Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Okay, okay. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

I was real tempted to spout off when the Feds indicted some Carpenters for embezzlement, bribery, wire fraud on the same day that Garth Drabinsky started his 7 years of research on a musical version of “The Big House.” It was certainly an karmic rich environment with Drabinsky’s attorney (or “mouthpiece” as Darth is learning) proposing that Drabinsky do community service by speaking to theatre students about “avoidance of unethical conduct” and the knuckleheaded President of the Carpenters turning himself in and testing positive for cocaine and marijuana. But thinking that I might not have anything positive to add to the conversation, I withheld comment.

But now some punk cheesehead from Racine, sitting at his computer alone in the dark in his underwear, is sending out anonymous emails about Union members not attending the Town Hall meeting about health care reform.

From the Huntington Post.

You socialist f---s have the nerve to say stop the violence at the town hall meetings when they weren't violent until you p---ies showed up because your n----- leader obama said to?????? When we have ours in Racine, Wi, I want you there. I want one of your little b----- to put his hands on this Marine. I want one of you to look or talk to me wrong. I'll be the last thing your ignorant faux body guards will remember for a very long time. You can f---ing guarantee that.

Yo, yo, Joe Cheesehead, over here, listen up. I fully realize that as a member of organized labor and a union member, I belong to one of the most despised minorities in the United States today. In fact I take a bit of pride in that. It’s an outlaw thing. And I understand that you, Joe The Dumber, are not really arguing for the retention of corporate profits in place of healthcare, in some form, for all. It’s that whole supremacist thing, us vs. them that you want to keep. That little high your brain produces when the hate juices are flowing. But you are allowing yourself to be played by the racist fear mongers that seem to have dominated the body politic since Joe McCarthy’s red baiting and Nixon’s “Southern Strategy.” The same billionaires that are shipping the industrial base of America to cheap labor markets are using your rage to promote their money driven control over every aspect of your life. Wake up. You don’t like the way things are and you’re afraid to change. Not a pleasant place to be. And so you rage.

You do have a right, guaranteed the Constitution, to have freedom of speech. So do I. However your right to swing your fist stops at the end of my nose. So lets stop the threats, the name-calling and the pitting of Americans against Americans. Don’t hang on to your hate but don’t lose your rage. Direct it against the people who are really ruining America.

The Pushcart Takes A Hit

The NY Times reports that during a time of deepening economic crisis, The Broadway League imposed an unannounced $1 a ticket surcharge on the tickets sold at TKTS. TKTS is the ticket outlet for discount tickets sold by the Theatre Development Fund, the not-for-profit that was established to aid in the promotion of the performing arts in NYC. The League, which has decried anything that would raise ticket prices, quietly imposed the surcharge/fee/restoration charge on those patrons at the lower end of the economic scale; those who patiently wait in line in all kinds of weather to see what discount tickets are available. Three months later, when the state considered a restoration of the amusement tax, Rocco Landesman, the nominee for Chairman of the NEA, plead "pity the poor workingman" in arguing against the tax in front of a legislative hearing on the tax proposals, saying that ticket price increases will cause shows to close, restaurants to fail and frogs to fall from the sky. The League, which according to tax returns spends 30% of its revenue on salaries, claims that the fee is for "added value for theatergoers", educational programs and web sites. League member dues, which make up about half of the Leagues $8 million revenue, will go up by 10%. The source of the additional 10% was not disclosed but it is unlikely that in these troubled times, the theatre patron will see ticket prices drop.

I fail to see how raising the cost of a ticket will add value to theatre-goers on a budget. It’s also interesting how we’ve gotten to “the hard-working men and women employed by Broadway” from "Our goal is simple: to pay for workers we need and for work that is actually performed."

The last surcharge became a war chest. Who's next?

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Does anyone else see a similarity between the uproar over Nancy Pelosi and scenery? Not to make light of the suffering these human beings were put through but it seems to me that blaming Nancy Pelosi for the torture scandal is like blaming the closing of a show on the scenery. Both were in the background, neither were strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage. She didn't write the play, cast it, light it, prop it or even elect to produce the turkey in the first place. And now the actors and producers are saying, “Nancy, why didn’t you tell us this one was a stinker? It’s your fault!”

And the Times dutifully reports about the latest fight backstage as if it was actually somehow consequential. “Minsky outraged he’s not being sued for a million.”

There’s the news and then there’s the facts. What a world.

I'll Gladly Pay You Tuesday

Sometimes these posts write themselves. I've been playing with the gizmos on the side of the posts while trying to get this internets thing figured out. I was going to get rid of the "News Stagehands Can Use", a Google search for IATSE, when these two items pop up. The first reminds me of my earlier DiCaprio post and with the other, well, words fail me.

In this Tales from the Trenches column in Movie Maker, April Davila describes the negotiations with San Francisco's IATSE Local 16 before production started on Harrison Montgomery. It seems that the Producers started out with a budget big enough to rate a Low Budget Agreement contract. When they realized this, they did what any first-time producer would do. Try to get the budget below the minimum cutoff and hired college kids.

Local 16 BA FX Crowley may have been born at night but he wasn't born last night. A contract was signed, the movie made and two months ago the producers sold the international rights for the project and are currently in negotiations for the domestic rights.

A less fortuitous outcome occurred in River City, err, Charleston when Harold Hill, err, Kearns Entertainment came to town with a show called Palmetto Pointe and apparently a bunch of trombones. The charlestoncitypaper.com has the sorry story of shills, schlock and Southerners.

I think I'll keep the news thingie.

Beware The People Weeping

For the first time in a number of years, May Day celebrations in Europe turned into riots. The loss of their standard of living, rising unemployment and lost benefits were the cause of the large May Day turnout. In the US, we, as workers, don't need to espouse any alternative types of economic systems because everything is just going just great. In fact, in the US we don't celebrate May Day anymore because in 1959, the day was rebranded Loyalty Day.

Anger and hunger have a way of making movements develop before there are press releases, before time can be reserved on the bird for stand-ups, before it can be packaged. Gil Scott Heron had some thoughts on this. As did John Steinbeck in the Grapes Of Wrath which is well worth a watch again.

I came across Herman Melville's "The Martyr", his elegy on Lincoln's death, and the last stanza gave me a shock.

The Martyr
Herman Melville
...............
There is sobbing of the strong,
And a pall upon the land;
But the People in their weeping
Bare the iron hand:
Beware the People weeping
When they bare an iron hand.

The truth can be a fearsome thing.

Stupid Things Said By House Crew

Road guys talk about the local crews on a site just for them. It's educational and good to see yourself through others eyes. I can't say I like it but it's real.

I know I'm in for a bad night of mixing when the house sound says "Yeah, it's an acoustically perfect room!". Perfect for what, I wonder? Not for a live show, that's for sure.

A local rigger on a show call for a tour I was on blew me off when I asked him to watch the chains while he was running motors. I believe he said "Ive been doing this longer than you have been alive" or another typical line. Right afterwords he began chatting with his buddy while working. The chain got jammed and ruined the motor while I watched it all happen....lame

Working in a small arena, we marked that one point was to be a split 15 - 15 bridal. we hear the up rigger shout own to the ground rigger "whats the F***ks a 15 dash 15 V" yup.....

So were dumping the trucks, give one of the hands the FOH cases. "Where do these go?" he asks. "Send it to Front of House" our SM tells him. almost 1/2 hour later this kid comes back to the trucks and i shit you not i quote "I looked and looked, but could not find this house you were talking about."

I told a neck-down that I needed all the Stage Right Gear on the STAGE RIGHT Side....He actually had to ask the second dumbest question, "So is that YOUR stage right? or My Stage Right?"

"Ive been a stagehand for 20 years and never once has anyone asked me if I had a cresent wrench."

"Which one is the snare?" Spoken by a local audio guy in a theater, who had just finished telling me he'd been there for 15 years.

My fav was at Madison Square Garden when I said to the stagehands "Are you with audio?" and they replied "No, we're with sound?" You can't make this shit up!

I'd like to hope on that last one somebody was being ironic and somebody else missed it.

The Oak And The Willow

"The best test of a civilized society is the way in which it treats its most vulnerable and weakest members. "

Mahatma Gandhi

One of the main talking points of the Broadway League during the run-up to and during the strike in 2007 was that the Local was too inflexible in its rules and resistant to change. The Local replied that we were resistant to job losses and that Local would not change work rules without something in exchange. We were called featherbedders in public and worse in private, I'm sure.

The reality is somewhat different, of course. Given the width and breath of Local One's jurisdiction, with scene shops, television, opera, concert halls, Off-Broadway and LORT contracts, there is no such thing as a one size fits all contract. Are there standards that we want maintained? Yes. Safety, retirement security, cleanliness, the ability to take a break and have a meal, minimum calls, a living wage, these are all standards we work to keep. However, we don’t write contracts that close shows or shops. We will make adjustments when they are called for. Stagehands are nothing if not practical.

It was with some pride that I learned that the Local members voted on Sunday to accept wage freezes at two theatre companies that have been hit hard by the financial mess. As a Local we have worked over the years to help grow these companies with contracts and conditions that were appropriate for them and their size. Also passed was a new contract for a space in the Bronx that had been organized. In that contract the Local recognizes that the venue has a split mission, one as a roadhouse and one as community theatrical resource. As a result, there are different pay rates for the crew, depending on the event.

I think one of the inadvertent highlights of the labor disputes 2003 and 2007 is a renewed sense of “community” in the theatrical community. We have a history of helping each other during tough times. Now is one of those times and Local One is doing its part.

Is This the Time and Place?

Anonymous (who seems to be all over the Internet) posted a comment to an off-hand remark I made in “After The Fall” about romancing the Federal Theatre Project. In the comment, Anonymous claims “theater unions were vehemently against its beginning”. I asked for references and he/she referred me to two books. I have not read the books so I can’t judge on how accurate the original works are on the subject. Nor on Anonymous’ interpretation of their interpretation. Being underemployed and with a slight case of OCD, I did my own research. In NYC there are various theatre libraries like the NYPL for the Performing Arts , the Wagner Archives and industry resources at one's disposal.

Thanks, Anonymous, for making me proud to be a union member.

In the 1928/29 season there were about 264 shows that opened. In the 1931/32 season that number had dropped to 230. By the 1935/36 season that number had dropped to 170. In 1931, upstart Shubert Brothers were bankrupt. The League of New York Theatres and Producers, now the Broadway League, was formed in 1930. It was estimated that 25,000 show folk were out of work.

There was no unemployment insurance, welfare, food stamps, pensions or health care. Hoover, the conservatives and Big Business rejected ideas of programs of emergency relief and instead raised tariffs, which worsened the problem.

With rising unemployment in it’s own ranks, IATSE Local One decided to create it’s own relief program. With the agreement of the theatre managers, it was decided stagehands would work a five-show week and that unemployed stagehands would make up the rest of the shows. I haven’t determined how the program was administered, though perhaps like our League Strike, we learned to administer it on the fly. When there wasn’t enough work, there were relief stipends, and in emergency cases, there were loans. Sometimes raffles were held to help individuals, often the retired stagehand without a pension, who were having illnesses or other hard times.

In September of 1935, IATSE representatives, Local One business agents and others in the industry met in Washington and New York with Hattie Flanagan, newly appointed head of the Federal Theatre Project of the Works Progress Administration. In her first Regional Directors Report on Oct. 8th, 1935, Miss Flanagan describes meeting with the various interested parties. After meeting with “National Stage hands Union” she said, "The decision was that we cannot run a union shop, but that preferences is given to union workers because of their professional qualifications". The meetings with the League were successful only after some negotiations. “These meetings, in New York City, resulted in this group moving from complete antagonism to the project to the utmost cooperation, with an offer to sponsor several New York units as try-out theatres. “

With that out of the way, Flanagan, Edward Rollin, J. Horn and Mr. Barber of the Theatrical Projects Administration Staff, the IATSE Reps and Local One Business Agent Vince Jacobi began to set up the mechanics of the administration of the FTP in NYC. Business Agent Jacobi was appointed to oversee the application process for the stage technicians.

In February of 1936 an agreement was reached whereby Heads of Departments were paid $130 a month and grips, clearers and operators were paid $103 a month for 12 days of work for eight hours a day. 90 to 100 stagehands were expected to be employed by the program. By way of comparison, at the Hippodrome in 1935, a head made $125 a week and flymen, front light operators and others made $6 a show.

Many Local One members took great pride in being part of the program. While they were making less than they could with their Relief Tickets at other non-WPA theatres, protecting the Union and supporting the work that was being put on was more important than a days work at a higher rate. It was the policy of the Union that any man who did not protect the Union in the WPA jobs would be removed from the program and replaced.

In April of 1936, Congressman Wagner had read into the Congressional Report a telegram of support for the WPA, sent by Local One.

The success of the program was such that RKO, Loews and other theatre managers who saw the FTP as competition, complained to Local One that the FTP stagehands were being paid less they were paying for stagehands.

According to IATSE President George Browne’s Convention Report in June of 1938, the original program expanded from the original 90 in 1935 to 400 stagehands and 60 Department Heads. The rate had also been improved to $145 a month. The report ends with, “Our dealings with the officials of the Federal Theatre Project have been exceptionally satisfactory. I have always found a keen desire on their part to cooperate with us, which I have endeavored to reciprocate at every turn.”

The Living Newspaper shows played at Maxine Elliot’s Theatre, 49th St., Adelphi, Ritz, and the Biltmore Theatres.

The Negro Theatre Unit performed at the Lafayette and Adelphi Theatres.

The Children’s Unit performed at the Adelphi.

The Experimental Theatre Unit performed at the Venice and Experimental Theatre (Daly's 63rd Street) Theatres.

There were also units for Managers Try-out, One-Act, Poetic, Popular Price, Studio, Theatre for Youth, Variety, and Yiddish Theatre.

By the end of the 1939/1940 season , when the FTP ended, there were about 100 shows that opened. In the 1946/47 season about 130 shows opened. We never saw another season as busy as 1928 with 264 shows.

But our finest hour may have been ahead of us.

WWKTD

What Would Kenneth Tynan Do?

In an article in Bloomberg about “Impressionism”, Jeremy Gerard writes a “commentary” (which evidently is a little less than reporting and a little more than opinion) about why “Impressionism” got less than stellar reviews. It was the stagehands. Those damned expensive stagehands. And their damned expensive scenery.

Gerard starts by painting sophomore playwright Michael Jacobs as a victim of a critical “mugging” and then calls the show a “muddle.” Manny Azenberg is quoted as saying everything is getting more expensive than it was in the old days (much more expensive!) but at least he attributes some of the cost to retirement and health care, not just the dirty greed of those nasty, nasty union thugs. Gerard then says “God of Carnage” is succeeding only because it is “ferociously funny” while omitting the cost/benefit analysis. And in the last line, he quotes Producer Bill Haber of “Impressionism”, who appears to be channeling Yogi Berra when he says, “The minute they stop buying tickets, I will close the show,” he says. “I’m not in the charity business.”

I think the future of Broadway lies in the stagehands writing funnier, cheaper scenery.

Double, Double Toil And Trouble

For me my blog has become a bit of a microcosm of what life is like for many in the entertainment industry. Ignored during busy times and doted over in idleness. For any of you who have spend days, weeks and months on a project know what it’s like to suddenly start spending a lot more time at home. Corners get cleaned, taxes get paid, dinners are eaten off plates that you have to wash yourself and if you’re old enough, tending to health matters that waited until you found the time. If you’re young enough, you continue to ignore your health and you go catch up with the regulars at the your favorite bar.

Until the next project. Then reverse and repeat.

I was able to catch up on some blogs and I want to draw your attention to an interesting post on Ken Davenport’s Producer’s Perspective. The post on March 30th discusses a study about discount tickets and the impact on attendance, etc since 1992 to 2008. The study used “Phantom Of The Opera” as the control. Graph One shows that gross sales continue to climb albeit at a slower pace since 2000. Graph three shows that Average Paid Admission has continued to climb with an increase in the growth rate since 2000. Graph Four shows Full Ticket Price increasing at a rate faster than inflation for the period.

For me the most interesting chart is Graph Two. Graph Two shows that in 2000 the number of Tickets Sold has actually leveled off, with a growth rate since of only 7%. My take on this is that Broadway is putting as many fannies in as many seats as it possibly can. But we’re not growing. Broadway can’t really be considered a growth industry.

The advice to Mrs. Worthington may still hold true.

After The Fall

Before the bankers and brokers coughed up this massive furball of a financial mess, the common wisdom in the theatre was that “people will always need entertainment” and that we were recession proof. There would be shows and music and we would bring a few moments of joy to a suffering public. As long as one never took a long, hard look at our history as an industry, this was comforting. The Federal Theatre Project existed simply to give the Marc Blitzstein background for The Cradle Will Rock , nothing more.

Now, however, the interconnectiveness of it all is starting to become clearer. Right after New Years, headlines predicted the collapse of Broadway (OMG, 11 SHOWS CLOSING. SELL EVERYTHING!) while failing to mention that 9 shows were scheduled to open by March 1st. They may have been more correct than their short attention spans would have indicated. When the pipeline of new work emptied out of the scene shops and the theatres reopened, everyone looked over their shoulder to see what was next. There wasn’t anything. The shops that had hired 40 to 50 went down to minimal staffs and now there is a just smattering of new work coming in. What’s missing? The two things everybody in this business needs, money and credit. The money is for the landlord and the credits for the resume. Now the real world has intervened and things have gotten switched around. Bankers aren’t giving credit to shop owners and the rest of us aren’t getting any money. Shop owners play a key role in keeping this business afloat by carrying producers and fronting them material and crews to built the sets. There is certainly upfront money needed for each show but tools, buildings, plywood, screws, etc are all bought on credit, the shop owner’s credit. Some shop owners have better credit and cash flow management techniques than others. Like the ones whose payrolls don't lag with the producers checks and weeks pass without the crew getting paid. Don’t get me started.

Why isn’t there credit for scenery? Because bankers, like Toby Keith, are vowing that they will never smoke dope with Willie again. They partied long and hard and ended up in the fetal position with drool on their chin. “Just one more credit default swap and I’ll be good, man, I mean it.” The bankers and brokers are like those who are new to recovery and are just a little itchy and scratchy. “Credit? No, man, I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t go there right now. I gotta meeting I got to go to, otherwise I would. Maybe later.” Meanwhile we, the toiling class, have to start a national Alanon meeting for those of us whose lives have been directly impacted by those with an addiction to money.

Things will loosen up. Money will start to flow again and we’ll go back to churning out entertainment. I don’t think there will be that “Quinn The Eskimo” moment when everybody jumps for joy, but we’ll get better. Just will just happen one day at a time.

Imagine Sisyphus Happy

In a post back in December I looked at some IATSE history and road scales. Then I found Working Life by the Labor Research Association. Jonathan Tasini had a column about wages not keeping up with productivity or inflation. Since I already had a reference point for IATSE I thought I'd see how we have done.

1917 $45
2008 Adjusted for inflation $759.73
2008 $30hr or $1200wk is fairly typical

Considering where we started from, over all, pretty good.

1917 $45
1974 Adjusted for Inflation $173
1974 $280

Through the Depression, WWII and after, it looks like we were doing pretty well for ourselves. Beating inflation, getting ahead, buying homes, and educating our kids.

1974 $280 (from an hourly rate for a grip, $6.70 hr)
2008 Adjusted for inflation $1,227.34 or $30 an hour.

The last quarter century we've just been keeping even and stopped getting ahead.

But then if minimum wage had kept up with inflation from it's start in 1938 when it was .25, it would be only be $3.85. Oh wait. In NY State, it's $7.15.

It's a good thing we had cheap credit and jobs for our wives or we might have been in trouble.

From Limelight To Plasma

The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.

Check this out. Imagine a lamp for a moving light or follow spot that is smaller than a dime, uses half the power of the current lamp, burns with the brilliance of the sun and gets its power from radio waves. Luxim has introduced a solid state plasma light source that is the step away from LEDs. LIFI™ light sources use a solid-state device to generate RF (radio frequency) energy to power a plasma light source while LEDs use the solid state device itself. The plasma lamp also has a life of thousands of hours. There go work calls.

LEDs Magazine has an article here and PLSN has an article here .

Luxim has a video here and Cnet has a video here.

A Little IATSE History

One faces the future with one's past. Pearl S. Buck

A friend recently lent me his copy of the IATSE convention minutes from the beginning in 1893 to 1926 and I've found them to be great reading. It started when he was telling me about the Clearers Local #390 and Calcium and Electro-Calcium Light Local #35 in NYC. I had never heard of them so I decided to do a little research. The things you find out!

It seems that there were Property Men and assistants but the rest of the work of setting props and decorating were done by "clearers'. This was a separate Local and the men were not considered to be as skilled as mechanics, flymen, carpenters or electricians. It wasn't until 1920 that these separate Locals were "amalgamated" into
Local One.

I knew that the Alliance was originally called the National Alliance (NATSE) but had heard the name was changed because it rhymed with Nazi. Turns out that this little item was planted by some Hollywood press agent in the 1940's. Actually it was changed because, among other reasons, Canadian locals were included in the Alliance. That was done at the convention meeting at Emerald Hall in Norfolk, Va in July of 1902.

Items from various minutes.
July, 1895 Resolution passed that offers support to Eugene V. Debs and his brothers in Woodstock jail.
Resolution offered by Local 5 Cincinnatti to do away with counterweights and sandbags. Rejected as interfering with local laws to much.

July 1896 Rates for Traveling Men
Master Machinist $35
Asst Machinist and Flymen $25
Extra Men $20
Property Men $25
Asst Propertymen $20
Electrician $25

In 1903, Local 4 in Brooklyn requested that the rates charged in Brooklyn were to be as follows:
Master Machinist $30 week
Asst. Machinist $20 week
Traveling Company $20 Week
Property Man and assistant $35 Week
Stage and Fly Hands (extra hours and broken time) .65 hour
Electrician or Gas-man $21 Week
Stage Carpenters Per Day $3.50
Stagehands Per Day $2.50
Stagehands and Flymen per performance $1.50
Sunday, Nights, Holidays Double Time

1905, IATSE locals collect $1695 for San Francisco earthquake relief.

In 1914 Quebec outlawed sandbags and counterweights being used over "the heads of actors, machinists or other persons on the stage." What we call "arbors" were required.

May 1917 Road Scale Rates:(Pink Contract)
Master Machinist $45 week
Asst. Machinist $40 week
Flyman $35
Extramen $35
Propertymen $40
Asst. Propertymen $35

January, 1919, Local 4 requests amalgamation with Local One.
May, 1919 IATSE Executive Board rejects the Local 4 request for amalgamation.

May 1920, President Shay reports that during the Actors Equity Association strike, IATSE supported the union with an assessment of $1 per member. It was the support of all members of the Alliance that helped AEA win the strike.
Electrician $40 Week
Assst Electrician $35 Week
Moving Picture Machine Operator $45

1917 $45
2008 Adjusted for inflation $759.73

On The Bounce

The business is slow right now and there is a lot of fear out there. As workers we’ve been inculcated with fear about our jobs, our future and our status in life since the Reagan administration. The middle class life we knew has moved further and further out of our reach. Rightly or wrongly we measure our self worth by the kind of work we do and when there isn’t any work, we’re diminished.
One of the odd things about this business is working on the bounce. There is a sizable population of our business who work as per-diems or daily hires. Technicians who by design or circumstance live a life determined by the ebb and flow of work calls, holidays, special events, swinging into a show track, one-offs or hotel jobs. Split shifts, back to back to back calls, clockers and short notice calls are all part of the career. Depending on what is going on in you home life will determine how quickly you take any call that comes along. A stagehand with kids and a mortgage isn’t going to get much sleep.
How one copes with financial insecurity often determines the part of this business one goes into. Stagehands sometimes get a basic, full-time job and never venture out of the venue into the rest of the jurisdiction. Others don’t have the skills or the contacts that allow them to get these jobs offered to them in the first place. Still others seem to have the job skills but lack the social skills to stay in one place for very long. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
The hardest part is managing cash flow. After enough time in the business you learn that a steady job often means you can keep a smaller cushion since money is coming in on a steady basis. When your bouncing around, however, you keep a larger cushion because the checks arrive when they arrive. When doing a hotel job you know not to count on the check at the end of the call, the end of the week or even at the end of the month. Corporate jobs often tend to be slow since the payroll has to get invoiced, passed through the production company that hired you, then sent to the client, processed through their invoicing system and checks are then cut. Weeks can pass and sometimes enough time passes that a check comes in the mail that you had forgotten about. Sometimes you end up being fly-by-night operations creditors but the Local is pretty good about that sort of stuff. I’ve gotten ripped off a lot more often without a contract than with one.
It’s a balancing act keeping the bills paid, the calls filled and having a real life. Most of the time when things get out of balance it’s the real life that goes first. There’s no time for family issues or relationships or relaxation. You can’t really relax because every show closes, every job comes to an end and you have to find the next one. More work, a little sleep, another call across town and a quick meal. You get home to change clothes and grab some shuteye. And repeat.
I see fear in people’s eyes now. The cushion is getting smaller or perhaps has disappeared. The calls are fewer and after watching the news or reading their annuity statements, the prospects look grim. However fear is an emotion and not a fact. There is an ebb and flow to show business and to life and we need to keep that in mind. Watch out for people that are trying to play on your emotions, be they politicians, financers or commentators. The wealthy lose a bunch of paper money and it's a depression. Working folks lose their homes and it's a housing bubble. The multinationals that control the levers of power are jockeying for position with these bailouts and playing chicken with the financial system.

I have no idea where it will end up. I do know that we have more survival skills, street smarts. We had to have them in order to get by in the New World Order. Don’t buy what they’re selling. We’ll be alright if we stick together.

Stagehand of Babylon

A couple of folks with to much time on their hands have asked me why I’ve stopped posting. I’ve been blessed with a schedule that has been filled with a lot of work. Those of you in the business know what “busy” means in terms of time constraints. If you don’t, ask you family.

I think many of us like to think that we primarily make our living in the arts or at least on the periphery of it. But even in New York City it sometimes difficult to survive on just a diet of culture. As we get further and further from the hot sun of the fine arts, away from the nourishing atmosphere of Broadway we’ll work in the cold outer planets of “television” and “industrial.” Even these can be satisfying when the technological gee-whiz factor is high enough. A lot of product rollouts and events have a lot of bright, new shiny toys.

So where am I? Out in the cold outer reaches of our universe, there is a distant planet called “Cable.” It can support life but it’s a hardscrabble existence. Orbiting that planet is a lifeless, gray moon called the “Business News Channel“.

Business News Channel is inhabited by a race of people called “Clients”. It’s a soul-sucking place where the end result of a stagehand’s labor is to help tell the rest of the Universe about the importance of the “Market”. The Market and the Clients don’t produce anything. They do, however, talk a lot about how important they are and why they are the “Masters Of The Universe.”

Their main religion is a philosophy called the “Tao”; I believe it’s spelled. A great deal of attention is paid to the daily and even hourly moods of their god. Often you will hear it brightly said, “The Tao was up today” or solemnly “the Tao closed down today”. "The Tao went for a walk on Wall Street."

Space is often warped on Business News Channel. Regularly in the workplace, small groups of Clients will arrive, blink quickly and announce, ”It looks bigger/smaller than I thought it would.” For me, it looks exactly the size it was drawn to be on the blueprints but for the Client there seems to be a problem with perception on many levels. Sometimes color is a major problem. “It’s bluer/darker/flatter than I thought it would be” as if the sample of the color they were shown is not the same color as the one that appeared on the set.

The distortion in perception is not limited to scenery. Their measure of success in life is marked by the acquisition of things. They also seem to believe that a Bank is more important a Bakery. That Commerce is more important than Community. They put Profits before People.

There’s more, so much more and yet so very little. There will come a time when I’ll get off this little moon. As the saying goes, “when the money runs out, so do we”. The Client can hire my body for a couple of hours or days but the money always runs out and that’s my ticket back to sunshine.

Where have I been? I prefer to think about where I’m going, thank you very much.

And so it goes.

Chimera

I had the opportunity to work the Papal Mass at Yankee Stadium and I was again struck by unique skill sets required of stagehands that not many workers have. We take the known and create the new. And if it is done correctly, after the audience, the music, the applause and the bows, we make it disappear. After everything is swept and clean, the idiot check performed and the ghost light put out, we leave no evidence of our presence except the memory. Other trades build for permanence; we build to create a figment of a feeling.

Major league baseball understands this illusion. If you’ve been to a ball game in high school or even played beer league softball, the dimensions of the field are the same, more or less. What changes in a major league park is the scale. The immenseness of the stands creates a feeling of being dwarfed and changes the 90 feet between the bases to multiples of that. Television shots can create an intimacy with the players at home that is missing at the park much like the difference in theatre and film. Being on the field helps to understand the similarities.

Like a theatre there is certain sanctity about the place. The diamond and the outfield grass were as protected by the grounds crew and the security force as if it were a brand new auditorium and these were brand new seats. "Don't put anything on the seats" was changed into "don't walk on the grass". They may be different venues but it’s the exact same reaction.

Then there was a transformation. The fabled "House that Ruth Built" became something much more familiar. It stopped being a baseball cathedral and became a stage for a mass. It was going to be religious rite on a grand scale but also entertainment. Meaning no disrespect to the rituals involved or the faith of the participants but this was the start of a process we, as stagehands, knew intimately, creating entertainment out of a bare stage. Musical, concert, drama, religious ceremony, political event, business meeting, all require the same elements to achieve the same goal, to convey a message using presence.

Part of that transformation was a change in scale. During the day the trusses soared against the blue sky and at night the white ceiling glowed translucent. Although the stage was of a standard size commonly found in outdoor events, the upper decks of the Stadium that surrounded the stage provided an unusual point of reference. There developed an illusion of the stage/altar growing larger and the Stadium shrinking.

Then, as with any ballgame, show, event or religious rite, it was over. Silence settled over the familiar blue and green space as the last off the mats were pulled up and the forklifts backed up the runway. So lightly did the Pope thread on Yankee Stadium that there could have been a ballgame that night.

I wonder if the Yankee grounds crew has a ghost light.

Continuing Education

Due to a combination of work schedule and a lack of motivation, I've not been posting. Call it spring fever, laziness, whatever.

I came across this link to a SFX workshop that I thought looked promising.

SPECIAL EFFECTS CLASS LED BY GREG MEEH

The six-hour class will cover a wide spectrum of effects including uses of SFX in a variety of mediums from performing arts to print to TV and film. The first section of the class will cover Designing Special Effects: based on hundreds of images and drawings from 35 years of special effects design, Gregory Meeh will comment on and discuss the techniques and applications used to realize the needs of many types of productions, from the Off Broadway originations of Broadway hits to major Las Vegas hotel venues to fashion shows, auto shows, and daytime television.

Demonstrations and discussions will follow about the tools used to create the following effects: confetti and snow, water effects, atmospherics, wind, firearms, flames, and pyrotechnics. Each technical section will include experienced J&M technicians expert in the area and will include examples of functioning equipment as well as applicable safety information.

WWED (What Would Euripides Do?)

I've always been a technology buff. The formative influences in my youth were the polio vaccine, the Mercury Seven, pictures from Mars and deep-sea submarines. I can recall watching open-heart surgery on local television. It was shown late at night so as to avoid disturbing the squeamish but the image of a surgeon holding a beating, human heart in his hand will always stay with me. Good theatre should have a similar gee-whiz factor, either in production, performance or at best, a combination of the two.

While theatrical plotlines remain essentially the same (seven-count em, seven), science, engineering and the audience drive the technological advances in the theatre. Moving lights can produce millions of colors, hydraulics can move tons with ease and high tensile steels and alloys allow for scenery and cables of incredible strength. But the audience doesn't want to see a show about moving lights or scenery or flying people. It still boils down to telling a captivating story. And that human element can still trump technology.

A case in point is automated follow spots. They've been trying for years to find a way to allow an automated moving light to replace a human spot operator. Cheaper and flashier, theoretically you could put twenty spots on a single performer. Its been tried with rock and roll and more recently on a Broadway show. There are two major problems. Lag time and head fakes. Currently a performer carries tracking device that the unit tries to follow. The problem is processing time. Even in milliseconds, the time it takes for a signal to get from performer to processor to the motors is long enough to create a visible lag or jerkiness in the moving head. If you try to preprogram moving head for a point to point cross following an actor, well, unexpected things happen in live theatre. Even the fastest computer processing power will not react faster to a head fake or the suddenly reblocking of a scene than an stagehand who can decide, on the fly, to open the iris and follow the changes as best they can until the regular blocking is restored. Try that with software.

In the first Darpa Grand Challenge in 2004 the furthest an autonomous vehicle got was 7 miles out of the 150-mile course. In the 2007 Urban Challenge, this clip shows how unmanned technology mixed with human traffic . It did pretty well for the most part. For the most part. However imagine being the robot car being a piece of automation and the actors name is Taurus. Ford Taurus. The bugs for follow spots will be worked out.

One potential answer for follow spots may lie in joining facial recognition software in a unit such as High End Systems DL.2 with its built in camera and infrared sensors. By eliminating the need receive a signal from a homing device and introducing the process directly into the software, you may cut down on the lag time. Which could make automated follow spots a reality.

Do I want to hang on to carbon arc follow spots for the sake of job preservation? I would if, with their heat and foul odors, a carbon arc would put fannies in seats. If not, give the people what they want and give me a healthier work environment. Bring on the next deus ex machina. Since the Greeks, it’s always been about spectacle and the story. Why change now?

If It's In The Paper It Must Be True

In a Variety article, polls showing that the vast majority of Hollywood professionals feel that the WGA strike is losing cause.

"The town's opinions have budged a bit since the November survey on the question of whether the WGA's decision to go on strike was a "tactical mistake."

Among all respondents, 57% said no while 35% said yes -- not much different than the divide in November (57%-31%). WGA respondents are holding fast, with only 16% agreeing that going on strike was a tactical miscue.

But among DGA respondents, 42% now agree it was a tactical mistake, compared with 34% in November. Doubts among SAG members are also rising, with 25% agreeing that the strike was a tactical mistake, compared with 15% in November. Half of IATSE members are convinced the work stoppage was a tactical error, inching up to 50% from 47% in the November survey."

A lot of figures and percentages are thrown around as proof that the WGA strike is failing and creating a lot of hostility among other entertainment unions. According to Variety, half of all IATSE members are convinced that the dispute is a tactical error. Well, sorta. You see only 616 Variety subscribers responded and of that 616, 7% were IATSE members. So 3 1/2% of all the respondents who also happen to be IATSE members and subscribers thought that the strike was a "tactical mistake". And how many real people are we talking about? 7% of 616 is 44. So half of that is 3.5% or 22 people. Which means that in an industry consisting of hundreds of thousands of people Variety makes a statement that there is a large percentage of opinion against the strike and represents that "half of all IATSE members" are against it. The opinions of 22 PEOPLE now pass as consensus! Looked at another way, with it's circulation estimated at 31,000, Variety is making that statement based on the opinions of 0.07% of it's readership.

I'm not in the middle of the fight but from the outside, thats worse than sloppy, thats disingenuous. That's Corporate Media posing as a free press.