Friday work, rehearsals and stuff

Interesting day at work. I started to build an automation suite for a new feature I'm testing, but the scripting software was acting strange. I was finally, after several months of asking, loaned a pair of machines for some of the more advanced tests, but have to wait until a critical bug is fixed. I was expecting that Tuesday, but it didn't make it yet. Maybe Monday.

Lunchtime I went home, and at 1 picked up the move-out packet from the manager. She also wanted to chat about theater, but obviously did not know about community theater, and when I tried to explain she still thought it was the professional stuff in SF and SJ. Sigh.

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Home for 20 minutes after work. The alternate route I had mapped out to get to the rehearsal hall was sabotaged by the main roads of the South Bay not corresponding to the geography. I ended up going about 5 miles out of my way north (or maybe it was east). I called the SM and left a message I would be late, but when I got there, instead of being late (I have lines about 5 minutes into the show) I found the director re-choreographing the final number,  micro-managing it. Disgusting.

I haven't mentioned this yet, but our rehearsal pianist is the worst I have worked with in the Bay Area. This theater group has access to some of the best, I wonder what happened? Producer FAIL. It is impossible to enjoy these rehearsals when the pianist can't keep up, doesn't know the tunes, and has not a clue about tempo.

We were missing the two female leads. Totally ridiculous to do a complete run-through without them. This show has been a continuous series of those cluster things. I should have walked out when I had the chance. As I've said before, this is a show which cannot be killed, it is too well-written and the tunes are too good. Even the most mediocre high school production would be enjoyable, and this will be maybe half a notch better than that.

One other thing. At auditions the director announced she was pregnant. She has been getting more and more so as time goes by, of course, but she's pushing herself as if she wasn't, and while she is a fairly athletic, active person, there are limits. I hope she doesn't hurt herself or the baby.

The co-producer who has been out for the past month because he was starring in a show at another theater, is micro-managing. He's giving as many directions as the director, and buttonholing the leads and giving them very specific instructions, some of which contradict what the director has given. He's talented, and I'd like to like him, but he's making it very difficult.

And the co-producer who gave me that bullshit line last week about how I should trust his highly talented staff? He's off to Cozumel for a scuba trip. The week all the heavy lifting needs to be done - we move into the theater tomorrow. At the height of hurricane season in Cozumel. That's another person I'll never work with again.

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When I was home for lunch,  Domino got her hind paw caught in the cat tree tube where she spends about half her daylight time these days, so I went over with scissors to see if I could fix the problem. And found the lining was badly deteriorating. It occurred to me that I have had this cat tree for about 10 years, it has long since been scratched to death, but since it is so solid I had not realized it needed replacing.

Went online and could not find anything which comes close. Nothing with a big long tube at the top of a 68" tree. And only one with any kind of tube, the tube looks too small. After move-in tomorrow maybe there will be time to visit Pet Club and see what they have. Petsmart and Petco web pages have tons of trees, none work for me. Ditto Wallmart.

Plans for tomorrow:
Theater move-in at 10 am
shopping
maybe a nap
maybe *$s with the laptop.

Move-in (of the theater kind)

Too many of my FB friends are in this show, or staff for it, if you're wondering why I've been venting here.

This morning's WTF was email from the assistant director, who happens to be a pal from Palo Alto's Jekyl & Hyde, saying I forgot to put my bags in the baggage cart on my first entrance.

I have no bags.

I have never been given that blocking.

Turns out the AD forgot that this was just something he and th staff had been talking amongst themselves about during last night's rehearsal.

There is no reason for me to have bags, because my first entrance is a cross from the staterooms to the gangplank to meet the reporters. And the baggage cart is several feet behind where I meet the press, I would have to go out of my way to upstage myself to do that bit. It would be a very funny joke if they had everyone who comes up the gangplank toss a bag into the cart (one comic leads is hiding in the cart), but the way they have blocked it, no way.

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Got to the theater at 10 am as scheduled, only to find the parking lot closed for what looked like re-paving. The workers had the whole lot, front and back, blocked off, There is parking across the street, sort of, at the middle school.

Inside, we were still waiting for the truck from the set shop. It was about an hour before it arrived. Unloading was not too bad, there was someone on stage who knew where everything went, there were more than enough cast members and a couple of volunteers to do the work. It went pretty quickly. There was one awkward moment when we discovered the two main platforms (huge 4-foot-high things on wheels) were too wide to fit into the loading dock door, but they fit when we flipped them on their sides.

I was mostly a warm body, and the next WTF was I was told to hold a very heavy platform upright, for no apparent reason. There was plenty of space to lean it against a wall, but the OCD lead set builder wanted them held upright while the set pieces they would be attached to were built. At lunch time (they gave us sandwiches from Eric's deli. All of them had sprouts. Yuk. And no extra mustard.)  I yelled loud enough to get OCD Guy to wise up, and we leaned the thing against the wall.

There was a second truck, a lot more huge pieces along with the little bits.

At about 1:30 I was told to go home, they only needed people with carpentry skills. I have none.

The good news is the set looks mega-sturdy, all three levels of it. The bad news is it is HUGE and blocking is going to have to change big-time for anything on the balcony, which is me a couple of times.

They have all night and till 6:30 tomorrow night to finish it. 50-50 chance of that happening.

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Waiting at Starbucks for Janice. I went to Pet Club and PetSmart, neither of them had anything resembling the kind of cat tree Domino would like. Online, then....

Character Names

Did I mention this yet? I don't think so.

One of the things which happens when rehearsals start is staff and cast start calling cast by their character names. I have been in shows where I did not know many of the cast's IRL names, I just knew them as the characters they played.

This show, the staff is calling us by our IRL names, which is confusing because (a) I don't know their IRL names and (b) sometimes we have duplicates (two Gregs) and sometimes IRL names of one person is close or the same as the character name of another. We have an Evelyn (American pronunciation) and a character named Evelyn (Britt excruciation).  There is a Reina IRL and a Reno in the play. And so on.

FAIL.