Bentwater Roads: The Tower Of Pizza

The first of our tech days, at 10am we were all gathered at the Theatre helping to fill the Eastern Angles van with costumes and the large Ice Cream freezer. Volunteers rewarded in a free Ice Cream (breakfast of kings!).

Up into the van and off to Bentwaters Airbase.

Tech days are notoriously slow and gruelling, as all the specific of making the technical side of the show faultless are slowly set in place and marked down for future runs. Our technical crew have been doing an amazing job. They set up the live video feedback and integrated the starry night background on to the projected image.

Sounds cues were quickly picked up and noted (music and sound effects making an enormous difference to the feel of the piece, creating atmosphere and mood).

After a long day of deciding on lighting and sound, Penny had ordered in Pizza so we all gathered around the out buildings and had ourselves a mini feast of Dominos.

By the time the community chorus arrived at 6pm we were ready for a tech run of the second half. This is a run predominately aimed at giving the technical crew a chance at doing the show at full speed with their new notes. This seems to be a show with a lot of cues for sound and lighting so it's important they have a chance to practice.

The run seemed to go very smoothly on the technical side and I was practicing my quick costume changes between scenes, working up a full body sweat - sorry costume department.

At the end of the day everyone looked very tired, especially Ivan who had been working constantly throughout the day (actors were only called in for the scenes they were in and in the interim we caught a bit of sun, played with the football, cricket set, went over lines and basically tried to keep our energy up for the scheduled evening run.)

A really productive day and now we just have Act One to Tech with sound and lighting and then we can keep running and refining the show. Adding on costumes for everyone and the costume changes, seeing whether there is enough time for everyone to change and finding ways to make the changes faster. Caitlin is going to have some phenomenally fast changes, as well as Dan. They both literally finish a scene as one character and reappear seconds later as a completely different one. Making these changes happen is part of the glory and spectacle of live theatre and I'm sure we'll find a way.