Tech Week

Tech week is under way with Wizard of Oz at Fox Valley.  The show has come along really well in the last couple of weeks.  Last week was spacing and our first time in the theatre.  A lot of the kids have worked with Fox Valley before so they know the theatre really well, but it was fun for me to see the space.  It is a really nice theatre.  The back stage is a little funky and there isn't a lot of room, which is presenting challenges with a cast of 28 kids, but we are making it work.  It is also weird because we don't have a set for this show.  We are sharing the theatre with the main stage show so we have to use there set and sort of "make it work".  We have had many production meetings where we just sit and try to think of ways to make it look less like the inside of a house and more like OZ. Even though I am back stage during the show, Tim (the stage manager), let me learn how to mark and call cues.  He let me do that for a day while he went backstage so that I could see what it was like.   Tech started Sunday.  It is a sixty minute show but we only got through half of it in our allotted four hours.  We finished what we hadn't done on Monday and then started to run the show.  Yesterday we ran the show and worked on some problem areas.  I get to puppet the cow, witch and wizard shadow puppets.  It has been cool learning how to work with the puppets.  The Wizard is kind of hard to operate.  I have to hold him against the wall so that he doesn't wiggle while moving his eyes and mouth.  It really should have two people operating it, but we only have three people back stage and one of those people is designated as the mic swapper.  This process has been fun for me.  Tim has introduced me to a lot of stage managers around the Chicago area and I have been able to go help out on there shows and observe them during a performance, which has been enlightening.  Tonight we will run the show.  We have tonight and tomorrow left of tech and then we open on Sunday.  The kids continue to impress me.