We were scheduled for a new tour of a Steven Sondheim musical review. It required us to provide all sound (10 lavs and six handheld wireless), six monitor mixes plus side fills, some backline for an eight-piece orchestra as well as scenic elements.
Trouble started when it became obvious that the production's light plot did not accommodate the scenic elements they had us construct and the production's LD was only dropping by to see the venue and not to actually participate in the focus or the running of the show.
There were no stage washes, only specials and "break-ups" in the provided plot, plus two followspots. And the producer informed us the night before the show that they did not have belts for the transmitters to fit into the costumes and no pockets in the costumes of most of the singers, so my house manager spent the night constructing from scratch the needed transmitter belts.
These were the red flags that were flying so brightly when the production arrived three hours late from the scheduled load-in time. With the house opening in two hours from their arrival, they informed us, "Oh we don't have our own soundman, and our stage manager just quit on us….Oh, and we forgot to tell you, we need a digital piano to go with the Steinway with his own mix."
I was given 10-20 minutes for sound check (for 16 singers and a nine-piece orchestra, with seven mixes from FOH), as the singers needed to go to the dressing rooms to get their costumes ready and to do vocal warm ups.
As the house opened, a half hour from curtain and as the audience was taking their seats, I was handed a hand-written list of songs for both acts, with the first names of the singers who sang in each song.
With no stage manager and no indication as to when each singer actually started or stopped singing in a song, from the beginning to the end of the two act show, it was an experience like riding a roller coaster that your were just sure was going to fall apart at any second, hurtling you into eternity.
Mics missed opening notes of singers, or worse, mics left hot would pick up singers coughing or talking to one another off stage during other singers' parts.
Since the light plot was not specific to the scenery (a series of risers and stair units), and there was no stage manager to cue the followspots as to which of the eight different entrances the singers were to appear, there was no way for me to even get a visual cue. Quite often, the followspots were still looking for the person singing even after the singer was two or three bars into their part of the song. Often my only indicator as to who was singing was to see which channel had the hottest LED read on the meter bridge – which didn't help if another singer was wearing a lav and standing close to the person actually singing.
For the second act, our house manager abandoned her post to take on the task of getting on ClearCom and getting backstage to try and at least warn us when someone was coming from stage left or stage right.
This was a show that any FOH engineer would have wanted at least a week's rehearsal with…not 10 minutes and no stage manager.
We affectionately called this the "Sondheim Music of the Nightmare Show," and when the producer asked my boss for a good reference, he was instead given a list of why not. "I blame all of this on your technicians," was his retort.
-Steven L. Ayola
