west uptowner

breathe throat, originally uploaded by trevorsc.

Aug. 13, evening

We have an open window to the back alley – that's our best ventilation for night shows. Underfoot, we are hearing a constant low level stream of awful heart-wrench rock on rotation at Jimmy Chung's on the floor below. And just as I'm going to bring in the house – thunderous fireworks.

Adam, our awesome FOH dude tonight, does the right thing and begs the Jimmy Chung's party-givers to bring the volume down from eleven. They do – Aparently Saturday night is 'hen night' and they tend to crank it a bit. Wow. Asking works. Sometimes.

I often wonder, when I'm back at home, or in the middle of heavy sidewalk traffic, or even running the show: what is it that I think about, as I'm standing in the dark waiting for a counter to time out and tell me to pull on a rope extremely slowly and smoothly with no noise whatsoever? The answer is, I have discovered, not much. The primitive cortex takes over, and time passes unnoticed, much as if I was in a queue to renew my passport or order a questionable burger with fries.

Aug. 14, afternoon

did the focus check, topped up our fog fluid with the “heavy” stuff that sinks, and brought the people in to see the show. 10 minutes in, the new fog stuff has risen straight to the ceiling and it sets off the fire alarm. Stop the show. FOH people are wrangling audience, and I wander around behind the irate firemen. They don't like our “artificial smoke”, but we tell them the show has been going for two weeks already without a hitch. “Well, seeing as it's gone a fortnight... alright. But if this happens again, we can't let you use this stuff.”

We cancel the 3pm show while I run to the Traverse to find a different kind of fog fluid. Find some, test it – better, though it still goes up. I'll have to 'dose' the fog out in smaller bits through the show until we can be sure things are settling down again. Really don't want to piss off the firemen again.


5:30pm

Okay, we're back. We've improved ventilation, switched fog juices, and have gone to a low-volume method of delivering the fog. And bonus: it continues to look fantastic.

# posted by trev @ 4:46 p.m.