Tech weekend is that magical weekend where everything in the show starts to come together. This is when all of the technical aspects of the show get integrated into the production, aspects like costume, lights, sound, and projections.
We started tech weekend for The Clean House on Saturday October 15th at 9 am and we began with light level set. Light level set needs the lighting designer, the director, the stage manager, and light walkers. For three hours the light walkers move to different positions on the stage in approximation of the actor’s blocking while the lighting designer shows the director all the different lighting ‘cues’ they have come up with. A ‘cue’ (or Q) is each time the lighting changes (or in other cases, each time recorded sound is heard, or a projection is seen). The purpose of this is to see if everything is bright enough, if the coloured gels are what we want them to be, and that the over all design of show is working. Then on Saturday afternoon, we started Q2Q. So we went through every cue in the production (lights cues, sound cues, projection cues) and made sure they were all working as they should be and that our timing was working. As the Stage Manager, it is my job to tell the board operators when to hit the ‘go’ button in order for the cue to run, and sometimes the timing of the ‘go’ has to be incredibly precise. So, in my copy of the script I have marks for every exact cue. During Q2Q we made sure that they were being called at the right time and we adjusted accordingly. We also adjusted sound levels and length of sound cues and we made sure projections were precisely where we wanted them to be on the stage.
Q2Q continued Sunday morning followed by a meal break. In the afternoon we had a run. At this run, it was the first time actors did the show in costume, which made it a little challenging. We had to make sure the actors knew how their costumes worked and h ow they would change during quick changes (quick changes are when an actor has to change between one scene and the next, the costume crew helps them to change and some changes get done in as little as 30 seconds).
After the run we did notes. We looked at everything that went wrong or wasn’t timed correctly and decided how to fix it. Then over the next few nights we had more dress runs and we continue to improve. And then Friday October 21st, we opened to the public. It’s a very busy and stressful time, but it’s also incredibly rewarding and exciting. It’s been an incredible process and I loved it all, and I can’t wait to take a nap, which will probably happen once we close on October 30th (which means you still have a week to come see us!).