FAULT LINES JOURNAL PART IV

For more Parts I-III, please read prior postings.

OK, so the venue that was chosen to host the play was the Brewery Tap, which is a bar in the northern part of downtown Houston. I had seen the Brewery Tap many many times, but had never been, and honestly I thought it was closed. (Sorry Brewery Tap!!) Super cool bar. Wood paneling. Soccer banners and scarfs on the wall. Good jukebox. 10 or so regulars who were there every day (I mean every day). Not super large. There were two slightly raised areas in the bar--one of which served as a natural stage for the play and one of which served as a natural stage for the band. The venue is kind L shaped, in that from certain sight lines in the bar you couldn't see the band, etc. The Brewery Tap had live music very semi-regularly, but was not really a good sounding room at all, acoustically.

The Horsehead people set up the lights and sound all day Sunday March 7. March 8 was the first full technical and dress rehearsal at the venue. Technical/Dress rehearsals were to be held over the next 3 days (March 8-10). During these 3 days, we encountered just about every technical problem you can imagine. There was a $10,000 or so lighting rig, and a bunch of sound. The power supply at the Brewery Tap was shaky at best. One of the breakers blew one night. One night during the rehearsals we could only have sound and no lights because the venue's power could not handle it. The breaker box at the Brewery Tap was in a state of disrepair. Horsehead had to pony up some dollars to get an electrician in to make a short-term fix just so the show would go on. This was Wednesday, the day before the show. I know they were extremely nervous.

Sound. I don't think we ever mastered the sound (even during the 3 weeks of performances). This was not the fault of the sound people. It just was what it was. Mic's would go out. Amps would go out. Speakers would go out. It was crazy, and definitely a very stressful 3 days of dress rehearsal. To add to this problem were the regulars. Part of the deal with the play was that when the show started, the regulars would get in for free every day. They were there every single day. During the rehearsals, they would have conversations at full volume, in that they were drowning out the actors. And, they didn't really care for the Ceremony Music, which was very in your face and loud and screeching at times. They had to listento us play this 4-5 times a night, which I am sure got old. But they came every day. You have to respect it.To combat the the loudness of the potential talking, the actors began using tiny mics hidden on their person and ear monitors. The mic's were first introduced into the production on Tuesday March 9. The mics did help with the overall actor volume, but the mics would pick up weird feedback and sounds at inopportune times, and overall were extremely difficult to monitor and handle. Jaz (Horsehead Sound) did a great job of keeping the sound problems related to the mic's to a minimum. Another strategy we devised to combat the regulars voice volume was to come up with a little speech (which I was to say every night before the show) that would ask out of respect for the actors and the audience to keep conversations to a minimum. This seemed to help keep the regulars a bit more muted.

The one part of the show I was most nervous about was the lighting for the ceremony. Jeremy the lighting designer was designing a light show that would be programmed to match the music with the Ceremony (overture) theme. The Overture was about 5 or 6 minutes long, had multiple tempo changes, etc. I was nervous that we would be able to consistently match it. Or that he would not be able to "punch in" on cues at certain times, which would allow him to manually make changes with us, so that we would not get out of sync. To make it a bit more stressful, by Tuesday (2 days before the performance) we had not even seen how the lights would work, nor had we rehearsed it. Luckily, Jeremy the sound guy was a fucking pro, and the first time we rehearsed it, it matched up really nicely. It looked really good. I was glad that I did not have epilipsy, as it might well have caused me to go into a seizure. But it was awesome.

The actors were amazing through all this. They were always able to concentrate and act through all the electricity, sound, loud regulars, anxiety etc. Luckily, we had a really good rehearsal on the last rehearsal night (Wednesday), and I think we all felt like we were ready to have a great run of shows. Stay tuned for Part V....