For the final week of the festival we say goodbye to The Lock In and Cinderella and say hello to Lost dog with “It Needs Horses and Home For Broken Turns“, James Cousins with “There we have been” , Tavaziva with “Greed” and Scottish Dance Theatre with “Second Coming” which now gives us a total of seven shows a day in the main house.
The second week of the festival brings us our sixth show Burklyn Youth Ballet with Cinderella.
The Lock In on their day off this week are performing in a festival in Newcastle so after all the shows finished on monday we got their set, instruments and sound equipment out and then got it all back in between shows on wednesday.
I haven’t had much time to take any photos since we’ve been open so I’m going to direct you to Owain Shaw our residant photographers Flickr, it’s well worth checking out http://www.flickr.com/photos/owainshaw/sets/.
Week one of the festival is almost over and we’re now into the full swing of things. Five of our shows for the main house are up and running with the sixth on its way for week two. Ben, Will and I have arranged our rota so that one of us works the morning/afternoon, one of us works the evening and one of us just works the get in’s and get outs to help with the changeovers. I was bored today as I was on the changeover shift so I couldn’t really go very far so I made up this mash up of the promo videos of the shows currently in our venue.
We had an early start today as we had Lock In’s get in and tech time to do from 8am till 12pm. After a short lunch break we carried on with the programmed shows with only a small delay to the start of “Out of his skin” as we lost a module in one of our ART 2000 racks and had to do a quick re patch.
Our normal day in the Main house without any tech time looks like this
12.40 – 13.25 Get In “S/He is Nancy Joe”
13.30 – 14.10 “S/He is Nancy Joe”
14.10.14.40 Get Out “S/He is Nancy Joe”
14.40 – 15.10 Get In “Out of His Skin”
15.15 – 16.20 “Out of His Skin”
16.20 – 16.50 Get Out “Out of His Skin”
16.50 – 17.00 Get In “That Is All You Need To Know”
17.05 – 18.25 “That Is All You Need To Know”
18.25 – 18.40 Get Out “That Is All You Need To Know”
18.40 – 19.05 Get In “The Lock In”
19.10 – 20.20 “The Lock In”
20.20 – 20.40 Get Out “The Lock In”
20.40 – 21.00 Get In “Squally Showers”
21.05 – 22.20 “Squally Showers”
22.20 – 22.50 Get Out “Squally Showers”
Todays the day that most of our shows opened. The four shows we have already tech’ed up in the Main House opened with their first performances going down without a hitch. After all four shows had concluded we promptly made our way down to the cab bar for the opening night party.
Today we carried on with another two technical rehearsals with TANTEHORSE with S/HE IS NANCY JOE in the morning and Little Bulb Theatre with Squally Showers in the evening.
Today we saw the start of our Technical Rehearsals, In the main house the production companies are allocated 4 hour as their tech time. In that time we have to “get in” and build any set they might have, rig and focus any specials they are bringing, plot the show and then pack it all away again ready for the next Technical rehearsal. Today we teched 2faced with ‘Out Of His Skin’ and Idle Motions show ‘That Is All You Need To Know’
So this morning we found out what venues we would be spending the next four weeks in and who we’d be spending them with. I was lucky enough to be chosenalong with Ben, Will and Ruth for the Main house which is ZOOs biggest venue.
After a health and safety briefing we all split up and made the way over to our venues. I spent the morning familiarising the rest of the Main House team with the ETC ION which is the lighting desk being used.
Finally after lunch our second dimmer arrived. The afternoon and evening consisted of patching, fault-finding and finally focusing with a little bit of set building and marly laying thrown in for good measure. I was on the desk and ben was up the tower.
Bottom three photos by Owain Shaw
I was outside all day today finishing off the outdoor bar. It took us all morning and afternoon to finish attaching the roof tarpaulin because of the rain. After Tea I rigged the festoon round the bar, a tree and the entrance truss goal post.
One of the problems with making a venue out of a sports hall is that it has six full length floor to ceiling windows. In order for us to be able to achieve a full blackout a group of us spent a good part of the day boarding them up.
After tea we where re arranged into different groups, I ended up back outside working on the out door bar. We managed to get most of the roof up before it started raining again.
Other teams had been working in the Cab bar and the Studio which are almost finished.
