Strange. After a show is open I rarely see another performance. Sometimes I do not even know when the shows close. I assume there are small problems that arise from time to time but generally take the view that no news is good news and keep going on. Well, the two shows that I have up both had major problems this weekend.
Twenty Years of Agnes, on its closing performance ran into a problem with the computer that runs the lighting cues and the first half of the show had to be done with a generic wash turned on by someone who was there. I got a voicemail about this when I emerged from the subway in Brooklyn a half hour before the show was to begin. I could not have made it in time to solve the problem. Act two was solved, or so they told me. C’est la vie.
Windows is apparently running into some big electrical problems as the archaic electrical system at the Workshop Theatre seems to be breaking. Now the Master Electrician on Windows is the Production Electrician for Playwrights Horizons, so I when the theatre says “It must be something you did,” I am having trouble finding that to bear any basis in fact. But what can you do? It was rather disappointing when I got a phone call from the Production Manager asking me which lights could I afford to lose if I had to get rid of 4 of the 44 dimmers in the space. “Um, none.” Hopefully the problem has been solved.
One must, by necessity put so much faith in other people to maintain and stay true to your work. Electricians maintain a designer’s work after the show is open. A director handles a playwright’s text after it is printed. The stage manager holds the entire thing together once the creative team has gone away.
I really don’t like to think about these problems. But they are very real. And there is no way around it. One can not afford to get upset by it. That would only wear you down. Still, it is disappointing.
