Much Ado About Nothing

A One Song Production, I honestly expected this to be completely terrible. And to be honest, for the first few rehearsals, it was, mostly due to actors who didn't know their lines and very rough technical work. As time passed, however, the actors learned their lines and the show took on a charm of its own. It was Shakespeare's text set in 1920s New York City. It had a lot of people in it that I knew in middle school, and it was good to see them again. It was also my first encounter with the elusive East Chapel Hill techies. They were fairly normal people.

The completely agonizing (tantalizing, really) part of it, from a technical standpoint, was the pipe of Source Four Ellipsoidals hanging in exactly the right place to light the stage. However, the people who owned the space (the auditorium at Phillips Middle School) forbade One Song Productions (after all, just a bunch of yahoo teenagers) from touching the instruments or even turning them on. As a result, the play was lit from eight 3-inch parcans, and the final product was dimmer than my room is when I turn off all the lights.

Additionally agonizing was the fact that we had to show up hours early every day to load in and load out the entire set daily. Not only could we not leave the set on the stage, we couldn't leave it anywhere near the building, which meant that the set, props, costumes, lights, and sound equipment arrived daily in the cars, vans, and trucks of a dozen actors and techies. Needless to say, this was a less than ideal situation. I ran sound and opened the curtain, as well as helping with load-in and load-out every day. I was, in simple terms, an Assistant to the Technical Director.

The show ended up amazing, and I was thoroughly surprised.