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Opening Week

       After our week of tech rehearsals, Dirt Dog Theater Company's production of The Graduate opened on Friday, May 25, 2018. Before and after the first show, I finished learning how to turn on and off all the operating equipment (projectors, light board, sound board, computers), as well as learning what backstage lights needed to be on and off during the show, and what kinds of checks I needed to do to make sure that the lights were running properly before each show. There were 11 performances of this show, so as the weeks went on, this process became much more efficient, and I added other sound and video checks to my list. Our first weekend of shows went really well. We had a show Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon. During this first weekend, I got to know the cast and crew better, and finish learning everyone's names. I spent most of my time in the operating booth with the stage manager, so I got to know her the best.
       The first two shows of the weekend went very smoothly, and I started to feel more confident in the timing of the show and my timing for the light and sound cues, as well as my routines before and after the show. On Sunday, however, we encountered our first problem. When we went into the pre-show music, it did not come on through the speakers in the theater. We tried several times to get it to work, but it was to late to reboot the system, because the house was already open (people were in the theater). I ended up having to manually run the sound for this performance. This just required me to press a different button at the same time as I pressed the light cue, which was not as difficult as expected. It ran very smoothly. After this show, we started working on a better order to set up the lights, video, and sound, which eventually fixed the problem. I also added a soundcheck to my pre-show routine.


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