Speaker 1: Hi there, and welcome to Theatre Pass Marae. My name is Eric Reed, and I'm the production manager and facility manager here. I'd like to welcome you back to the Behind the Curtain series, and today we're going to go over a couple of quick tips and tricks that you can do ahead of time in the rehearsal hall, and things that will help you streamline the tech process, and hopefully take some of the whole stress out of it. There are lots of different roles in theatre, and lots of different toolkits to meet their needs. I always recommend you try different things until you find something that works for you, and then you add it to your kit. In the meantime, I've got a couple of suggestions for basic tools that just about any production could make good use of. First off, a tape measure. You always need to measure things out, like the size of your set pieces, checking if things will fit through doors, figuring out where your spike marks will go, and so on. If you get a cloth tape measure, that also lets you get measurements for costumes. Next, a cordless drill and a few different sizes of screws. You never know when you might need to repair a set piece on short notice, and the best way to make sure you can find the right tool to do that is to bring it yourself. These come in all different shapes and sizes, and it could be worth picking up a cheap one at first to get a feel for what you really want before investing in something better. Tape is always useful. More colors and widths are even more useful. Most theaters won't let you use masking tape, so stay away from that, but there are lots of other options out there. I suggest getting a couple of different colors of nice cloth tape, especially if you're going into a festival situation where they expect you to bring your own. Blue is a great color, but it's so great, someone else will probably also be using it, and you don't want to get confused. Spring clamps or bulldog clips can be really useful in a setting where you need to hang up some fabric or get some set piece looking just right without actually screwing or nailing into the walls of your rehearsal space. Bulldog clips also serve another purpose, by which I mean their actual intended purpose of keeping large amounts of paper under control. Some kind of a straight edge is a good idea. I personally like a good steel ruler, so you can also make straight cuts with an Olfa knife or X-Acto knife. If you're interested, you can look into getting a proper scale ruler as well, especially if you expect to be looking at floor plans on paper ahead of time. Tabs, flags, or post-it notes are wonderful things. Whether you're organizing a script or making notations on set drawings, they come in handy all the time. I personally like to use post-it notes as all of the above, but once again, just figure out what works best for you. When you get into the rehearsal hall, I often find it's very helpful to tape out the space. You can usually pull measurements off a website or tech sheet of some kind. Start with the front edge of the stage, and a center mark. Sometimes quarter marks come in handy, which literally just means dividing the front edge of the stage into quarters and marking those points. Ideally, you'll also be able to mark out where the masking will be, and where the entrances and exits to the stage are located. It's also really helpful to figure out where the first row of seats will be, so the performers can get a feel for how close the audience is, and everyone else knows where the show will live in the actual theater. Later on in the rehearsal process, your set pieces will ideally be placed and spiked in what is their final positions. Take some time to make a spike map for your show. I would tape down a measuring tape from the edge of the stage running up along the center line, then measure perpendicularly to each spike from there. Write them all down so you have a list of things, like upstage corner of chair, 14 foot upstage, 3 foot stage right. Draw a little map, ideally color-coded so it's easy to read, and then it'll be easy to place your set when you get access to the theater. The earlier you can start playing sound cues in rehearsal, the better. The transition into tech will be so much easier if everyone is used to hearing those sounds in the right places already. Ideally, you should use the device you're planning to use for the actual show, whether it's your laptop, your tablet, your phone, or whatever your plan is. Most theaters will be able to take anything with a standard headphone jack and hook it into the sound system. The other nice thing about this is it lets you generate a cue list nice and early and gets the stage manager used to where those cues will go. Don't forget to think about pre-show music ahead of time, and always give yourself more music than you think you need in case the start of the show is delayed for whatever reason. Lighting cues in rehearsal is a little bit more tricky since you probably won't have access to a full lighting grid. It can still be really helpful to dim the lights if you're able when shifting to a darker cue or just turn them off when going to a blackout. You don't have to do it every time, but if you can do it even in one run-through, it helps everyone prepare themselves. If you can't control the lights at all in your rehearsal space, I've definitely been in a room where the director just yells, BLACKOUT. Once again, this helps get the ball rolling on that cue list and keeps everyone involved in the process. Now that you have all of those lovely cue lists and your stage manager knows where they're supposed to go, I highly recommend setting aside some time to sit down with the director, stage manager, and designers and just go through the whole script from start to finish so everyone hears where the cues will go and everyone is in agreement ahead of time. Sometimes people call this a paper tech, and it is absolutely worth taking the time to do it. You don't need to have the performers around, and it might feel weird to not call them for some part of rehearsal, but when you get to cue to cue and they're not spending eight hours going back and forth, they will be thanking you. As you're planning how to tackle your Load In and Tech Week, you should assign tasks to everyone. Make sure that it's always the same people moving the same things, and that everyone knows what they're supposed to be doing. You don't want to get into the theater and have a scramble of wondering where each thing goes or whether you brought in the costumes or not. Plan it out ahead of time and write it all down. If you're feeling really ambitious, write up a track for each person, so even if something unexpected happens, you can still hand that sheet off to someone else. When you have limited time in the theater, you don't want to waste the first 45 minutes while everyone says, what should I be doing? Do the same thing for Strike well ahead of time, and ideally, the same person who brought something in will be the one taking it out. If you're planning on touring or remounting your show, you'll be thanking yourself that you have those lists and everything is so organized. Also, make sure to look into the parking situation ahead of time. Try to choose a driver who is less crucial to the load-in. There's nothing worse than having to stand around for half an hour, waiting for them to find parking. This last tip is more about festival shows, where you have to take your show down in between performances. Most festivals will tell you well in advance what size of storage area you'll have access to, and it can vary quite a bit from space to space. Once you have that information, tape it out in your rehearsal hall, and practice striking the set and fitting it into that space. If you can, try to strike it at the end of each rehearsal and set it up again at the start of each day. It'll help get everyone accustomed to the festival routine well ahead of time, and it just makes everything easier. There's also no guarantee you'll have a wall to lean things against, so don't forget to make your packed-up set free-standing. And that does it for my tips today. I hope this has been helpful. If you have any more questions or comments for me, please feel free to reach out. You can find my information on the Theatre Passamaria website. Thanks for watching.