The production came together really well this year for me, with the biggest bonus being the time we were able to get into the theatre.  It’s the third time we have used the Hebden Bridge Little Theatre and clearly they are starting to trust us more than previous years.  In the past we have had to arrange with them to be there to let us in each time we needed to be in the theatre, and to stay until we had finished so that they could lock up again afterwards.  This proved a real restriction on the time we had to do our get in.

For me this is of course a real problem – it takes time to rig and focus the lights, as well to work out a dimmer patch and do any programming I wanted to do.  In fact, in previous years, I haven’t had time to do much programming at all – I’d just run the show of some hastily put together scenes on submasters and busked through each night.  This year I was able to do much more and the difference was noticeable.

We got into the theatre on Tuesday night. We were met at the door by a member of the theatre who left us with the keys and code for the alarm.  I took responsibility for them, knowing I would be wanting to get into the theatre at slightly more unpredictable times than everyone else.  The director had arranged for some of the cast to turn up to run through some scenes on the stage a little later in the evening.  This turned out to be a bit of a pain for me as it meant they wanted both light and stage space – we couldn’t rig on stage and we couldn’t whip though the focussing as quickly as I wanted to.

I had planned out my design from what I knew of the theatre previously, and things looked like they would work out when when I saw where the fixtures were in the theatre, but it wasn’t quite as straight forward as it first appeared.  The fixtures on the FOH bar nearest to the stage were just not far enough away to be able to get a good clean coverage of the whole width. There were four lamps along the front bar which I suspect had been used previously as just a straw wash, but as I needed both a straw and steel wash I was going to have to make do with just three fixtures to cover the whole width of the stage. Sadly this meant moving the front line of profiles back onto the second FOH bar. I ummed and ahhed about this for a while – those profiles are heavy and access to the bars is bad at the best of times – but was convinced by people that if we needed to do it, we needed to do it. So we moved them. It was the right choice. Unfortunately by the time the cast had cleared off stage and we got the front of house bars rigged and focussed all the people who had come to help with the lighting had started to lose interest. It was heading towards midnight, so with only the stage lamps to do we called it a day. I could finish those and do the colour call myself the next day.

So I arrived back at the theatre on Wednesday at 11.30 and set about rigging the lamps on stage. I didn’t really have a clear idea of what I wanted to do here.  I knew the key lights which we needed but from there it was a matter of seeing what stock was available and doing whatever I could with it. I dropped all the best lanterns the theatre had into the rig for the most important effects until I had only two very old PC lanterns and a pair of Strand Patt 123s. These I coloured orange and green and used to throw lighting across the set from either side. I was very happy with this. By the time I had finished the rig and cleared my mess away it was 3pm and the director turned up. He had offered to come earlier to help me but I didn’t think there was much which he could have done – I was happy working by myself without having to worry that someone else was spending the day getting bored. I quickly explained to him what I had done and left him to play through the sound while I went through to the bar to work out a patch.

With the patch done and everything plugged in we had an hour and a half before the cast turned up. I spent this hour programming the desk (a Strand GSX) with scenes. I’d never done that before at this theatre because of the lack of time we have had in the past. It made running the show so much easier than ever before and allowed me to be much more creative. I didn’t program in any fade times or blackouts – as I hadn’t seen the play before the dress rehearsal that night I didn’t know quite how things would work out, and I didn’t want to risk that being the reason things went wrong. I ran the whole show on the A-B faders.

The three nights of the play went very well. It’s the first time this company had done a three night run, and I’m not sure they will want to do one again – while there was no problem for the cast,  and it allowed it to be much more polished the third night, there were only about 25 people in the audience on the Thursday night. Talking to the director after the Thursday production we decided we would class that as a preview production, with the full run being Friday and Saturday. We also included an interval on the first night but it was decided this should be dropped in order to keep the pace of the play up despite the first night audience saying they liked having it.  They were wrong.

I think everyone was pleased with the way the production had gone when it came down on Saturday. I escaped pretty quickly, having said goodbye to everyone. It’s a shame there was no curtain party, but I probably wouldn’t have stayed long if there had been. The rest of the company are going out for a celebration meal on Wednesday. Sadly I have to head back and work for people who actually pay me money…

I expect (kind of hope) a few days will be occupied by the Grim North stuff. It’s my one (perhaps two) chances each year to stretch my lighting design legs.  Lighting was something I did quite a bit of when I was younger in one way or another, and I really love.  At one stage I considered training to work as a theatre lighting designer, but it never happened.  I also do their photos for them.  I’ve read the script a couple of times now, but to be honest still no idea what’s going on.  (This is the same as last year.  Then only having seen it a few times did I begin to get the hang of it. I don’t know how anyone watching it once could possibly have understood it).  I’m hoping that I’ll get chance to talk to the director about his artistic direction at some point early in the week, then on Wednesday night I’m going to attend one of their rehearsals to see how they play it out.  By this time I’m going to have to have some idea of how I’m going to light the thing and will, hopefully just be finalising ideas by then.  I’m told we’ll have time in the theatre on Thursday for rigging and focussing, but it’s not confirmed yet.  If we don’t then we’re going to have real problems.  The company is in the theatre 6-10pm on the Friday when the plan is to have a block run and, hopefully, a quick tech run.  This doesn’t leave much time for anything else.  They are looking to hire a small space in Hebden Bridge on Saturday to do some final polishing, which hopefully I’ll be able to shoot, as I’ll have finished everything else by then (to be honest even if not there’s not much I can do by that stage), before being in the theatre 6-10 on Saturday and Sunday.  I think the show goes up at 7.30 so I’ll have an hour and a half to, hopefully, relax before each night.

One problem with this company is they don’t have anyone there all the time who is technical.  When they book the venue they don’t give any thought to when any kind of technical get-in might happen, so when I turn up and ask about it, it always seems to take them by surprise.  Along the same lines they don’t have many people with professional theatre experience, although there are some who have trained professionally, and certainly no one who has experience back stage, so no one thinks about the general house work needed around the theatre, so I end up doing all that too.  It gets a bit hectic.  I’m hoping this year will be a bit different – the production team have more experience and I gather there will even be a stage manager.  It could be all different.

Either way, I think I’m looking forward to it.  Despite the hard work last year, I really enjoyed it.  I’ll let you know how we get on.

I’m at Wakefield Westgate now.

I joined the company today in their rehearsal space and watched a run through of the piece, taking notes as to what I’d like to do.

I have some ideas but there’s one problem – I haven’t been to the theatre it’s playing (the Hebden Bridge Little Theatre) in since I was about 11, Ben’s not been able to get any kind of technical contact there, and we have an hour and a half in the space tonight to get ourselves sorted – rigging, focussing, plotting, etc.  All I know of the technical specification is that last time Ben went he thinks he saw a computer screen in the box.  If this wasn’t bad enough when I spoke to Ben quickly today about it he said he wasn’t even sure if we were going to be able to move anything and that we might just have to ‘make do with what was there’.

That’s not really good enough for me.  I need to do the best I can.  I need to make sure it’s right and I’m willing to put the hours in – I’ve said that if the problem with access to the venue is because people don’t want to hang around with keys then I’ll take responsibility and get the keys back to them once we’re done or the next day when the show goes up.  I’m willing to stay all night if we can make it right.  Unfortunately I suspect it’s more complicated than that.

So, later today, armed with notes, I’m going to meet Ben and we’re going to talk through what we both want out of it.  Then we’re going to go to the theatre and see how much of those plans we can actually do.  And I’ll let you know.