Sometimes you miss place things, sometimes other people miss place things, and occasionally things just disappear.  That was ultimately the case after light rig this weekend.  After checking the plot over during the focus call, I discovered we were short three 36 degree instruments.  It is not that uncommon to be short an instrument or two, because we usually find out an instrument got hung in the wrong place.  Not this time though.  Somewhere between last season and this season three instruments walked off.  It kind of pisses me off.  First, who would take only three instruments, let alone Source 4 Jrs, when there was better equipment around?  Also, they have L5-20 plugs on them, which make them pretty useless for any non-theatrical event.  So thus is the mystery of the disappearing lights, and I doubt I will ever find out where they went.  The End.

The past two weeks have gone from a fairly standard pace into high gear.  Bryon Winn, our lighting designer, flew in earlier this week, so I had a lot of prep work to do for rig and focus which we finished late last night.  The theatre space is very manageable, but it does get tricky sometimes.  We have a 96 dimmer sensor rack and about a 150 lighting instruments.  Needless to say, there is a lot of two-fers and three-fers in the plot and a lot of cable to run.  Overall, I was happy with the amount of time hang and circuiting took.  I pre-planned all of the circuits to minimize cable lengths, place our mult breakouts in convenient locations and worked to save our precious twofers where possible.  Preparing the circuiting ahead of time allowed me to set the patch up quickly too.  I realize that 96 dimmers are really easy to type in and patch, but then again I’m either lazy or ambitious, take your pick.  I still find it ultra convenient to export the ASCII patch from Lightwright and load it into the off-line Expression editor to do my patch.  The problem these days is finding a computer with a floppy disk drive to transfer the show.  I could be all slick and buy a USB drive for the few times I need it, but I am a little stubborn, and would rather unpack and reconnect an old computer we have at the theatre that has a floppy drive.  It worked just fine though, and I didn’t have to punch any numbers, so I win!

Below is a list of our inventory.  For the life of me everyone here has the same conversation each year to discuss why the theatre bought Source 4 Jr. for most of the inventory.  Certainly there is the cost issue, and that the space is on the boarder-line of throw distances of Jrs. Vs. Source Fours.  The units are well maintained and in good shape, so that is a plus.  But this is our inventory:

Instrument                               Qty

25-50 S4 Zooms Jr                 42

50 S4 ERS Jr                            14

36 S4 ERS Jr                            12

26 S4 ERS Jr                            2

S4 PAR                                     32 (6 XWFL lens)

S4 PARnels                              16

50 S4 ERS                                6

36 S4 ERS                                2

26 S4 ERS                                2

50 Strand                                 12

10″ Scoop                                 6

6′ Mini-strips                           4

AF 1000                                   2

This was a slow week for getting things done in the theatre for our upcoming production of Twelfth Night. It is not that we work slowly, if anything we work to efficiently, but what it really came down to was that there was a guest lecture being held in the theatre today, which limited the amount of work on the show we could do. We did however complete the upstage wall for the show, which is simple, yet eloquent. It should be an excellent element to light since it is covered in bamboo blinds and acts like a scrim. Let me tell you, buying perfectly good and expensive blinds and cutting them apart can be a lot of fun. Overall the bamboo wall is finished except for some thicker bamboo panels that will be on the doors (think Gilligan’s Island). So I focused a lot this past week on carpentry instead of electrics, but it’s sort of nice to get back to one of my other passions, I do miss being a technical director or master carp sometimes. Lighting is still on hold for the most part until the designer flies in next week.

In other news we’re working on installing a permanent, but flexible cue light system in the space. A good friend of the theatre is visiting us for a bit, and just so happens to be an electrical engineer. He has a pretty amazing relay and logic system set up to minimize the number of wires, but we will probably simplify it so the electricians installing it won’t get confused. It will be pretty awesome. We did discuss using a low-voltage LED cue light system, but ultimately we decided using 120V (with powercons) would be more beneficial as we could conceivably modify the cue lights to be practicals, permanent power supplies or triggers for solenoids etc…

That about covers it for this week from Vermont.

I am back up in Vermont to start my third summer stock experience at The Bread Loaf School of English. I hope to do a weekly recap of my seven weeks here as the master electrician. So far, it has been a relaxed opening week of the summer. The equity actors and production team arrived within the first few days of classes starting, and everyone went straight more

I drove down to UCLA yesterday to meet up with a few friends to walk-through the Design Showcase West exhibit. For those that are unfamiliar with Design Showcase West, it is a portfolio review and presentation primarily for graduates from a variety of schools. The main schools at the showcase this year were UCLA, USC, CalArts, University of Texas at Austin, University of Kansas City at Missouri and Yale to name a few. It is the “Clambake” of the west as we often refer to it at school.

I had a great time at the showcase because there was a lot of amazing work and I got to hang out with a lot of my peers who I haven’t seen in a while. Also, as I was unable to get to Clambake in NYC, I thought this might be a good opportunity to see what other designers were up to. I would estimate that there were a total of 60 presenters at the showcase, but the majority was scenic or costume based. I was a little disappointed with the low turnout of only five lighting designers, two of whom are friends of mine. The most impressive part of the showcase was the scenic models. They were incredibly detailed and accurate, and glancing briefly at the play titles they were for, they made a lot of sense in supporting each work. It was an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon with friends in the industry.