Lighting Programming & Dress Rehearsals

Well, here we are back in Rochdale but this time with the cast and some new crew members. Its great news to finally have a full crew, just 14 days before the tour starts. We are joined by Neil and Alex who is our backup member for when the worst happens to someone. Its also good to have Cate and Rachel the new dressers along. Theres not much to say about this week really its quite a slow, dull job trawling through the show recording the lights into the desk, hopefully we will have finished this process by Wednesday evening.

Other than that its phonecalls galore for everyone trying to get the first few shows ready, and it seems there are alot of little issues to resolve, all in all very daunting but wont it be great to finally get on the road and do some shows?

Tech Rehersals - Day 4

THE END IS NIGH!!!

Well todays the last day so we got up early in order to get through all the little jobs before going home to the start of a weeks (much needed) holiday. Basically it is mainly tidying up and testing everything works, which thankfully all went very smoothly!

Danny Spratt (rigger extrodinaire) dropped in to dead hang our trussing and get the motors of so they can have their chains replaced with ones long enough to take the system to full height. Mick Spratt and Mick Mcgurk dropped in to see how everything has gone, and me, Tim, Craig, Sam and Ben popped down the road and got some Pie, Chips and Peas for lunch.

Right all thats left is to power down the gear and get in the van and go home.

Off on holiday next week so will see you later.

Tech Rehersals - Day 3

Well, the last two days have been a bit of a slog through a field of issues...and still they roll on, after EC undertook the mamoth task of leveling our set for us yesterday (11cm of wood needed in places!!!!), we finally got the set up and started building the truss around the set all was going smoothly until we came to get the ground support in the air. Due to a mis-wired 3 phase supply one of the motors ran itself of its chain. At this point we also discovered the chains on the hoists are not long enough to get the truss to its full height.

So today an early start with a trip over to our friends at Wigwam to collect a replacement hoist and drop ours of for repair. Nigel came back and helped me re-wire the 3 phase and we dropped the truss tower height so we could at least get it up in the air. Once up we dropped all the lights and tabs in place and put it up as high as possible, and we also got all the sound gear and front of house gear into place. So a slightly more productive day all in all.

Lets hope tomorrow is even better!