We arrived in Birmingham around 19.00 direct from the RFH after the mega long rehearsal day, the schedule was as follows, Steve & Richard go to the hall at midnight to begin setup, Nickin and Myself follow at 05.00 for video lineups & programming, Steve & Rich have a break and some sleep, we then do an afternoon rehearsal and then a show on the evening. Its a mental schedule and allot to squeeze into such a short space, with each venue throwing up a new challenge. This was the view from our projection/control booth for Birmingham, with massively different angles to rehearsal in the RFH, (we toured the toilet roll).
From arriving at the venue, the entire day seemed to vanish, doing lineups, redrawing masks, and going through programming the show, changing and updating footage. Interspaced with a full rehearsal, we continued through the day tweaking and programming and possibly got a little obsessive with matching the sail-moves timing with the video which was tacking the sail-moves. In the end it was time well spent, the masking and mapping was “bang tidy”, (inset a geeky high five here). With a short break for tea and doing final transfers to the backup machine we ran the world premier of Bluebeard’s Castle with Video, it was quite tense but Laura the show-caller is very clear which helped greatly. The show went down very well with i think, although I have very little experience with opera audiences and their reactions. Overall it was top performance and technically seamless :-), on top of all this, Steve had somehow managed, not to have a break and by the middle of the get out had worked for 24hours and was still managing to carry on. It was at this point that Nickin and myself decided it would be the right thing to do to wrap Steve up in PVC LX tape just to make him feel appreciated. This was definitely the most grown up thing to do and was perfect for that time of night!
Tres Fatigue (Trezfattygay)
Bluebeard Birmingham, TICK! Next stop Lisbon!