASH... I look up and see a wall of glass pieces falling down towards me. I’ll admit, I did a pretty good impersonation of a Homer Simpson scream (I only seem able to when genuinely ‘scared’ or I’ve dropped something!) and turned away. When the tinkling had stopped I turned back and the tech was standing there, mouth wide open with a little bit of blood trickling from his palm – not serious though and I was covered in glass, as was the desk, my notes, the floor and the back couple of rows of the auditorium... Luckily it was made up of that Safety Glass, not your stock standard glass so the wall of glass that fell towards me was little cubes rather than actual sharp segments but getting showered in glass, even safety, is not my cup of tea – especially when you can feel it underneath your t-shirt.
"Excuse me Usher, there's some glass on my seat..!"
Christos came up to see what all the noise was and started getting a little terse with the tech, saying that he should have moved it gently. I tried to tell him that he wasn’t forcing it or doing anything stupid but Christos didn’t want to listen. Luckily the tech only had a few minor scratches on his hand from where he’d clenched a few pieces of the handle into his palm at the shock of the noise. The desk was literally covered in glass so we did a save and then powered it down so we could move it out to clean up the mess. Did I mention that we were 2hrs from opening doors and letting a sold out audience in...? The techs started moving out chairs and stuff to be able to get in and clear up the debris. One of them came in with a dustbuster & I assumed it was to clear the glass off the top of the desk, oh no, he came in put the dustbuster down, said “You help?” and before I could utter a word or leap about waving my arms he grabbed one end of the desk and just lifted it up, sending glass tumbling down the entire length of the console and across all the faders that had the perfect amount of space for small safety glass fragments to fall in...!!
We took the console outside and I decided that I was going to go and grab a coffee to try and stay calm and have some time away from the disaster zone and collect my thoughts about my plan of attack seeing as we were eating pretty quickly into what little time I had left. I was about half way down the auditorium stairs to the stage when... SMASH... as the second of the four window panes smashed..! This time Christos himself had been moving one to get at some glass in the tracks and the same thing happened to him!! By the time I’d run back up the stairs to the Control Room I think I’d heard every Greek swear word in existence...!! One hour, twenty before doors and I decided to make it two coffees...!
Christos inspects that special electrical component that releases a burning smell - the You're Farked Valve..!!
About 15mins later I made it back to the Control Room, just as they were putting the Congo back into position. All plugged up, monitors on, desk... um... hello...? Desk...? Nothing, then there was this slight stirring noise as the fans inside started up, ‘Congo’ appeared on the monitors and then there was a small ‘crack’ sound and the fans stopped making noise... Pretty much straight away one of the techs said, “What is smell..? Burning..?” Sad enough to say, the desk was pronounced Dead with approx 1hr til audience, 1.5hr til curtain up and Opening Night. Oh yeah, there was no other desk in house... At that point, as we were now working at a level far above my pay grade in regards to getting the show to happen, I went outside to take up smoking again..!!
At around 12 minutes before 2,500 people were due to enter the space, an ETC Expression was brought in – but it had a failed disk drive so I couldn’t just load a show, do a quick check of the cues and then launch blindly into the show, oh no, if they were going to have a show, it was going to have to be built from scratch!! I wanted to jump on the console but in some idiotic stance of defiant stupidity or brave act to save face and make amends for falling glass, Christos insisted on operating for the plot..!! With about 8 minutes left til audience in, I took a moment to let the adrenalin to kick in and settle. Any theatre tech knows ‘that’ feeling - the rush of doing something cool, something weird, something that’s going to take finesse, push you to the limit, really test your theatrical backbone – with a massive chance that if you do something slightly wrong, nobody dies but the show is ruined, the magic of theatre destroyed. It comes from doing a major scene change whilst the orchestra plays on with only seconds to set everything before the lights come back up, when the entire lighting crew (spots, desk, floor LX) blacks out together, being thrown into a busy floor/spot plot at the last moment due to someone being ill with no rehearsal, your first stadium gig, when the pit lights stop working 5mins before curtain up and the audience is seated and waiting. Those are the moments that make theatre one of the most satisfying and rewarding gigs around.
Me letting off some steam in the auditorium - notice how the lights aren't working..!!
I took another breath, drew a long drink from a bottle of water, looked Christos square in the eye, nodded, said “Let’s dance” and turned to look at the stage and I swear, I swear, I heard each and every one of the 6 people standing behind us in the Control Room take in a sharp in-take of breath as I started to spit out numbers & Christos’s hands became a whirl over the console buttons. It took about 5 cues for myself & Christos to hit a rhythm – me to say things in a way that made it easier for him to know what I wanted & him to understand what some of the things I was saying, seeing I was speaking with an Aussie accent and speaking about 3 times as fast as I usually do...! Usually it is up to the Board Op to find the rhythm of the Designer and this can happen over the first couple of hours of plotting – we did the same, if you take the time scale into consideration...!!
About 9mins later, the Head of Badmiton Theatre (one of the audience of 6 behind us) broke the silence by saying, “How much longer do you think this will....” and stopped, I don’t know why - maybe it was the look I gave him and the “You must be quiet” barked by Christos!! The fool broke our rhythm but we quickly found it again. Approx 12 mins later I stepped behind the console to quickly run through each cue – much to the Heads disbelief – and found one fairly glaringly obvious mistake I’d made. When I’d checked through to the final bows state, I hit ‘Cue 1, GO’ and turned to the Head, acknowledged Toni’s presence (no idea how long she’d been there) in the Control Room and stated, “81 cues in 21 minutes. It’s not pretty but we have a show. I hope there’s a decent tab at the bar tonight. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going outside for a cigarette and to vomit!”
My 'theme' for the night was 'Silly Faces" - managed to get one with everyone in the company. Here, Jolly y Vicki share the limelight.
